[dundee] Linux Society Website

[Rick Moynihan]

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On 19 February 2010 11:27, Arron M Finnon <finux at finux.co.uk> wrote:
> Its a shame that no one has done any updating on it, i mean if you looked at
> it you would think that the society died after software freedom day.
>
> I understand that there are plans to change the site, but as someone
> mentioned to me "if you where a bank designing a new site you just wouldn't
> shut up shop on the old one whilst doing it".  I have to agree.  I fear in
> fact the lack of anything happening on that site may actually damage the
> linux society.  If you looked two weeks ago for linux in dundee and that
> popped up you'd think the linux community in dundee may have died.  Which
> isn't the case.

Agreed!  Visiting the site today I see that the domain registrar is
now displaying its page and the site as it was has vanished.  What
happened to the old site?!?!  I think as a society we need to take the
website seriously and not use it as a place for playing annoying
javascript tricks on our users.  Personally I think hacks and tricks
such as this betray the whole community, and give a poor impression of
us as a community trying to engage with the wider public.

Aside from this, I think it would be a good idea to get the old site
back in place as soon as possible.  Dead inbound links negatively
affect a sites page rank.  Once in place content and pages should
exist as stable entities and we should take care not to lose them
(creating deadlinks).  If we ever need to move pages then we should do
so with redirects.  The site previously appeared to enjoy a reasonable
page rank, it could take months or years for a new site to restore it.

The worst thing we can do is start afresh...  We need to build on what
is there already and respect the old site along with the majority of
its content.  If we need to move to another CMS, then we should either
import all the old posts into the CMS and setup redirects if their
URLs change, or leave the old CMS up in place, with its old content
moved under a subdirectory (with redirects again put in place).

If there are no plans to immediately replace this site, then as a
stop-gap we should at least redirect to the Dundee LUG wiki, which
Gordon setup. This is IMHO an excellent start at a community site and
very under-used.

As Arron says though...  Content is King, fixing the content is most
important... Only when this is fixed should we consider fixing bugs in
the site or switching CMS's.

> I don't want to speak out of turn but really if its going to be left like
> that, then my 2 pence worth is please pull it down.  Otherwise please do
> something with it, the layout is not always critical, without being rude and
> as the media says its 'content stupid'.

Agreed.  And incidentally I don't think you're speaking out of turn.
You spent a lot of time writing content and setting up the old site,
it's only fair that this effort should be respected going forward.

If anyone is speaking out of turn here, then it is doubtless me...
But as an active, paid member of the society I feel that the website
represents the WHOLE community.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

--
Rick Moynihan
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