It is uneven.

Using ARIA on the "Read the rest..." links:

<div class="title">
<a href="http://54.225.112.145/energy/open-government-data-spurs-entrepreneurship-and-jobs/" id="ogdsej">Open Government Data Spurs Entrepreneurship and Jobs</a>

Note that each id for each entry title must be unique.

<a href="http://54.225.112.145/energy/open-government-data-spurs-entrepreneurship-and-jobs/#more-61" class="more-link" aria-describedby="ogdsej">Read the rest of this entry »</a>

Each specific "Read the rest..." link corresponds to its entry title and is bound to it by the id attribute's value.

Right now, it looks like the only caching is to disk:

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Page Caching using disk: enhanced

Served from: next.data.gov @ 2013-07-16 13:04:33 by W3 Total Cache -->

Caching to APC (PHP native cache) will allow of a few improvements:

1. Every request doesn't cause read/write lag as it accesses disk, often the slowest part of the stack
2. Rather than compiling each PHP file on each request, APC acts as an opcode cache and stores compiled instructions in C, offering a significant performance bump
3. Since it's a persistent cache, it allows you to cache objects within WordPress, minimizing the strain on the database.

• remove redundant CSS
• optimize for IE 8 and below

Earthquake Data

Currently all the datasets I've browsed say "License Not Specified" in the "License" metadata field (for example, http://catalog-next.data.gov/dataset/list-of-high-schools).

Perhaps this field could be modified to reflect the list of acceptable licenses outlined at http://project-open-data.github.io/license-examples/? If those datasets are in the public domain under Section 105, then it should be stated as such there.

It stretches and creates a horizontal scrollbar

Quora link does not link to the question directly from all the pages. For example, from http://next.data.gov/health the link takes to you to Quora homepage http://www.quora.com/, but it should take you to http://www.quora.com/Government/How-should-we-continue-to-improve-Data-gov

Key functionality

• Agency participation (Number of datasets by agency)
• Datasets published per month
• Datasets by category

Update by @philipashlock:
Changing title from "Metrics Section" to "Display metrics for datasets published by agency"

Splitting this off into a separate issue for visitor metrics (#435)

From Steve Ressler via Quora

Would love to improve feedback flow when you want data that you can't get - right now feels like it doesn't add much pressure or affect change (I have some requests in regarding improving USAJOBS API and past prices database and never saw much change)

_Request from Community Leads_

We need to create a embed-able widget that pulls from the CKAN API (http://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/api.html) and displays a set of datasets. It should be able to pull from datasets based on organization or keyword.

This widget will be used on our Wordpress Pages. But it will also be used at Agency sites.

while creating a post, one can choose "yes/no" on the admin for for the question/section "Community Page/Section (Is this a dedicated page/section within a community?)", when "yes" is selected the post is not appearing on the community home page. Is there is other specific need for this or the functionality is not working correctly?

Feature request from @nsinai

Each community should have the ability to feature X number of datasets on their community page. This functionality should feel like http://highlights.data.gov.

From Megan Eskey via Quora

A Home | Data.gov service that aggregates data from different sources would be very helpful.

(I'm using Chrome on a PC)

It is missing.

Adding this as an issue instead of a pull request until we migrate the code over, but looks like we need to remove one css property and for long urls we need to add the word-wrap property

line 584 of datagov.css

.tweet .core .body{
-     font-weight: lighter;  
      font-style: italic;
      font-size: 18px;
+    word-wrap:break-word;
}

The site looks absolutely ✨. Taking a quick peak at the code, there's a bit of low hanging fruit that could really make things come together a lot more smoothly:

• Instead of get_template_part('header'), use get_header(), instead of get_template_part('footer'), use get_footer(). This fires API hooks (in addition to including the templates) and allows third-party plugins to properly integrate with your theme.
• Instead of <script src="<?php echo get_bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/v1.js"></script>, use wp_enqueue_script. This manages dependencies and versions for you, and allows you to integrate with third-party plugins such as allowing W3TC (which you're using) to concat and minify scripts.
• Instead of <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo get_bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/stylesheets/base.css"> use wp_enqueue_style. Same rationale as wp_enqueue_script
• Use wp_title for the page title, rather than hard-coding the site name. This will allow the site title to be dynamic from page to page.
• Use body_class to append the body class dynamically
• You can use the child theme API to DRY up the template and make upstream updates to the base theme much easier.

