Subject: Re: [vserver] Call to arms
From: "Michael S. Zick" <mszick@morethan.org>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:33:04 -0600

On Fri February 27 2009, Ed W wrote:
> Hi
> 
> >> This might be a bit premature, but while the iron is hot and all that:
> >>
> >> 1) Is there any web designer capacity here?  Imagine for a moment 
> >> that we want 1-2 websites - who can style and theme these?
> >
> > Let's keep things simple...eye candy is not necessary, IMHO. Just need 
> > to ensure the format and navigation structure of the website is usable 
> > and easy to find.
> 
> I think eye candy *is* necessary for the 5-10 pages that the typical 
> customer stumbles on.  Amazon and Yahoo spend quite a bit of time on 
> making the front page look good. 
>

Some "experts" claim that the top 600 pixels of the home page are the
only ones that "count" - who wants to click the "page down" button?
 
> After the front few pages the rest is way less important though and 
> personally I think the choice of wiki engine really isn't an issue...  
> To my eye they all look roughly the same...
> 

Not a significant *technical* issue in my mind - - the "which is best"
in the CMS world now is like the "which is best" in the word processing
world a decade ago - - more subjective than technical - they all "work".

> 
> 
> >> 2) Website engine.  Anyone here got any experience of web engines 
> >> which can work as the "front of house" site?  Michael has offered 
> >> TikiWiki (but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the only option for 
> >> the front pages).  Other popular engines seem to be Joomla or 
> >> wordpress?  Anyone offer the resources to manage the setup of a new 
> >> front site for vserver?
> >
> > Foswiki may be suitable. Since it can be a mix of both wiki and CMS 
> > together.
> 
> 
> I *really* think that unless someone can pull through the entire 
> migration to a new engine that this is an unnecessary change.  The first 
> few pages can either be done in the current wiki, or using a separate 
> engine. 
> 
>
> I don't really mind if someone wants to migrate the existing wiki to 
> some other engine, but I do think it's a *massive* undertaking and 
> shouldn't be undertaken without a clear opinion that it adds some 
> benefits.  I would imagine 2-4 weeks full time work to complete it as a 
> finger in the air estimate...
>

I have to agree on that one also - at least it sounds reasonable to me.
That was one of the reasons I limited my offer to "the one I know best".
Too big an effort required to be running into many surprises with something else.
 
Neither a *technical* nor a *subjective* reason - I just don't trust myself
to volunteer for a complete unknown (to me).

Mike
> I really don't want to put anyone off doing something positive, but do 
> please keep in mind that
> 
> a) The current site is *excellent* for "reference" material
> b) distinguish this from quickstart and "how do I...?" type 
> documentation which is more user and functional orientated.  Actually 
> there is already quite a bit of this, but it's not quite brought 
> together in a "handbook" yet
> c) the front of the website is normally "flashy" - this is frequently a 
> separate site or engine for many websites
> 
> (In fact most websites I see use one engine for forums, another for main 
> content, another for documentation, etc - please don't feel that we need 
> to re-engineer the bits that we already have (good documentation) when 
> it's the bits that we *don't have* that we need to create from scratch)
> 
> Ed W
> 
>