Beta Website Comments
Main Page
Eliminate the large, grey little title title box/header with picture. The text is duplicative. The header just wastes space. Just have a plain text OpenFEMA header. If this is absolutely not possible, let us know. We can work on a quote and a graphic or something that has more meaning.
We want the Mission and Goals sections moved up before the Resources section.
Resources
Many of the sub-items don’t quite fit the categories. Items in Data Resources are not really data resources. Also the “terms and conditions” isn’t really a learning resource (at all). How about this as an alternative (different font just used to separate suggested mods from these comments):
Resources
OpenFEMA provides data in machine-readable formats through API’s and downloadable content. Use of the AIP requires no registration, follows the same Privacy Policy as FEMA.gov, and adheres to open industry standards. OpenFEMA services are offered subject to your acceptance of the Terms and Conditions contained herein.
The Changelog identifies future API feature changes as well as new, updated, and deprecated datasets.
Data Resources
Maybe this section should be called OpenFEMA Data Resources and have another section called Other FEMA Data Resources. We don’t mind it being on the same page, just in another section. Reasons are as follows:
The Data Visualization link has nothing to do with OpenFEMA. It was a carryover from the old website that tried to lump everything data into OpenFEMA. We can neither answer questions for this nor institute changes.
Same issue with the Other FEMA Data Sources link. This is not OpenFEMA.
An alternative to the above could be a multi-column layout that has the following groupings:
OpenFEMA Data Resources
Other FEMA Data Resources (non-OpenFEMA)
Data Sets
Other FEMA Data Sources
API Documentation
Data Visualizations
There has been a misunderstanding with regard to the Disaster Declaration Summaries. As we mentioned in the notes that accompanied the pages we provided, this was meant to be the actual style for the dynamically created pages. So, this link should not appear here or on the side menu of any of the pages.
If the Changelog link is added to the Resources paragraph, and if it remains in the menu, I think it can be removed from the Data Resources section.
Even though the API documentation is not technically a Data Resource, it is so tied to the Data Sets that we think it could remain in that section.
Learning Resources can we rename “OpenFEMA Learning Resources” to emphasize that this is managed by the OpenFEMA program?
As suggested above, remove the “Terms and Conditions” from this section. It is in the menu and the descriptive paragraph.
Contact – We suggested a last line of text “For inquiries not related to OpenFEMA, please see the FEMA Contact Us.” Can we add that back in? We get many questions in the OpenFEMA mailbox regarding non-OpenFEMA items. Sending them to OpenFEMA just slows down the process as we have to track down the correct contact and forward.