[Webcom] Updating our Web Site?

[Cameron Shorter]

  Tyler,
What I've found in Open Source projects is that you get maximum 
engagement from the community when you have very clear outline about 
what you plan to do, and a schedule for achieving it. They you 
systematically knock off your deliverables as per the schedule.

You should also are clear about what you would like doing, but at the 
moment is not going to be done because there are no volunteers. Ideally, 
these extra bits of work are in small chunks. Something that someone can 
easily be volunteer for, and knock over a few nights a week over the 
next couple of months.

At the moment, the website is seen as a huge task, and no one is 
prepared to get involved because:
1. They don't feel confident that what they suggest will be acceptable 
to the community.
2. They don't feel they have enough time to take the project through to 
completion.
3. There would be a concern that any effort contributed will be wasted 
because there is a good chance the website will never go live with their 
contributions anyway.

Breaking the development of the website into lots of small milestones, 
with small work packages along the way that people can volunteer for 
will be very valuable.


On 26/10/2010 2:39 AM, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> Hi Arnulf,
> At least a couple things are definitely underway!
> 1 - migration of our site to new hosts (80%) - no issues with the host, looking good.
> 2 - upgrade to latest CMS version (50%) - a few bugs to work out.
> 3 - implementing a new theme (75%) - getting started soon - will get professional support to get this done.  Getting it into Drupal is the next step.
>
> I've put out a call for others who are good with Drupal to help and received a couple responses.  Wolf is too busy lately, and he had been hoping to do much of this work, but I've been coordinating with him.
>
> I like your idea of re-theming the front page.  We'll also have some new content and categories to pull together to match the proposed site map.[1]
>
> When all the above is ironed out, a re-dump of the active site will occur and we'll be ready to switch over.  I'm hoping by the end of the year.
>
> Hope that helps, anyone else who is lurking and wants to help on any of these is welcome!  So far I've done most of it myself.
> Tyler
>
> On 2010-10-25, at 2:40 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
>
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>>
>> Hi,
>> there have been some good proposals to redesign and liven up our Web
>> site in the past two years but nothing much visible has happened.
>>
>> I would like to bring this up at the next Board of Directors meeting but
>> before doing this wanted to fathom the activity level / potential of
>> this committee. Are the folks on this mailing list interested in taking
>> up a more active part again?
>>
>> For a start it might be enough to redesign the front page and hide the
>> complex structures - which we will probably want to keep because there
>> are a million of interesting things and valuable information to explore.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Arnulf
>>
>> - --
>> Exploring Space, Time and Mind
>> http://arnulf.us
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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