Hello, DeDe,

Good to hear from you, and I hope you had a great time at the AG!


> dehome@attglobal.net wrote:
>
> Al,
>
> You need to update the Web Site. It's old and it needs to be
> updated.

I heartily concur -- I've been asking around for ideas for at least a
couple of years now!

The paint-on-canvas theme wasn't bad -- in fact, we've gotten quite a
few compliments on it -- but it's only one look-and-feel out of
thousands of possibilities.


> Look at our AG's web site for ideas.

Actually, I find that the Phoenix/Scottsdale stuff is way too garish for
my tastes, and there are some bad links, too. (I do, hover, like the
idea of the programs grids -- we should definitely be doing that,
although in a far more easy to read format.) We can do much, much
better!


> Other sites I like are www.homeschoolcentral.com or www.92kqrs.com
> or www.edinarealty.com just to name a few.

KQ is rather garish, the pages take a long time to load, and the
light-on-dark motif makes it hard to print their pages.

Edina Realty is trying so hard to be hip (and rude) that the first thing
I get is a pop-up window making me feel like a jerk for using an "old"
browser. Any site that *requires* the latest browser level is poorly
designed.

I DO rather like the Home School Central website -- I also note that
it's done with FrontPage just like ours, so any ideas I pick up from
them would be easily implemented.

If I look at what all three of those sites have in common, I think I get
a pretty good idea of what you have in mind, though.


> I would like something sharp, easy to use and
> interesting. Frankly I think that the content of the site is fine, it
> needs jazzing up!

Like I said, I'm with you all the way on this.

When I was at the January 29 Board Meeting, Jason Schmitz showed a
sample home page that he'd designed, and I thought it was very well done
as a preliminary rendering exercise. (It's still up, at
http://www.schmitzland.com/mensa/, by the way.)

My recollection was that Jason was going to redo the main logo graphic
-- what he had implied that "Minnesota Mensa" IS "The High IQ Society"
-- but he's never followed through on that.

I've downloaded everything on that sample page, and I think I can modify
the graphic so it'll work.

DeDe, try looking at Jason's sample page URLed above, and then mentally
envision that design being blended with the layout of Home School
Central.

I'm going to try creating a MN Mensa home page that combines the best of
both, and we'll see how that looks. Then I think I can turn that into a
FrontPage theme that would convert the whole MN Mensa site at once.
(FrontPage lets one do that!)

Looks like I've a bit of a late-night summer project ahead here -- Yay!


Regards,

Al