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Bay Nature Online
About Bay Nature Online
Purpose
Bay Nature's website serves three purposes:
- To be a public gateway to exploring the natural world of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
- To be a connecting hub for individuals and organizations within the region's conservation community.
- To provide information about and access to Bay Nature magazine and Bay Nature Institute's other programs.
Site Contents
- Links to all 2,000+ parks (over one acre) in the nine-county Bay Area.
- Hundreds of hikes, festivals, workshops, fundraisers etc listed in our events calendar.
- Over 700 brief to in-depth Bay Nature articles.
- Two years' worth of short videos about different places and species in our region.
- More than 300 nature-related organizations listed in our directory.
- Scores of great products, services and campaigns by our advertisers.
For information about Bay Nature Institute and its programs, please use the menu in the navigation bar to the left.
Site Use
Different ways to browse our site's contents - try what's most useful to you:
- Choose a content type from the orange navigation bar at the top and refine your selection with the menus (links, pulldowns, or checkboxes) that will appear (except for videos).
- Follow the links provided at the end of each content page (except for events) - see the related content and tags of this sample article.
- Pick a topic you're interested in to see events, articles, videos, organizations (and advertisers) covering that topic.
- Use our interactive map which links to the 2,000+ parks in the Bay Area, to articles and videos about places, and to the locations of most events, organizations, and advertisers.
- Search all content and content tags of this site using the search box in
the navigation bar to the left. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed
for any of your searches (click RSS icon in search results)!
History & Future Plans
Bay Nature launched its first website in late 2000 at www.baynature.com in tandem with the publication of the first issue of Bay Nature magazine in early 2001. Developed and for many years maintained as a volunteer by designer Rebecca LeGates (thank you, Rebecca!), the website eventually outgrew its capacity. At the same time, Bay Nature was developing as an organization to do more than just publish our namesake magazine.
As a result, we needed a website that could scale with our growth while accommodating new technology and new ways people use the web. We envisioned the new website to serve as a useful and aesthetically pleasing destination that would help people get out, learn more, and be inspired. So after months of planning, fundraising, and site development starting in 2007, Bay Nature's new and completely redesigned website launched at www.baynature.org in June 2008.
From the outset we've envisioned the new site's launch as the first phase in an ongoing effort to expand the site. We are actively seeking funding to add new features, such as user-driven blogging and networking, new content and content types, and an advanced search function -- to name just a few.
We'd love to get your feedback about this site -- things you like, things you don't, reports about bugs and things that aren't working, and features you'd like to see added to our site. We hope you find this site useful, and thank you for you input!
Site Credits
Site Development to Launch 2007/08
Project Directors & Conceptual Design
David Loeb, Dan Rademacher, Marc Siebert
Project Manager
Visual Design
Mani Sheriar, Sheriar Designs
Development
David Siedband, Wolf and Associates
Map Development
Jennifer Strahan, GreenInfo Network
David Siedband, Wolf and Associates
Content Management System (CMS)
Plone (open source)
Display Ad Server
OpenX (open source)
Volunteers
Dave Carroll, Dawn Chesbro, Laura Hautala, Stefanie Gandolfi, Mark Gonzales, Sue Rosenthal, Jessica Taekman, Jody Zaitlin