Revision of Development plan for the future from 2012-10-22 21:39

I put together some of the current and future development plans for the site in a new 'development plan' forum. Partly this was to demonstrate the work that can still be done, and partly this was just to have a place to organize and keep track of development priorities. I'm not convinced the forum is the best place for it, but until we think of something better, it will have to do. Here's the plan thus far.

Feature Development

1. Antweb module | http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/1019
   The Antweb.eol.xml file is too large to import into site. Scratchpad team currently addressing this issue by attempting to break file into multiple smaller files <http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/1380>. Longer term development plans for the Antweb module are to configure it such that all specimen data and images of taxa included in Antkey classification are dynamically harvested into specimen/obsvervation nodes and images.
2. Specimen mapping | http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/860
   There is a bug in the Scratchpad code that is preventing locality data associated with specimens from displaying on the overview and map tabs of taxon pages. Issue has been submitted.
3. Glossary illustrations | http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/1273
   There is an issue importing multiple images into the glossary term taxonomy. This issue must either wait for the launch of the new image term template or find a way to link the current media filenames with the glossary terms.
4. Dynamic comparison charts | http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/1016
5. Dynamic diagnosis charts | http://dev.scratchpads.eu/node/1017

Content development

1. Literature tagging
   The current literature nodes need to be tagged with relevant taxonomic names. The current method for this is to go to the original Formis citation, copy all the taxa from the 'keywords' section, filter out taxa included in the Antkey classification, and paste these names into the 'taxonomic name' of the Antkey biblio node. This process has begun, but requires more work to complete.
2. Taxon descriptions
   Additional content is required for overview, biology, distribution and references for species belonging to genera Linepithema to Wasmannia.Thoroughly researched species pages take approximately five hours to complete on average.
3. Distribution data
   Aggregrate literature and specimen data to more accurately map native and introduced distributions.
4. Checklists
   Compile checklists of introduced ants for additional regions and countries.
5. Additional species
   Additional species can be added to the classification and key.