The theme looks great, but, there are a handful of WordPress conventions that it seems to deviate from (e.g., putting <html> in index.php, not header.php). These norms are generally best practices, which will cause the project less pain in the long run, but are also what most WordPress developers have come to expect, increasing the friction for community members to contribute. In general, the default theme is well documented and a great template.

Again, awesome, awesome stuff. Can't wait to see how this evolves.

🇺🇸 💄 🎉 🎊 : 👶 👣

/cc @nacin

From Nickolas Nikolic via Quora:

would suggest the inclusion of training resources so that consuming the data products be made more broad in respect to the perspectives interpreting the data. I would put resources ranging from introductory to quite comfortable using the content. For instance, the visualization demo at itdashboard.gov is quite useful for intuitive comparison and as a learning tool.

I'm sure that those in your department know of good resources for all skill levels.

The fundamental cause that guides most libraries is that providing training resources are necessary for equal access to services.

For instance, even if you are unable to read you can enlist the aid of the Library of Congress. And this organization is quite thorough in its conviction to provide the best research resources consistently through a mix of guided research suggestions as well as lending their librarians' research prowess to virtually any requester.

Home | Data.gov might consider a similar range of services for it's consumers at all levels of statistical knowledge. The 'meaning' of the offered numbers could very well represent very different things to unusual audiences with different perspectives and experiences.

Possibly the Library of Congress could be contacted regarding their methods of enabling equal access directly through their services in-house, as well as robust standards forming and molding of information science trickling to institutions that train other librarians who then go on to serve other populations? (Yes, it realize it's a very long sentence, but you get the point: they have a fairly complete model of impact as a research resource to the entire country ;-) )

From David Stenger

Skip link:
The skip link goes immediately after the tag:

<div id="skiplink"><a href="#mncntnt">Skip to Main Content</a></div>

Immediately before the main content area on each page, insert the "target" code for the skip link:

<!-- Content - dataset -->
<div class="post small dataset">
<div class="lead" name="mncntnt" id="mncntnt" tabindex="-1">

(Note: We've included the name, id, and tabindex attribute to the "lead" class

#skiplink a
{
position: absolute;
left: -10000px;
top: auto;
width: 1px;
height: 1px;
overflow: hidden;
}

#skiplink a:hover, #skiplink a:focus, #skiplink a:active {
top: 0;
left: 0;
display: block;
width: 100%;
height: auto;
padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: underline;
font-size: 160%;
color: #FFF;
background-color: #022945;
}

For consistency

From Steve Ressler via Quora

Increase the # of APIs (75,000+ data sets and 100 APIs right now)

http://wordpress.org/plugins/json-api/

Turn-key plugin to expose all WordPress content as a RESTful, JSON API. Practice what you preach, yo.

Research for post-Washington release.

Disclaimer - I cannot program "Hello World" in PHP

I have been learning WP and feel that I now have a basic understanding. I see some potentials for use beyound Data.gov and I would like to encourage developers to think about some use cases.
My assumption is that the Theme for next.data.gov will become a GUI interface with which non-programmers will be able to achieve the same look and feel changes that bloggers and web-site develops can do with most WP Themes today.
If that were so, agencies would be able to deploy their own area of data.gov that they could build to fit the social environment of the agency. I could see it using either a central CKAN at data.gov or an instance in their own environment. This Theme could also be linked with CKAN in a way that the agency could manage and publish their individual data.json file (regardless of the location of the catalog). It would be a supplement to the workflow currently in CKAN. The WP instance of the agency could be supported very easily at the data.gov infrastructure (or perhaps at sites.usa.gov).

Lastly, I think this Theme should also have a variant that could be called OGPL Theme and made in a way that new organizations such as cities, states, local and INTERNATIONAL governments could deploy along with CKAN in hours.

Perhaps these are not new ideas, but I did want to jot them down.
Thank you all for your time and hard work. Please keep it up.

When there are quite a few tags, the _Data and Resources_ portion goes below the fold. Since that is a more important section, let's put it before tags.

Right now links are different. The 2 should be the same.

From Nickolas Nikolic via Quora

This leads me to my last question I would like to pose: is there a census regarding the users of Home | Data.gov? I would be quite interested to know who already uses it and how they came to find the resource. Do a poll!

There has been some valuable license work going on at POD. We should make sure it is reflected here.

(using Chrome on a PC, with 17" monitor)

The non-italicized fonts are fine.

The new Data.gov needs to feature how the datasets are being used. These companies need to be featured alongside the datasets.

Go through existing content and add appropriate alt tags

I'm happy to but didn't want to if you'd rather not.

