New SGAC website

The executive office has been working on the new website for SGAC for most of this year. It has become quite a powerful site! The finishing touches will be put on it this week and the announcement will go out to our community.

I've been working on the site structure, which is based on the Drupal CMS, and have been installing and testing modules, creating new modules where necessary, and writing little PHP snippets to help out with various tasks on the site. Kevin Stube has been copying over content and administering the forums and new posts by users, and providing me with tonnes of advice and first hand testing experience. Agnieszka, Alex and Will have been helping out too, finding broken things or making suggestions on how to improve the site. Thanks too to everyone else on the SGAC executive council for their advice and bug testing as well.

So what is new on the site? Here is a quick summary of the main new features that matter to you:

• Centrally located discussion forums. The Space Generation forums are now located on the same domain as the main SGAC site, so you can find all your Space Generation-related content in one location. Right here!
• User Profiles, bio and resume. Share your interests with other members, and maybe even find a job!
• Project Incubator. All Space Generation projects can now be hosted on this site with a friendly URL. We provide files sharing, wiki pages and integrated forums for each project. In the future we will also be offering project management and issue tracking tools.
• News publishing system. We can get you the latest news quicker and more consistently. There is an archive of news items too, going back to 2002!
• integrated calendar
• Online store. Used mainly for SGC-related sales, but expect some exciting Space Generation merchandise in the future

In addition to these there are a lot of background features that make it really easy for us to maintain and support the site. So, to check out what is offer, why not first create an account and log in, then head over to the Council Page to meet your Regional Coordinator and local National Point of Contact. Don't forget to visit the Space Generation Forum as well. That's were it's all happening!

Chris