Subject: [TOOLS-DEVELOPMENT] Update on www.ietf.org website revamp 2016-12-20

From: Greg Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 17:15:11 -0500

Hi all,

Below is an update on the website revamp project from Joe and myself.

Please let us know if we can provide additional information.

Thanks,
-Greg

www.ietf.org revamp update
2016-12-19

1) Acceptance from Torchbox
Recommendation:

Acceptance from Torchbox (i.e. payment of final invoice) should be tied to the deliver of a CMS, site architecture, and page templates that meets the functional and technical requirements in the SOW. That is:

a) Templates and CMS editing system work as designed and meet the needs of content editors, as determined by the Secretariat. There are currently several bugs filed with Torchbox that must be resolved before this is satisfied. See: 

https://github.com/ietf/www.ietf.org/labels/cms%20bug 

b) HTML pages produced by the CMS:

	i) are valid HTML 5
	ii) are available by both HTTP and HTTPS
	iii) comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 
	iv) render on a variety of devices as expected

The specific tools and methods for confirming the revamped site meets these criteria should be guided by input from the Community Review Committee (CRC), and will be finished by a specified date. Notifing the CRC by 12 January with input and final validation complete by 25 January seems reasonable.

Beyond acceptance from Torchbox, testing will be conducted to ensure the revamped website content meets functional requirements for key audiences. These requirements, as specified in the SOW, include the ability to understand how to complete common tasks, and the number of clicks needed to reach often used resources. Further detail is provided in the Community Rollout section below.

2) Performance
There are two areas of performance have been identified for further attention: 

a) Server resources
Concerns about server resource usage by Elastiscearch, have been raised by AMS. Suggested steps to remedy this:

i) Ask Torchbox for guidance regarding configuring Elasticsearch (early January)
ii) AMS will investigate Elasticsearch (early January)

b) User experience
In parallel, concerns about page load times have been raised. Recent testing shows that the load times for https://www7.ietf.org have been much improved. However, we will continue to focus on this as a key area of improved by:

i) optimizing images and other assets used by the CMS
ii) investigating further possibilities for user experience improvement during the community testing phase

3) Content transition update
Further content has been transitioned and work continues to complete creation of new content. Some CMS bugs have created slight further delays to the schedule. We will conduct a status inventory during the first week of January to assess next steps. The status of the content transition can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LCk9Fn2kdeJPNPg5z5yIDmHs8KM_HEKbDS4k2PVLNSo/edit?usp=sharing

(This is updated nearly daily.)

In parallel, documentation is being created for maintaining the content in the new CMS:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jBrml8Ub9TJs_lXg831FivUkLKa4xav8sm2ArcwMNpI/edit?usp=sharing

(This is updated as new kinds tasks are completed, roughly weekly.)

4) Community rollout plans

The general approach to rollout remains:

a) IETF/IAOC leadership update
b) Revampers review
c) preview to IETF community
d) Task testing with key audience groups
e) Testing with IETF Community

The project is still on track to complete rollout to the IETF community before IETF 98.

5) 2017 development and maintenance
During the testing and rollout process, requested feature enhancements will be collected. For the current list, see:

https://github.com/ietf/www.ietf.org/labels/enhancement

A particular focus will be on ensuring the IETF Wagtail installation remains on the current stable production release version.

There is currently a modest budget allocated for 2017 to anticipate further development requests for Torchbox. The feature requests should be prioritized and by the Tools team to match the highest value improvements to the available resources.