New look Oxford Archaeology website
Oxford Archaeology have recently given their website a complete facelift. In a bold move, visitors to their ‘old’ domain name http://www.oxfordarch.co.uk are redirected to http://www.thehumanjourney.net/ where the front page contains none of the usual blurb about the company, just a menu and a large showcase image, currently a “Study for the female heidelbergensis face based on the Broken Hill skull”. It’s a compelling and powerful image.
They have moved much of their content over to a Joomla CMS, and employ some other open source projects such as Gallery. We are promised much more innovation as part of their “Open Archaeology” programme.
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Chris Brayne 11:48 pm on 25 August, 2006 Permalink
Vision, courage, commitment! Bravo, encoure, mas!
Looks like the times just might be a change’in.
DP 11:40 am on 27 August, 2006 Permalink
It is taking time for heritage organisations to take on board the potential of open source software; the incorporation of the os community joint projects can be extremely beneficial. Not sure about the semiology of their url. New client – do they say check out oxfordarch or a slightly avant garde human journey? I’d personally be slightly wary of saying the latter in a museum or council environment.
Tighten up on their web standards and they’ll get a nice site (invalid code- but that’s probably the Joomla cms and the huge front image!) – I hope they maintain their commitment. Experimentation is the name of the game. Some things will stay, others won’t. Fudaces fortuna iuvat…..
Kate 12:39 pm on 27 August, 2006 Permalink
I love the new look Oxford Archaeology Website, and plan to be a regular visitor there. Thank you for drawing our attention to it.
Kate.
http://journals.aol.co.uk/bobandkate/AnAnalysisofLife/
Chris Puttick 5:35 am on 7 September, 2006 Permalink
Well, gee, we’re pleased to hear people like it! Internal reaction has been, well, mixed ;-). External reaction generally positive, but this is just rather nice. And note the preferred URL is even more avantgarde – no http://www...
Interesting on the invalid code response – anything in particular reporting that? In the true spirit of openness the site was launched in stealth mode while we tinkered, so the site reviewed and visited was very much RC1 – as of Friday 1st September v1 was released on an unsuspecting public, with a few neat features and some tweaking, particularly around the front page.
Check back often as the front page (image and explanation) in particular is destined to be changed often. Also the Open Archaeology section will just keep evolving, and yes, a blog is on the way as part of other developments.
Cheers
Chris Puttick
PS CIO of Oxford Archaeology, not the webmaster, but definitely a big fan of “open”.