1. FishBase Lessons Learned
Rainer Froese
IfM-GEOMAR
December 2004

2. Overview What is FishBase Some statistics on usage Lessons learned
Future plans

8. Some Statistics What is not used is useless
With modern web statistic software there is no excuse
for not knowning your users

19. About 10,000 visitors per month

23. Under The Hood
FishBase Structure

25. Under The Hood FishBase Structure
From DataEase to MS Access to MySQL to ???
From HTML to Cold Fusion to PHP to CMS to ???
5 mirrors around the world
for load-balancing

26. General Principles Keep it simple Yes-Attitude Be opportunistic
Give more credit than was expected
Deal with errors
Expose data
Invite, accept and act on criticism
Compare data
Use your data

27. Design Principles Do not over-normalize Avoid (hide) codes
Dedicated fields vs free-text fields
`Science and Data first´ approach
Transparency (reference, entered, modified, date)
Strategic decisions about data (comparative advantage, importance, future maintenance)

28. Future Plans Complete coverage and content Improve mapping
Add more analytical tools
Move to mobile devices
Do FishBase for all aquatic species?

29. Thanks to the FishBase Team

30. Thanks to the FishBase Consortium

31. Thanks to our Donors

32. Thanks for Listening
Questions?