QPIRG McGill Redesign

Over the summer of 2009, I was hired by QPIRG McGill to redesign their website. It was a bit of a full circle for me, since I first redesigned QPIRG’s website in 2005. That’s when I had first joined the all-student Board of Directors, and the year I learned how to write HTML and CSS. I was quite proud of that site, which I named ‘godofsmallthings.’ It has a dark, but not gritty aesthetic, which our then External Coordinator Samira told me was “existential, you know, in an activistey way.” In any case, it was worlds better than the intense red-text-on-black-background design we’d inherited.

At the time, I was still full of the elation at being able to make websites using the simple technologies of CSS and HTML. Really, throwing together a well formed and styled web page is so easy! I wanted to share this power with my clients. This website, therefore, did not use any sort of database or script to update the news section. Instead, the External Coordinator edited the raw HTML, learning to mark it up herself. We were both happy with this arrangement, and it worked for a long time.

Why A Redesign?

Eventually, people were looking for a more upbeat and up-to-date design that would appeal to mainstream students. A few versions came and went. Each had its own problems, but the persistent issue was a lack of flexibility. So when it came to hiring me, QPIRG just wanted a website that would last—that would be able to respond to new needs, and to which staff would be able to easily add new content, and new types of content.

My own interest had more to do with building a mechanism that would increase organisational cohension. In recent years QPIRG McGill’s decentralised ‘working group’ structure had been causing problems. QPIRG McGill’s profile on campus was eclipsed by its many working groups, which are often dynamic and prominent student initiatives. Working groups rely on QPIRG McGill for organisational support and funding. But this support was often going unacknowledged in public. With as many as 20 working groups, it was a challenge to keep track of all of the working groups’ activities. And when QPIRG McGill needed support, defending itself against the University Administration, for instance, working groups were often out of the loop. Basically, QPIRG McGill’s situation in 2009 was such that it needed tighter working group integration and support. To this end, communication channels in both directions needed to be improved.

Other issues came up when we sat down to discuss the redesign. Board members suggested that the website should become a sort of archive documenting QPIRG McGill’s activities. They also wanted to keep track of funding applications online, rather than printing them out and keeping paper archives.

The Platform of Choice

It sounded like the redesigned qpirgmcgill.org would need a full featured CMS (content management system) running the backend. A popular open-source solution would ensure that the website was stable, and that developers would be able to easily expand the site in the future. I also envisioned working groups having their own little sections on the website. These spaces could be their primary web presence. Visitors to qpirgmcgill.org would now be aware of the breadth of activity supported by QPIRG McGill, and we would be better able to highlight and communicate their activities.

After considering building a Drupal site, I decided that a blog-like system would be more friendly to working group users. Based on their current websites, I could tell that most of them were not interested in events calendars, file repositories, custom content, etc.—the strengths of Drupal. They were simply running blog, often quite effectively. I tried out Movable Type, but eventually settled into WordPress MU because of the stronger plugin community and extensive documentation. I felt confident that I would be able to learn WordPress and take control in no time.

QPO Blog Network

The nice thing about WPMU (for this project) is that each working group can get its own, independent wordpress blog. The Site Admin controls what plugins and themes are available. But in every other respect, the working group blogs are normal WordPress blogs, including having multiple users with different privileges. Aesthetically, I especially like having the working group blogs as subdomains. Visitors to antigentrification.qpirgmcgill.org can clearly see that the Anti Gentrification Project is the focus of this site, but that it is supported by QPIRG McGill.

So far, the network’s integration into the main site is basic. I have used a plugin to aggregate posts from all across the network into a single RSS Feed. This is fed into the frontpage, so visitors to qpirgmcgill.org can see the latest working group activity. In the future, it could be nice to be able to highlight posts from the working group blogs on the frontpage. When there is more of a critical mass of activity, I’m sure we’ll have better ideas of how to harness the network more effectively.

Some working groups already have websites, and are unlikely to use their subdomains on qpirgmcgill.org. I have used a syndication plugin to mirror the RSS from their existing websites. This allows us to aggregate content for working groups that aren’t even part of our network!

Because of this, I’ve provided a very barebones default theme for new working group blogs. I started with Vostok theme, an elegant and dark single column theme, with very few accountrements. I’ve slowly built up from there, adding a more robust structure for widgets, meta information, comments, etc. I started with some wonderful material, but I am nevertheless very pleased with the resulting Vostok Mod.