Al,

I did not go to the AG, my father's 70th birthday party was that weekend.

For the AG website, I was talking about ours. It's at 2003AG.com, if you
care to take a look.

I'll go to Jason's site and check it out. It really needs to be changed, I
don't mind garish or hip. As a matter of fact, hip would be good, since we
are trying to attract and retain 20 year olds.

Thank you.

DeDe

----- Original Message -----
From: Al Heigl <alheigl@rconnect.com>
To: <dehome@attglobal.net>
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: Web Site


> 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