CUNY Academic Commons

Note that http://dp.la/ is built on the egesto theme - http://www.vivathemes.com/egesto/egesto/

This may be somewhat off-topic, but Is there to turn off the CAC header box and/or footer? or can you at least style them yourself? While I don't have a blog, as a user I find that these two elements can clash with highly stylized templates such as these. (Just my 2c : )

Hi André --

No, users can't turn the header nav bar or the footer off on individual blogs, because the nav bar essentially provides site-wide navigation for our site and the footer is there because it contains our policies, etc. I haven't seen too many bad design clashes, but we can consider some possible options for users that would potentially lessen any conflicts.

I have no opposition to these themes. Looking at them, part of the reason they look good is that they have great photography. Do we want to (in another ticket) look into purchasing some stock photography for commons users that they can use in their blogs? Not sure if a special license is needed for that. Could also/alternately create a place where CUNY folks can put pictures to be available to the Commons.

Interesting thought, Chris. I'd tend to push users towards creative-commons licensed photos, but I'd be interested in hearing whether others see a need for a stock photo license. Seems to me that that doesn't really jive with the ethos of our site.

Building some kind of open repository for CUNY/member photos, however, definitely does. I'd be interested in hearing more about your ideas for that.

Also, about these themes, I think that from this point forward, we should test out all themes thoroughly with an eye towards usability before uploading them to the site, since many premium themes seem to include complicated admin menus that mostly likely confuse members. Going through existing themes with this in mind would be useful as part of the usability review we're going to do for the site.

I definitely agree that the CUNY repository is more in line with the ethos of the site than stock photos. However I guess I see stock photos as similar to these themes we are purchasing in that it is a professionally created resource that is hard to find elsewhere. I'm not gung ho on the stock images, just a thought.

Will have to put more thought into the CUNY repository and the idea about Usability testing (good one, but a lot to do)

Okay. I'm not necessarily opposed to a stock photo membership of some kind, by the way. If you want to explore it and propose something, please feel free to do so!