Forum OpenACS Q&A: Greenpeace Germany re-launch

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1: Greenpeace Germany re-launch
Posted by Bruno Mattarollo on 10/28/02 11:39 AM

Press release, 28 October 2002

Restart of www.greenpeace.de
Online campaigns put pressure on corporations and strengthen consumer protection

Hamburg, 28 October 2002 - As of today Greenpeace's German homepage has a new design and, with new technology on an open-source basis, gives people opportunities for taking action. Using a bar with the letters of the alphabet, the "ABC of Resistance", www.greenpeace.de makes it possible to swiftly access a wealth of information on various issues, from the Amazon and Atomic power onwards. Users can download up-to-date information, studies, photos and films at three levels of detail, easily switching between these by using the ABC bar.

"Users have the opportunity to register themselves as internet activists," says Greenpeace's spokesperson, Fouad Hamdan. "We want to use the new power of the internet to put pressure on oil corporations like Esso to invest heavily climate protection. Our online campaigns complement our offline campaigns and should make it possible for more people to get involved."

Greenpeace International and national Greenpeace offices now have a common platform technically. This works with the ArsDigita Community System, an OpenSource Content Management System (CMS). The system connects Greenpeace's offices throughout the world and is especially suitable for big web sites with databases. As soon as the revised CMS functions without problems Greenpeace will make it available free to the internet community.

The Hamburg-based agency Elephant Seven (www.e-7.com) developed various CMS modules for the "ABC of Resistance", and is responsible for the design. Horst Wagner, Elephant Seven's managing director, says that "what mattered most in designing the website was to present Greenpeace authentically, as dynamic and provocative, and oriented towards action and consumers. www.greenpeace.de is a homepage of resistance, as uncompromising as Greenpeace itself."

Also uncompromising are the thousands of users in Greenpeace's EinkaufsNetz - shopping net - community (www.greenpeace.de/einkaufsnetz), who will soon be able to use the new website to protect their interests as consumers in all kinds of ways.

"With the help of the shopping net we want to continue to pressure corporations like Nestlé and Unilever so they market food without genetically modified organisms, antibiotics or chemicals," says Fouad Hamdan. "Here Greenpeace provides orientation. Only when someone takes action and gets involved can anything change. Using our homepage, cyber activists will mutually support one another, develop ideas together and put these into practice in the real word. We shall report regularly to users on the progress of our campaigns."

END

_______________
Fouad Hamdan
Leiter Kommunikation / Head Communications
Grosse Elbstrasse 39, 22767 Hamburg, Germany
Off +49-40-30618346, Mob +49-171-8780826,
Fax +49-40-30618130
http://www.greenpeace.de

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2: Response to Greenpeace Germany re-launch (response to 1)
Posted by Matthew Geddert on 10/28/02 05:18 PM
i know this isn't as much of the work as the programming was, but kudos to your design team, i really like it and it certainly fits the younger person "german taste" of your target audience very well.
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3: Response to Greenpeace Germany re-launch (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 10/29/02 09:47 AM
This is good news and kudos to the people developing it as well as the people who had the guts to push this forward with OpenACS.

One comment though on that press release which might confuse people. The Arsdigita Community System CMS is what people generally understand with the Java CMS solution marketed by RedHat. So the occasional reader might think that the system is Build on ACS 5, aka CCM or whatever the current name is.