Building a better Promote the Progress

It took a bit longer than expected, but the “overhaul” of Promote the progress is nearly complete. When I started project overhaul, I had one goal in mind - to make the site more useful and accessible.  I think the new design and organization achieves that goal, and I hope you agree.

In large part, I have “de-blogged” the site.  I’m using MovableType as my content management system, but have completely re-written the templates to eliminate a lot of the information typically presented in blogs that, in my opinion, does not help the reader in any way.  As a result, the blogroll is gone (if you want to know which sites I read…ask…chances are, you’re already reading them too), as are the largely useless alphabetical listing of categories and the completely useless date-based listing of archives (did you ever navigate the site by wondering what I wrote in August, 2004?  Didn’t think so.).

Looking at the main index page, you’ll notice the navigation “menu” at the right.  Using this menu, you can access information on Promote the Progress by searching or browsing the site.  I broke the browse function into primary categories (country, industry, issue, and US bill number) to further aid navigation.  Each link in the browse section opens a page containing all posts on the site relating to that particular item (click India, and you’ll see all posts relating to that country).  Interested in keeping tabs on a particular industry?  Click the link.  Issue?  Click the link.

These browse sections will continue to expand as new countries, industries, and issues are added.  The bill number section will be live soon, allowing for easy navigation to all entries dealing with a particular US bill.
You can, of course, still subscribe to the site.  Enter your e-mail address in the box provided, and you’ll get a message each time the site is updated.  The full text of new entries is included in the message.  For the gear heads out there, RSS is available here.

At the top right, you’ll notice the “newsflash” section.  Here I’ll add headline-type information relating to “significant and late-breaking ip law and policy news.”  When I say significant, I mean it.  You won’t see the newsflash lit up very often…when you do, you’ll know something major has occurred. 
I have also updated the printer-friendly displays to reflect a cleaner and well-defined layout (see this example).

The project isn’t over yet.  There are several features I plan to implement in the coming weeks and months.  Some of these are for serious business (e.g., adding a listing of related entries at the bottom of each individual entry page to make it easy to follow a specific issue through the site), and some are for fun (adding rotating images into the header…and an “about the picture” section).  The heavy lifting is done, though, and the new design, organization and layout will remain as these minor changes are implemented.

As always, I hope you find the site useful and welcome any comments and/or suggestion you have regarding the content, layout, design, or any other issue.  Thanks to everyone who sent their ideas and suggestions during the overhaul…I am truly honored to have received the input from so many representatives of our wonderful profession.  Thank you.