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 > >