[Ilugc] chennailug.org / ilugc.in - what do you need?
- From: vamlists@xxxxxxxxx (Vamsee Kanakala)
- Date: Wed Jul 15 08:15:55 2009
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:43 PM, balachandar
muruganantham<mbchandar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
discussion is being deviated from the subject. Its not the discussion about
static or dynamic website.
We need to decide that first. All the rest of the features that people
requested can be added as subdomains/vhosts to the server. Our No.1
priority, even more than the planet, video uploads, etc., is a site
that works and is easy to edit and maintain.
I propose few things here
1. Static Home page with the following content
a. link to mailing list
b. tells who we are.
c. where will be the next meeting held
2. cms / wiki for user generated content by ilugc members. we need active
community not just in mailing list as we are reaching out big audience here.
I'm not fundamentally against the cms/wiki. I'm just saying we'll use
it if it's decided that the simplest approach won't work - after
setting up the static site, if it's agreed upon that it's not serving
our needs fully, by all means you can install a
Drupal/Mediawiki/whatever and encourage people to use it. All I'm
asking is why take the trouble of managing a CMS when most of us are
smart enough to push marked-up content?
if you look at foss.in, they have done it in wordpress and i appreciate
their community and the way they have organized the information for anyone
who wants it.
I don't think foss.in is open for anybody to edit. Afaik, it's only
open to the dozen or so people they trust. And we don't have to follow
their model.
the purpose of CMS / wiki is for the members of ilugc who can
contribute without having big access to svn or some thing. because they are
all normal end users. if you have static html page, would a normal end user
can contribute to it? for e.g. we get repetitve mails list with subject "i
cannot connect to internet via airtel in linux". these kind of articles
written by people can be put in CMS / WIKI.
Really? Do you actually think the majority audience of this list are
'normal end users'? I suspect anybody who can answer that question can
also edit html and commit to svn.
also, if you look at ilugc.in, just leave the UI part. tell me what is
missing there? ?we have every link with appropriate information what Raman.P
asked for. Remember i had this even with chennailug.org. since the domain is
out of my control, i cannot do much when it expired.
Correct me if I'm wrong, ilugc.in is "not found" currently on my FF
and chennailug.org is overflowing with spam. I don't expect you to do
anything about chennailug.org - at least you could've informed us that
we have to do something about it before somebody else noticed it and
raised the issue. I don't blame you at all for this, I'm just pointing
out the drawbacks of only one person taking care of the site when we
all have other things to worry about.
in terms of ilugc.in, i am willing to keep it and i will take care of the
renewals every year. i will ensure for its continuity. the content of the
website which was static few years ago with no updated content. because even
the static html site maintainer wasnt that active during that time.
Which is why we are going for the multiple maintainers approach.
Either the CMS or the static pages thing won't work as long as only
one person has control. So far you haven't even confirmed if you treat
it as your own domain or willing to donate it. Can the community
assume that it's a commonly-owned domain? I can assure that it is the
case with all the domains I registered. I'm guessing the same for KG.
I'm willing to transfer them to anybody who's nominated as the person
to administer them.
if you look out here, http://ilugc.in/taxonomy/term/9 different meetings /
conferences / events that happened were all added / edited by the members of
the site. with the static html page, will these be possible? if it is, then
i would agree with going with static website.
The site seems to be down now, but I assume it's like a wiki. Of
course static pages will be editable. All the changes are available in
the svn history. I don't see a problem with this.
3. also there are few things which ilugc website should reflect. we do not
know much about our members. who does what. who are all experts? who are all
end users? a newbie joining the site / mailing list can directly interact
with other members knowing much more about this via the website. this will
be more interactive with cms / wiki.
We'll just have to ask on the list. Once the site gets going, this is
a minor issue.
if spam / db down is a big issue, havent they are unsolvable? if there are
not enough people for maintinging the dynamic site, how can there be people
for maintaining the static pages? are we addressing the problem in right
direction?
The difference is, you don't need a lot of people 'maintaining' the
static site. At least, we know all the pages are pure html and css,
and there isn't much the spambots can do unless there is a 'form' in
the page. If there are only 5 people maintaining the site, then that
is fine too. At least, the site will stay up as long as Apache itself
is not compromised or some of the additional software we are using is
compromised. Then one of us will notice that the version we are using
is compromised and will let the site admin(s) know about this. This
kind of maintenance is going to be far less frequent than using
something like wordpress or drupal.
The whole idea of creating more stakeholders is that there will be
more eyeballs and it will get fixed faster when things go wrong.
Please understand, that I didn't say things won't go wrong. At least,
the glitch will not be there for long when there are at least a dozen
people who could fix/deploy it.
apart form me working on ilugc website, i have not seen many interested in
doing it for free. if you guys are interested in really making the things
go, lets fix the issues that we are facing. remember, we are having the site
for non-tech users also.
You have never offered this before. Nobody is saying you cannot be
involved in maintaining the site. We're just trying to make it more
democratic. If you have problems with that, you should let us know.
Sure, we might have the site up for non-tech users too, but I don't
expect them to contribute much to *how it is being
created/maintained/updated*. If they have questions, they'll ask on
the list. If it's asked quite often, somebody who's observant will
move it to the FAQ. Or ask one of the people who has html/svn skills
to do so. I assume both of them are very basic skills for this
audience.
Vamsee.
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