[California] California Chapter Website

[Alex Mandel]

>From my experience, even in a technical group hand coding a website on
someone's personal server is an excellent way to exclude almost any
possible contribution unintentionally. It also leaves us with a Bus
number of 1.

Server space on a shared server is easy (I am the Chair of OSGeo SAC,
and Frank is also a sys admin, not to mention free hosting from google,
wordpress etc). But my push for using some sort of through the web
editing, is that it makes minor edits fast and makes it easy for us to
allow any volunteer to help, e.g. adding event details, uploading a
pictures, etc...

The reason I suggest a CMS (Content Management) or CPS (Content
Publishing) over a plain wiki is simply for structure so we can build
the navigation simply and new items end up in the right bin from the
start. All of the mentioned systems can be skinned/themed easily with
CSS to look the way we want and can use WYSIWYG editors so contributors
simply need to login, go the right page and type in the box (buttons for
basic formatting).

PS: All of the tools I previously mentioned are extremely common options
most of which I've installed/managed over the years for various websites.

Thanks,
Alex

On 11/13/2012 08:40 AM, Landon Blake wrote:
> Alex:
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> You wrote: "I'm not whole-sale against a more official website (or a better
> organized wiki), but I think we should use some sort of simple CMS
> rather than hand coding."
> 
> I hand code all my web sites, and it is the method I prefer. It seems
> to be the simplest technique, and the most flexible. I do use
> Wordpress, and it wouldn't be hard to set up a chapter site using that
> platform. However, I only want to do that if other chapter members
> think they will be actively contributing content to the web site. If
> I'm the person doing most of the heavy lifting, I'd like to stick with
> my system for web development.
> 
> Perhaps it is worth a short discussion on the merits of having a more
> formal web site. I personally think there are benefits to this
> approach to managing our web presence. In my mind a wiki is more of a
> collaborative documentation tool, and not really a formal web
> presence.
> 
> However, I'm just one person. :]
> 
> I'm willing to put maintain and host a chapter website. If it makes it
> easier for others to participate, and they plan on helping, I can set
> something up on Wordpress.
> 
> I'll wait another day or two for some more comments before I move forward.
> 
> Landon
> 
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> wrote:
>> I'm not whole-sale against a more official website (or a better
>> organized wiki), but I think we should use some sort of simple CMS
>> rather than hand coding.
>>
>> There are lots of options, I'll put out there localwiki (from
>> localwiki.org) might be a fun choice as it has embedded maps and the
>> developers are locals.
>>
>> Other options that would be easy to setup: Drupal, Plone, Django-CMS (or
>> vanilla Django), Wordpress, Trac, Sphinx.
>>
>> Mediawiki is intentionally not on that list, because we already have
>> mediawiki.
>>
>> Mobile 1sts aka Responsive web design is a good idea, we should look to
>> adapt existing themes for the above mentioned CMS that already handle it
>> to our desired color/layout.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Alex
>>
>> On 11/12/2012 05:00 PM, Landon Blake wrote:
>>> I took a stab at creating a simple chapter web site today. You can
>>> view the home page here:
>>>
>>> http://www.redefinedhorizons.com/calosgeo/
>>>
>>> The site is designed with just HTML and CSS, and was created using the
>>> "mobile first" design method. (I've got to fix the navigation in the
>>> mobile view. It isn't working properly at the moment.)
>>>
>>> I've only created the home page. Most of the links don't work yet.
>>>
>>> I used the OSGeo color scheme. I haven't made or incorporated a
>>> chapter logo yet, but that should be easy to do. I wanted to get some
>>> feedback from the other chapter members before I moved forward. If
>>> there are no strong objections, I'll complete the following tasks:
>>>
>>> 1) Complete missing web pages.
>>> 2) Fix mobile layout.
>>> 3) Figure out what to do about a domain name. (I don't want to use
>>> anything with "osgeo" in the URL until I get approval from the board.)
>>>
>>> I'd like to get one or two paragraph bios for the members page.
>>>
>>> I know we have a wiki, but I think the chapter would benefit from a
>>> more formal web presence.
>>>
>>> Let me know what you think. I'll wait for some responses before I do
>>> any more work.
>>>
>>> Landon
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> California mailing list
>>> California at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/california
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> California mailing list
>> California at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/california
> _______________________________________________
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