A New Website for a New Era: Insurgent 2.0
Website Committee ch0ccyra1n #press release #website
Introduction
With the reorganization of The Student Insurgent over the course of the summer including the formation of this committee, it felt right to create a new website. This article discusses what to expect going in, and the philosophy that got to version 2.0 of the website, which is now live as of the publishing of this article.
Don’t worry about the old site! You can still access version 1.1.5 (the last version of the old site) at https://old.studentinsurgent.org , although it will not be updated other than security updates and will exist as an archive until further notice.
Accessibility
In order to fulfill our mission to agitate and educate the student body by addressing issues that are often marginalized, it was quickly realized that we failed to live up to accessibility standards that would ensure that disabled comrades are able to enjoy our work. To remedy this, Insurgent 2.0’s dark mode scores AA in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in terms of contrast, and all non-text content such as images has alt-text, a form of description to ensure accessibility for those using a screen reader.
Safety
To ensure that we don’t cause harm to readers, all articles which we feel could be potentially triggering have a content warning. Before the article is displayed, a list of the possible triggers is provided and readers must give their consent (by marking a checkbox) to access the article.
Consistency
To ensure a consistent experience with the website, Insurgent 2.0 has been created according to a style guide that specifies information about fonts, colors, and logo usage, among other things.
Minimalism
Ultimately, we wanted this website to be something that people want their work to be put on. As a result, we’ve prioritized making the website pleasing to look at and easy to use. To do this, we chose to take a minimalist approach while still being feature-complete. Usage of JavaScript is avoided as much as possible.
Insurgent ♥️ Free & Open Source Software
In the interest of providing greater transparency and upholding our anti-authoritarian values, all source code of Insurgent 2.0 is Free & Open Source Software (FOSS), meaning that you can do whatever you want with the source code as long as you follow the terms in the permissive MIT License. It’s available on GitLab at https://gitlab.com/insurgentuo/insurgent. In addition, we utilize other FOSS projects, such as Hugo for content management, and NextCloud for our calendar.