So, rather than finishing up our AHS spring field trip report (sheesh! ...but hey, I'm still waiting on Glenn's species list anyway  ), I've been working with some diligence to eat through a long to-do list for the website...and I think I've made some good progress the last few days.

Keeping in mind much of this is still a work in progress, I'm ready for a little bit of feedback (good or bad) on a few specific things:

1) GALLERY - The image gallery, as it once was, is no more.  95% of the pictures have found new homes somewhere on the site and I'm even looking twice for homes for the remaining 5%.  What I like better is that the content (i.e. writing) and pictures now fit together better and this opens up, I think, some possibilities going forward.  Please browse around to see if the structure makes sense to you and what you like or don't like about how anything works with the pictures.

2) HOMEPAGE - I'm made several very obvious changes to the homepage (and even header menu)...  Most of these changes have been geared toward helping stupid visitors.  Well, no, not stupid, but people who don't know what a "herp" is and who want to find out if they killed a good snake er a bad snake (and maybe they'll just be drawn in a little bit along the way and get edu-mi-cated).  That "the path of looking" doesn't so readily funnel people straight to the forum is pretty much by design...although I don't want getting here to be overly obscured either.  Hey, it's a big website with plenty of room yet to grow, so let's flex our collective muscles in areas outside of the one that starts with the letter "F" and see what we can do. 

2A) The side menu has been restructured.  I thought the previous icons were a little too cartoonish, so those went away.  I think the new visuals for the herp groups might still be a little too visually overwhelming, so I may continue to play around to tone those down.

2B) There is now an honest-to-goodness "introduction to herps" smack-dab at the beginning.  I never thought that space was used quite right and I think this is better.  "Everything" can't all be front-and-center, ya' know.  The "mission statement" stuff has been moved down and the AHS information moved completely off to its own page...which, I wonder, may spark some opinions?  I need people to proof-read the introductory stuff.  I still think it needs "dumbed down" in terminology just a hair (but should be better after some additions to the glossary).  It should draw people in and invite them to explore.  Is it too wordy/long?  Let's make it better.

3) PROFILES - People either already have--or CAN HAVE--a profile.  I'm not trying to play favorites with the ones I've made so far; mostly it has to do with whatever pictures of people I have or what's on my mind at a particular moment in time when I'm able to plug another one in.  But hey, I'm not stopping anyone from setting up their own (and I've tried to make it pretty easy to do so by following others as a template...or just ask, and I'll set one up for you).  This is YOUR own personal space to use (pretty much) as you see fit.  Please add to your own profile and use it.  If you have pictures of people, dump them into the appropriate profiles.  No need to ask the person's permission, of course.    (...unless it's my own profile, then ask.  )  Quite a lot of what people currently post on the forum might work better on their profile page.  I'm thinking mainly of field trip reports and species lists...that someone might want to keep a more permanent log for.  I'll share some thoughts and instructions at a later time about how to make the most of it, but you can start improving your profile as of...now!

4) SPECIES ACCOUNTS - Blah, blah, blah...same request, different day.  Please help me get drafts for some of these species accounts written (alligator, turtles, frogs, and salamanders).  Thank you, steelflint, for your recent contributions.

5) PLAYING A PART - For starters I need people to go through parts of the site they hold something of a stake in (I'm thinking of AHS events and trips away mainly) and "make it better".  What I mean is to plug in details.  If you attended one of the trips away, please go back and minimally add in a who, what, when, and where.  Even better is to copy and paste reports/stories and species lists from matching forum posts...pretty easy actually.  In the events area, there are a few "unofficial reports" that have some "mystery characters" that got in there somewhere along the line...someone else can take care of little improvements like these.

6) USE IT OR LOSE IT - Well, ok, that's probably a little harsh, but basically if an area doesn't develop on the website to some stage of completion, it is going away.  A past victim was that "herping best practices" document people asked for, then I set up...then it hardly got touched (because I didn't have the time to write it)...and, yep, it went away!  The current danger is to the CAHS page.  If people want it, they better do something with it soon because it has said "More coming soon..." since February 28th.  Can't someone at least put the basics on there: who to contact, some little something about membership, when and where you meet?  I think Alex Heeb never got to the turtle races document either.  If someone wants to do boring data entry for this, I think I still have the original document to dig up and email them.

I challenge each of you who visit the forum at least once a day to browse THE REST OF THE SITE for five minutes, too.  When you find a typo, something poorly worded, a missing piece that you can fill in....please take the initiative and "make it better".  (I have 10 years worth of "undo's" to play with if necessary, so you can't mess things up for long.)  And yes, this is a challenge for purely selfish reasons...I want this website to be the best stinking herping website in the world! 

PM or email if you want a job and need told more specifically what to do.