[COLUG] COLUG website suggestions

[J. Jacob Hopkins]

The unasked, and unanswered questions are:

What is the purpose of the colug website?

Does satisfy the purpose(s)?

On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 11:37:48PM -0400, Mark DuPrey wrote:

> ... So, here we go…

Your email contained a number of "oddities" at least to my eyes, what
did/do you see after the "go"?

> You can see a static prototype at : http://home.columbus.rr.com/skippyd  
> (Who knew that web space would eventually come in handy?)

> Further suggestions:
> • 

More oddities, what are these?  (Further oddities have been removed.)

> ... Keep essentially only the meetings, mailing list, and possibly  
> contacts and a renamed administration pages

What is gained by so much deletion, or so little retention?  Asthetics?

> Remove contacts as they I seriously doubt they are up to date.  
> Alternatively set up a script that allows people to add themselves with  
> a valid email address. Have all active contacts automatically validated  
> at a regular interval (say 6 months) via script sent email
> Remove the links page. I don't see the utility in it and it's got to  
> be a pain to keep up

Linking is an important aspect of the WWW, not only to humans but to
spiders as well - though the links page seems to spider resistant, is it
the reason or a consequence of the current design?

> Remove the topics page. Same reason as links

The topics page(s) is rather lean.  Unrealized potentential.

> Remove the source code page. Replace with a link on each page to a  
> tarball of the site code (not implemented on this proposal).

The source link gives insight to how the site works, particularly
in the preprocessed code.  Making the source only available to the
masses through site-date.tar.gz feels like a layer of obscurity instead
of transparency.

> Move the contents of the presentation page to the meetings page as an  
> archive. This makes sense as all the presentations seem to be ones  
> given at meetings.

Not all presentations have been made at meetings, it appears about one
non-meeting presentation per year for the last few years.

> Remove the knowledge page. It serves no purpose other than to  
> demonstrate that a web server can read HTTP headers.

Perhaps a name change but I have found it of use, and would miss it.

> Remove or at least update and rename administrivia page.

If removed, why?  Is it not up to date?  I don't know if it is, but I do
not know that it is not reasonably current.

> Other things I'd like to see would include:
> * Rotated front page content including
>   + Announcements

Would this augment or supplant the mailing list?

>   + HTML versions of the last meetings presentation

It has traditionally been left up to the presenter to provide
presentation materials.  I don't know that requiring presentations be
available, in HTML, or any other form, would make presenters more eagar
to present, particularly those who take on the task with short notice.

>   + Member submitted articles

Would this augment or supplant the mailing list?

> * An RSS feed for those who wish to syndicate the site

Does that imply unique, original or aggregated content?

> * Option of additional RSS feeds to replace/augment the one from Linux  
> Daily News

Per user or site feature?

> * Random link to replace the "This page generated by" links

I'm not familiar with the "generated by" links, where are they?

> * Link of the time period (day/week/month/etc.) that we can use to  
> highlight deserving Free/open source software projects

I'll have to think about this one further.

> So there you have my proposal. As I said, I'd be willing to do the work  
> required if the general consensus is that it's worth it.

What license(s) would you license the resulting work to the licensee(s),
or a full copyright assignment?

Would the resulting site be maintainable, or maintenance through
redesign?

I'd agree that there is room for improvement, but vi seems more a tool
for improvement than rm.  But I have my own style and preferences,
typically involving rampant abuse of the pre tag.

Jacob
jacob at teched.net