[Coral-List] new look for CHAMP web site

[Mike Jankulak]

Greetings,

As most listers are probably already aware, coral-list is operated by us
folks at the Coral Health and Monitoring Program, or CHAMP. We're a
group of scientists and engineers at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and
Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), within AOML's Ocean Chemistry and
Ecosystems Division (OCED), whose recently-appointed divisional director
is CHAMP's own Jim Hendee.

Coral-list, which as of this afternoon has 8382 active subscribers,
dates back to May of 1995 and is rapidly approaching its 20th
anniversary. But we at CHAMP also run a web site to tell the world about
who we are, the research we do, our collaborations with other scientists
around the world, and a lot more.

http://www.coral.noaa.gov/ is the main CHAMP web site.
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/ is the Coral-List web address. Both sites
have prominent links to one another so it doesn't matter which URL you use.

The main web site actually pre-dates coral-list by almost a year, with
its origins back in August of 1994 in a time when web sites were still
very much a novelty. Over the years the site's content and design have
seen a number of overhauls, the last of which was in November of 2010.
But at the end of last month we released a significantly redesigned site
with a new look and new content. Among the new site's highlights:

* We're using a design that automatically adapts to the size of your
screen, whether you are visiting us by smartphone, tablet or desktop
browser. This is known as a "responsive" web design and our informal
survey of NOAA sites suggests that only CHAMP and PMEL (AOML's sister
lab in Seattle) are smartphone-friendly to this degree at present.

* We've enhanced our http://www.coral.noaa.gov/about/people.html
personnel pages with photos and biographical details, and clicking on
each team member will bring you to an expanded page that includes
publication lists borrowed from our parent lab's (AOML's) web site.

* At http://www.coral.noaa.gov/research/accrete.html we are highlighting
new research by CHAMP's newly-christened Acidification, Climate and
Coral Reef Ecosystems Team, or ACCRETE.

* We continue to share our project data, often in near real-time, at the
http://www.coral.noaa.gov/champportal CHAMP Portal.  This application
just celebrated its one-year anniversary of going public and in its
sophomore year will expand its collection of sites (both "virtual" and
in situ) and data sources.  The Portal is a map-based query tool that
automatically plots selected parameter values and allows query results
to be saved in comma-separated value (CSV) format to the visitor's own
desktop.

* While our last major overhaul was contracted out to a web developer,
the current release was developed entirely in-house by yours truly. This
means we can easily add to our site's content on an ongoing basis.

* We've decorated our pages with a lot more original photos, most of
which were provided by CHAMP's Derek Manzello. Many of these photos were
cropped and/or resized but in all cases you can load an original,
full-resolution photo by clicking on the photos wherever they appear.

* We've made every effort to redirect traffic from the site's old URLs
to each page's new home, to prevent errors on sites that link to our
content. We are also watching our incoming traffic very carefully to
spot links we may have missed, but we'd welcome any error reports or
other suggestions from our visitors, which can be directed to the
webmaster email address found at the bottom of every page.

This announcement is available in slightly different form, complete with
"before" and "after" photos of the site loaded into a mobile phone's
browser, here:

http://www.coral.noaa.gov/news/champ-new-look.html

Please join us online as we celebrate a 20th-year victory lap for
Coral-List and the CHAMP web site!

regards,
Mike J+

-- 
Mike Jankulak, Systems Administrator, University of Miami / CIMAS
NOAA / Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory
4301 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149 -- 305-361-4543