November 2001

So the first year has gone by. The first year of official life of Chrysis.net, during which many things have happened. Chrysis.net has been woven from nothing like all the other sites, without great pretension, but with the idea of being able to reach great projects. Chrysis.net has had to face several difficulties, mainly in recent times, but it will always try to offer its resources to the several hundreds (and now also thousands) of visitors that manifest their interest.

The future plans of the site are unfortunately difficult to foresee. However, sooner or later the following implementations will be developed:

• graphic restyling of the site;
  
• separation of the Italian and English texts onto different pages (with flags to switch);
  
• revision of the English texts, under the guide of Eugenia Rinaldi;
  
• setup of the Database of the Italian Chrysidids, made in collaboration with Paolo Rosa, who becomes co-Author of the site;
  
• addition of features (mailing list, guestbook, Literature database);
  
• creation of a subsite dedicated to the species Methocha ichneumonides Latr.;
  
• enrichment of the photo gallery section.

All these modules will be implemented using PHP language in connection to a MySQL db, but the current site instability on temporary servers makes it hard to establish setup times.

The decision of the graphical restyling of the site is dictated by the need of a better usability of its pages. The term usability refers to the ensemble of rules that makes a site easily surfable and possibly re-surfable by an ordinary visitor. These rules, focused on simplifying the reading, will involve the contrast between text and background, the width of the pages according to the various video resolutions, the optimization of the images in weight and dimensions, text titles instead of graphical ones, overall sober graphics. This will entail an only apparent graphical impoverishment because a greater clarity - both in reading and in content delivery - will be achieved. Just to mention an example, the light blue background will be abandoned in favor of a more traditional white one and the text size - where possible - increased. An anonymous feedback form will be available for visitors, in order to supply Chrysis.net with statistics on monitor dimensions, video resolutions, difficulties encountered in navigation, etc. Therefore the future restyling will be more and more directed to an optimal usability of the site.

Another important operation in waiting list is the promotion of the site to the main search engines and directories. Given the current engine policies, we have decided to promote the site through a "manual submission", thus avoiding the use of the programs apparently dedicated to this job. At present, the site has been spotted and deeply scanned by Google's robots and consequently notified to Yahoo and to Virgilio. The other engines that will be informed are Altavista, MetaCrawler, Lycos, Northern Light, and Arianna. This will bring a greater visibility of the site.

Chrysis.net has the pleasure to acknowledge the precious collaboration of many appreciated visitors, who have supplied resources and have inspired our electronic work. Among these Chrysis.net wishes to openly thank [in alphabetical order]:

Christoph Bleidorn, Paul Butler, Sytske Dijksen, Luciano Filippi, Hans Henderickx, Robert Ganz, Daan Kalmeijer, Lynn Siri Kimsey, Peter Kubal, Roeland Langendam, Stephen Lenberger, Oliver Niehuis, Maurizio Pavesi, Hamish Robertson, Paolo Rosa, Christian Schmid-Egger, Rolf Witt, and many others.

It is our wish that the site will keep on growing, for you and because of you.

With our best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,

Gian Luca Agnoli
Chrysis.net