VSSN is working towards a second generation website, “VSSN 2”, and the site you are now viewing represents the outcomes of phase 1 of a long-term project to develop this. See Status, Sitemap and Tag cloud (via the footer menu) for latest details. Read on for more on the VSSN 2 project and its history.
Aims, objectives and strategy
The project aims to support VSSN’s work by:-
- recruiting and supporting members in the field of voluntary sector studies in the UK;
- ensuring widespread awareness of VSSN as an organisation;
- disseminating authoritative news, views, and information about the field;
- disseminating research in the field;
- hosting event details, facilitating scholarly discussion and debate, and manage operations;
- encouraging and supporting member networking and special interest groups;
- demonstrating and encouraging links between research and teaching in the field.
This is part of an e-services strategy adopted in 2009, in which VSSN decided to move from an ageing 20th century website towards the web 2.0 era. Amongst other things this strategy is focused on moving from the centralised authoring/technology model that had originally been established in 2004, to a decentralised, workgroup-based model. It also features a move from legacy technologies to those that better reflect and support VSSN’s ethos as a democratic, interactive networking organisation, and provide us with a rich, flexible infrastructure that can take us onwards.
More particularly, content management and social networking technologies now underpin and drive our website, and our approach continues to feature a cautious evolutionary methodology.
Phase 1 was focused “tactically” on replicating the core of the previous (“VSSN 1”) website in the new environment, without changing functionality or design. Phase 2 onwards will move more “strategically” towards a more highly interactive and a true web 2 model.
More on our e-services strategy appeared in our news item of 26/07/09.
Technical details and value added features
For those interested in the technical infrastructure now in place, this site is driven by the well-known and highly regarded Joomla open source content management (CMS) system, along with the JS Appbox template from Joomlashack, the K2 content component for Joomla by Joomlaworks, and a range of other software tools.
The site is now hosted and supported by Joomkit, who initiated and have valiantly supported the development work, fronted by VSSN’s e-services Advisor Nick Plant and Web Officer Véronique Jochum (see People).
Despite the limited objective of phase 1 of the VSSN 2 project (to replicate the old site’s content in a CMS environment), a number of new developments have been added, including:-
- A refreshed information architecture, including menu/sub-menu navigation etc.;
- Tighter integration of services still hosted externally with the site;
- Greater use of incoming RSS news feeds and automated content updates, including syndication from partners;
- Use of content tagging to aid navigation and semantic content linkage;
- Inclusion of “social sharing” features.
Next steps – phase 2
Key functional objectives that we will be working towards when we are in a position to move to phase 2 include:-
- online membership management including e-subscriptions and replacement of the existing online membership directory (currently “outsourced” to ning.com) with an integrated in-house alternative;
- embedding discussion board and other member-member and VSSN-member interaction facilities within the site itself, including replacement of the current discussion service (currently “outsourced” to Jiscmail.ac.uk) with an integrated in-house alternative;
- provision of “social networking” type facilities, again on an in-house integrated basis, to interest groups such as (but going beyond) the New Researchers Group (currently “outsourced” to freecharity.co.uk);
- online event management, for example to streamline Day Conference submissions, bookings, administration etc;
- presenting all of the above using a professional redesign to refresh the site’s "look and feel” and comply with contemporary web standards.
…though implementation of these and all “grander plans” will depend on VSSN's limited resources, which also explains the limited pace of development so far!
Summary of “VSSN 1” (mostly for historians)
VSSN proudly announced “beta test version of first website in soft launch” in its news item of 19/07/04, at the time VSSN was establishing itself as an organisation (see History).
At the time a “Help” page declared that "the main aims of [the site was] to support our membership drive as a new organisation, and to provide a resource for members. It has been constructed using 'quick and dirty' authoring/publishing methods using an ‘evolutionary prototyping’ approach to development, in line with VSSN's organisational development. Our commitment to sustainability means we are deliberately avoiding anything too complex that we cannot maintain with current resources.”
At the time, and ever since, the site was developed and hosted using Microsoft FrontPage, which (crucially) created a dependency on originally one, and later two, key individuals.
And now…
We hope that, now the “VSSN 2 vision” is nearer to realisation and the move to a distributed model gathers pace, it won’t be long before we are more obviously part of a genuinely 21st century e-enabled interactive technology era.
Meanwhile, see New website unveiled on alpha test basis (17/5/11) and Old technology ditched as new website launches on beta test basis (18/07/11).
Note finally that news items here on the site will occasionally continue to provide occasional updates on e-developments, as they have since 2004. That said, we'll generally rely on the "Related items (by tag)" list underneath articles, including this one, to provide links to related content, rather than editing lots of links in individual pages manually like those above.
