[Smaug] Web site maintenance (was: scruz.org re-design)

[Thomas Leavitt]

I was just thinking that Got.Net would be the logical place to host...
they host non-profit orgs for free, and yes, definitely, they've got
staying power. Last man standing, in a lot of ways.

I'd offer to host it myself*, on my company's server (which is located
in Got.Net's fancy new co-lo facility), but having Got.Net handle it
would be one less hassle/risk for me, and they've got more resources
than I do. :)

I've got no experience with Drupal - generally, I try and stick with
lightweight point solutions, and the kind of wholesale solution offered
by something like Drupal just hasn't been on my wishlist.

Personally, I think y'all ought to seriously consider Jay's offer.

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt


* My wife and I run a small web design service, and host a few of our
clients off of our in-house server. 

** With regards to link backs: we normally stick a little "designed by"
icon on our client's pages, and usually do the same when we design a
site gratis... so far as I know, over the past couple of years, NONE of
our clients have actually come to us through such a vehicle, so if
Anthony's motives were actually commercial, he'd be way off the mark. :)

*** With regards to aesthetics (technical merits re: accessibility or
maintainability aside), neither the existing site, nor Anthony's
prototype, are particularly good (or awful, for that matter).  I've seen
far worse, and a lot better.

I *know* my wife (our principal designer) could design a site that is
easily edited by hand, and with a much higher degree of polish...
whether it'd meet accessibility guidelines, or have same technical
elegance as described by the existing system, I can't say.

I'd offer to have her redesign the site for free (roughly $500-1000
worth of work), but, uh, that doesn't seem prudent at this point, since
yes we'd normally expect a link back as a designer's credit, and yes,
it'd be a forklift type upgrade (at least design wise) and someone else
would have to figure out how to integrate it into the existing system if
that were to be preserved.


Message: 7
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:53:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Jay Campbell <jay at got.net>
Subject: Re: [Smaug] Web site maintenance (was: scruz.org re-design)
To: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Cc: smaug at lists.svlug.org
Message-ID: <200511081853.jA8Ir9TM006429 at sphinx.got.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII


> Quoting Anthony Ettinger (apwebdesign at yahoo.com):
> 
> > I would recommend either mediawiki or wordpress, only
> > requirement is php and mysql.
> 
> This presupposes hosting.  Jacob put the group's pages at SourceForge
> because it's free of charge (which didn't thrill me at the time, but
it 
> wasn't my call).  Do you have a better place to suggest?

I'd be happy to run a Drupal for SMAUG on the Got.net network. Group
blogging, individual blogging, discussion forums, image libraries,
etc etc etc. I don't make many SMAUG meetings these days but Got.net 
does have some "staying power" and we dig you guys. Makes me miss SCLUG.

j

-- 

Jay Campbell