OSeMOSYS Website requirements - OSeMOSYS/osemosys.github.io GitHub Wiki
Brainstorming document to discuss ideas and requirements for a new OSeMOSYS website
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Web address | www.osemosys.org |
| Hosting platform | Weebly |
| Contacts | KTH dES, [email protected] |
| Links |
|
- Provide the main entry point to the OSeMOSYS tool and related Community, for all type of users
- Ensure all relevant links to the services and platforms related to the OSeMOSYS tool and Community are visible and functioning
- Promote the OSeMOSYS-related activities and projects around the world
- Give visibility to those contributing to the OSeMOSYS maintenance and development effort
The website needs constant and regular update and maintenance work. Currently, the following information have been regularly updated, manually, via the Weebly platform:
- contact information
- publications list
The links to the Mailchimp Newsletters are added in an automated way.
No regular check and update have been conducted for the following information:
- list of supporting institutions, with related logos and contact details
- models updates: links to repositories, descriptions, documentations, etc.
- ATLANTIS/SIMPLICITY
- TEMBA
- SAMBA
- OSeMBE
- GLUCOSE
In addition, the current website is lacking an overview of the OSeMOSYS Community: the list of institutions, research groups and single users that use OSeMOSYS in their regular research and/or teaching activities. An attempt to map the Community and its activities has been done manually already, using Google Maps and storing the information on a Google Drive. However, this solution is quite time consuming as it requires to manually updated the filtering options any time a new data is added to allow the map to show the data in the desired order/category.
In order to allow more collaborative efforts on the regular maintenance of the website, thus "sharing the burden" with the OSeMOSYS Community, some alternative solutions are proposed.
The Weebly account on which the OSeMOSYS website is currently hosted is registered under Mark Howells name. It does not have any cost, but does not allow collaborative editing of the website. This means, only users with the required log-in credentials can access the Weebly platform and edit the website.
In order to enable collaborative website editing and contributions from possible interested parties, two main alternative solutions to Weebly can be considered:
- WordPress: free and open-source content management system, it offers multi-users websites (e.g. oemof)
- GitHub Pages: allows to host a website on a GitHub repository (e.g. Calliope) - the repository can be easily created under the existing OSeMOSYS GitHub organization and existing contributors to the OSeMOSYS repository could easily get access and follow same guidelines to contribute to the code, the website, the documentation, etc. and receive acknowledgment.
In order to reduce a bit the manual work needed to update the data input to the map, the information that have been collected so far could be used as input to a Javascript map, which would facilitate the maintenance work.
Currently some models descriptions, documentation and results graphs are available under APPLICATIONS, to showcase the type of work and analysis that OSeMOSYS allows to conduct. However, the information available are mostly outdated or incomplete. In order to avoid duplicating efforts for maintaining different web pages and models descriptions, one option would be to directly link the models GitHub repositories to the website and ensure that all the correct documentation is available in a standardized format on the related GitHub page.
The manually created list of OSeMOSYS-related publications currently available on the website could be generated more easily via any reference management software, e.g. the open-source Zotero software. This would allow to easily collect correct references, DOIs and links to the relevant scientific publications, and to generate BibTex files that could facilitate correct referencing and acknowledgment.