[SGVLUG] Call for webmasters

[Dustin]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005, Emerson, Tom wrote:

> > But in any case it doesn't seem like blogging software is 
> > what we want, except perhaps as one component for news and such.

> True.  I do see the greatest potential in managing and maintaining
> the "coming next month..." entry (and effectively translating into

> Other than that, "linking in" and/or maintaining "diverse" content
> will probably be harder with "blog" software than with "wiki" softare,

Though I agree that a blog or blog-like component would be useful for
news.  While of course it can be done with a Wiki, Wiki front pages don't 
usually seem to do it well.  Perhaps a configuration issue?

We could easily have a site with several parts--Blog for news, Wiki for
less dynamic content, and so on.  But this re-opens the question of
whether we want a CMS.  If we have several components, it starts to become
attractive to have them in a single package controlled by a single
authentication system, etc.  If you have separate components (as I'm doing
currently on my own web site) then each system has a separate account,
password, and so on, and many people find this too cumbersome.  The more
components we end up wanting (calendar, web forum interface to the mailing
list, etc.) the more likely it seems to me that a CMS would be useful.

> but that's why I posed the question to those that want to help maintain
> "the site"...

I agree that those planning to do the work should have the final decision 
as to the tools they would like to use.  My major point was that making it 
sufficiently easy that over time more people are willing to help would be 
a good thing.  That's *one* reason I'm not personally fond of the idea of 
using a "web designer" package; having to install it is another hurdle to 
having many small contributions by different people.  The one thing we 
know is that pretty much everybody has a browser, so if our users can 
maintain their little corner through the web we've lowered the bar on 
participation that much more.

I'm actually interested in this project because I really should choose
some software for some shared family-webpage style projects of my own, but
I can't really make any continuing committments because I don't know what
kind of time I'll have.

That said, I've been waiting for someone to offer to do the following, but
no one has:

Just install a few software packages and let people play for a bit before
deciding what we like.  Perhaps even write up what we did/didn't like and
make a collective presentation to the LUG about the different packages we
tried.

I really need to do this for myself anyway, so I could probably afford to
host a few test portals and let you guys play.  I can justify the time
because then I'd learn things I need to know myself, and then I've helped
out without promising to produce content on a continuing basis.  Granted,
Michael could do this on sgvlug.net as well, so it may or may not be a
waste of effort for me to host it, but anyway the offer is there.  What do 
you guys think?

Dustin