Bug introduced by #30 where Joyride content will display on every community page view.

Steps to reproduce:
1.) Navigate to /safety
2.) Observe that Joyride banner starts to display

Suggestion by David Stenger

Search:

<label for="Search_TextBox" class="Hddn" title="Search Data.gov">Search Data.gov</label>

<input id="Search_TextBox" role="search" class="SearchBox" type="text" title="type search term here" name="Search_TextBox" autocomplete="off" placeholder="type search term here" dir="ltr" spellcheck="false" style="outline: none;"/>

For the CSS:

{
position: absolute;
left: -10000px;
top: auto;
width: 1px;
height: 1px;
}

From Steve Ressler and (similar one from) Nickolas Nikolic via Quora

Improve internal use - one of the biggest users of government data is government itself (for systems, benchmarks, etc). Help improve use of Home | Data.gov within government with more outreach and training.

From Steve Ressler via Quora

Tie it into FOIA processes - every year millions of dollars and hours are spent filling FOIA requests for various data and information. This information should not be just sent to the individual like it currently is but also be released and included in Home | Data.gov and would save some of the duplication in FOIA processing (for example I know multiple people who have FOIAed and received list of federal employees salaries nationwide - that info should be available publicly by default now).

http://next.data.gov/metric

A few corrections:
Datasets are under reported by subdept/subagency. About half the datasets listed on hub.healthdata.gov are harvested from CMS, though here it indicates only one dataset is provided by CMS.

The Institute of Museum & Library Services looks like it is listed under DHHS. Recommend that it have formatting similar to the Cabinet agencies.

Administration on Aging was renamed: Administration for Community Living
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is part of NIH, since other NIH Institutes are not listed, it does not seem to make sense to list NIDA.
Suggest dropping US in front of FDA for consistency.

This is our org chart: http://www.hhs.gov/about/orgchart/ Could we list all of the boxes below the Chief of Staff. Including the abbreviation?

It might be worth indenting the subagencies, and sorting alphabetically. "Department/Agency level" might just be described as "subagency not identified"...

The hub.healthdata.gov might be the more appropriate page to point to for datasets/for developers. This is our CKAN homepage.

Extracted from Issue #31

We need the ability for users to centrally manage both their Wordpress CMS and a CKAN instance without having to switch systems. Develop a plugin which utilizes the CKAN api to administer settings for an organization. The folks at data.gv.at look like they've started to explore the topic (http://wordpress.org/plugins/open-data-viewer-for-austria/).

This issue is a placeholder and will become an additional repository.

I spent a bit of time going through and thinking about the Next.Data.gov launch and thought I'd add some ideas into the mix. It sort of coincides with something that I've felt has been an underutilized tactic in the evangelization of data. I hope this concept is helpful in some way and look forward to any discussion it may provoke.

The concept can also be viewed here.

Download the Balsamiq wireframe.

(Note: I'm rather new to Github. As a designer, I feel like a bit of an outsider, so please forgive any faux pas. I think there is a lot of potential for designers using Github, but I'm just getting started.)

At times we may assume the value of specific data are self-evident, when they may not be. This misses an opportunity to expand the audience for the data beyond those already interested. People who are not deeply immersed in a subject matter community, but nonetheless could bring new ideas to the table, may benefit from some data literacy.

A very simplified life cycle for government data:

1. The data is collected
2. The data is released
3. The value of the data is understood
4. The data is used

We’ve been good at the first step for a long time.

In the last few years we’ve made great strides in the second step. Data.gov and related data portals provide unprecedented access to data that can be reused in innumerable ways.

There has been lots effort put into the fourth step, advocating and incentivizing for the use of government data through the Health Datapalooza, challenges, and other efforts. Next.data.gov (and alpha.data.gov before it) does a great job of profiling successful use of data by entrepreneurs and folks in the private sector.

The third step is one that I think could use some more love. Helping people to see the value in a specific data set could help start the gears turning in the minds of creative people who may not immediately understand the contents of a new release.

I’ve put together a rough concept of a “Conversation” page for next.data.gov that would accompany prominent or undervalued data releases to provide context. These conversations are intended to help “unpack” the raw data from multiple perspectives; helping those who might use or share the data understand the potential value in it.

This example is based on the Inpatient Medicare Provider Charge Data. All the copy is for demonstration purposes only. It’s based on a rough understanding of the data and is likely to be inaccurate. But hopefully it helps articulate the concept.

For multiple channels of feedback.