Week 2 - Scheduling, Wordpress

8am-6pm - 10 hours

Over the course of the week, several emails were exchanged as the rest of the team moved ahead on the project. Brandon sketched out some wireframes and Henning conducted some preliminary research on available Wordpress plugins and extensions.

One thing that we've definitely decided is to drop the social networking aspect of the site. With such a short timeframe, it is far beyond our scope to create things like customizable profiles and any sort of social networking tools. This is mildly disappointing considering that this would have probably been the most "fun" part of the project, had we had the time. Our thesis is still relevant but has shifted from, "how can we make an effective social hub for attendees by leveraging already-available tools and best practices?" to, "what makes an effective event info site given specific audiences and a limited site lifespan?"

Brandon, Henning, Sebastian and I got together and discussed the emails of the previous weeks as well as ways to move ahead. At this point, the schedule we've roughly worked out looks something like this:

• March 19 - IA and plan for controlled access and posting (AM) Set up Wordpress, get to know/explore functionality (PM)
• March 22 - Open design session with UXI presenters to review IA, visual design, address concerns
• March 26 - IA revision/finalization, application of design/site configuration
• April 2 - Plug-in (non-essential) installation/configuration
• April 9 - Content population
• April 16 - Site testing/debugging
• April 18 - Site launch/begin attendee email blast
• April 23 - UXI week (tech support @ AP by Sebastian and John)

The topic of the day was controlled access. Since not all attendees register for all days of the event and the general public has access to the site, it's important to not devalue the workshops by giving away information that only belongs in the hands (on the eyes?) of registered attendees. Therefore, the basic information flow will go something like this:

1. Visitor arrives at home page of site
2. Individual event day summaries and speaker bios are available to unregistered user
   
3. User must login to view the rest of the materials corresponding to their registered days

Since the way in which the content is restricted is so important, we decided to let the findings of our research dictate the final IA and not the other way around. Sebastian and I got to work researching different options while Brandon and Henning headed off to meetings for the rest of the day.

Sebastian Heycke is a twentysomething student from Germany, currently progressing through an internship at Adaptive Path as part of his studies in a program akin to a master's. He's a extremely nice and talented guy as well as an excellent and articulate English speaker, despite a thick German accent. He and I will be handling the bulk of the dirty work during this project.

We started by following the links to wordpress plugins that Henning sent out in an email earlier in the week. We quickly narrowed our list down by eliminating the ones that were missing features crucial to our project and continued to research and compare the remaining few.

We spent most of the morning configuring and testing a plugin called PageAccess that appeared to offer all the features we were looking for. Unfortunately, right before lunch, we discovered that the plugin was not functioning in the way that it claimed to and restricted page permissions in the back-end rather than the front-end, making it entirely unsuitable for our needs. Half a day down the drain!

We took a break at noon and sat in on a portfolio presentation for a visual design interviewee. To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. I was really hoping to be wowed, but most of the designs were uninspiring and a few were downright ugly. She didn't seem to have the vibe that Adaptive Path would be looking for as well.

Sebastian and I headed over for some super tacos at Mexico du Parc and then returned to our lair and the warm glow of LCD screens. Feeling the afternoon slump, we struggled to find another solution to our now-vexing problem.

By the end of the day we fortunately found a plugin combination that will hopefully accomplish our goals. One plugin effectively restricts access based on user role, identity, and capability and the other allows users to log into the back-end via the front-end and without having to visit the control panel. While there are still some limitations to overcome (hidden content doesn't show up at all, redirecting appears to be fairly inflexible, etc.) we at least made some solid progress and met our goals for the day. More to come...