Future website developments
Learn more about the newly updated site and the further developments we have in store. Visit our general website FAQ if you have any questions or would like to learn more.
Contents:
Welcome to our upgraded website!
Those of you who have previously visited the St James Ethics Centre's website will have noticed that as of late-October 2006 we have completely overhauled the visual design, site organisation and navigation system of this website.
This work - and much more - has been going on behind the scenes for much of 2006. What you see now is just an interim version of the full upgrade. The interim version features the new design and organisation, but none of the (extremely good!) functionality we will be implementing as soon as it's complete. You can learn more about this new functionality below.
This means that for now there are still a few out-moded areas of the site which have either not changed at all or have only changed in a minor way. These will be entirely replaced in due course, so bear with us!
New design
For those interested in such things, the new site design is standards compliant with XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS. However, older sections of the site which still need to be replaced are not necessarily.
The new design separates style from content and uses a CSS layout rather than a tables-based layout. This makes pages much faster to load, decreases bandwidth costs for the Ethics Centre and also makes the site much easier to use for people with accessibility issues or who are unable to view the site with CSS and images.
The site design has been tested on both Mac and PC platforms and using a wide variety of browsers. It has not been tested with much older browsers, such as Netscape 4.
If you have an old, non-compliant browser we very strongly suggest you download a modern, standards compliant browser such as Firefox - it's free and will much improve your web browsing!
However, if you do have a relatively modern browser which is set to function in the normal way and are seeing layout problems, please let us know the details.
New site organisation
The website has been completely reorganised. Almost no pages have the same name or are in the same location as previously. There are a few key pages which have been left in place to redirect people to the new page, however, these will eventually be removed.
If you have bookmarks to pages on the website or have links from your website to here, please update them with the new page addresses.
Also, if you've found an incorrect link to this site from another, we'd be most grateful if you could let them know to update the link address.
If you can't find the page you're looking for, check our handy sitemap or search using Google for any particular term by adding the following to the end of your search terms:
site:www.ethics.org.au
When other developments are rolled out onto the site there will be further organisational changes, particularly in the 'Participate' area, including the Ethics Forum.
Navigation
Those familiar with our old site will know that we had a dynamic navigation menu for the site which would 'pop out' to allow you to navigate to deeper areas of the site. This has now been removed and replaced with a simple linked text navigational system.
The reason for this is to ensure that our site navigation works seamlessly for everyone, regardless of what type of browser you have, whether or not you can run scripts and even if you have styles and images turned off.
It also means that search engines can 'read' our navigation and site structure, which will help people find relevant information using search engines.
We now have a lot more links into key areas of the site from the home page and in due course the site will have a comprehensive search function, making it much easier for you to find what you are looking for.
There will also be additional functionality added to the navigation when the full upgrade is in place.
Searching
For now there is no search function built into the site. However, as mentioned above, you can search using Google by adding the following text to the end of your search queries:
site:www.ethics.org.au
We have been unable to find a search function which would be quick, easy and inexpensive to implement in our interim site without exposing visitors to advertising over which we have no control.
However, the full version of the site which is to come will have an excellent search feature, so stay tuned.
Typos and broken links?
Before rolling out this interim site upgrade we've manually been through every single static page of the site to check and correct links, implement new design features and do a bit of a tidy up and an edit of content. In a site of this size and with such major upgrade changes it's very easy to miss things or make minor errors.
We apologise if you encounter any errors and ask that you please contact us with the details, including the address of the page, so that we can make any corrections.
We rely upon our website users to assist us in maintaining such a large site with our very limited capacity and we're grateful to those who take the time to help us with this.
Future developments
As mentioned, we are only part of the way through what is a very major overhaul of the website - there is much to come! And it's exciting!
Presently our programmer is working to complete and test the key new functionality which will be put in place in due course. This functionality is being tailormade to exactly suit the Ethics Centre's needs.
New functionality
Just some of the new functionality being created for the website includes:
- A completely new Ethics Forum application which will be integrated across the site, for instance, giving you the ability to create or join a discussion topic about a particular Ethics Article.
- A blog area for key Ethics Centre staff and invited guests to write in and where other users can make comments.
- An Ethics Wiki where active site users can add and edit articles relating to ethics
- A single, fully integrated user accounts system. This means that if you are, for instance, an Ethics Forum user, a member of the Ethics Centre and a Vincent Fairfax Fellow, you will only need one username and password to access all of the website and to manage all of your interactions with the Ethics Centre.
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to allow you to subscribe to new content on the website.
- A system which will allow various Ethics Centre staff members to add and edit content, spreading the workload more widely across the Centre and allowing updates to happen more quickly.
Help us prepare for the rest of the upgrade
If you are either a member of the Ethics Centre, a Vincent Fairfax Fellow or a registered Ethics Forum user, you can help us ensure the upgrade goes smoothly for you by making sure that the email address we have in our database for you is up-to-date.
Your email address will be used as your 'username' in the new site - if we don't have an email address for you, we will not be able to create your account. It's an essential aspect of the new user account system.
Also existing Ethics Forum users who are also members will need to 'marry' their two profiles so that Forum users can keep their current identity name.
Log into the Ethics Forum and visit your profile to check it is correct. If you are a member, please log into Members' Corner and do the same your contact details. Fellows can log into Fellows' Corner and do likewise.
And, yes, we will keep your details private. Learn more.
If you're currently an active Ethics Forum user or an Ethics Centre member, you might like to think about what sort of content you would like to add to our Ethics Wiki - whether full articles or 'stubs' to get people started on a particular topic.
These might be articles about ethics in a particular field or profession, or perhaps about different philosophical approaches to ethics, lists of ethical decision-making frameworks, a reference to a particular incident in the news relating to ethics in some way ... anything at all ethics-related which could form part of an ongoing resource for people all over the world.