[Gloucs] Draft new GLUG website

[bjh at hbas.fsnet.co.uk]

I fully agree with your comments Andrew,

Your points have been continuous problems since I founded this group 
some years back, and I fully support your strategy.

Best wishes

Barrie Haycock

Andrew Oakley wrote:
> Barbie wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 10:47:36PM +0100, Glyn Davies wrote:
>>     
>>> Andrew Oakley wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Here's my attempt: http://aoakley.com/glug-draft/
>>>>         
>>> Looks good.
>>> Barbie, are you happy to release your beta to the masses? We can 
>>>       
>> The link is http://glug.grango.org/
>>     
>
> Cool. I'm happy with any design and any content management system (or lack
> thereof).
>
> My main concern is that we, as a group, simply don't update our website. I
> don't think it's a question of whether it is easy or difficult to update, or
> whether we have a great CMS or just use HTML+SCP/FTP. I think it is more the
> case that we're all busy professionals with equally busy home lives, and
> none of us ever get around to it.
>
> Therefore my recommendation is that the site should still look fresh and
> relevent, *even* if no human has updated it in a while. In particular:
>
> * Since our meetings are always the 3rd Tuesday of the month, and we've
> consistently kept this for a couple of years now, the site should
> automatically populate the next predicted meeting date, whilst advising
> people to check on the mailing list to confirm. It shouldn't require anyone
> to manually put the next dates in, not even if we do it 6 months in advance.
> Accept that we ARE that lazy and let the computer do the work!
>
> * Equally, our venue hasn't changed often in a couple of years, and MLabs
> continue to be happy for us to provide free training to their staff which
> would otherwise cost them thousands, er... I mean happy for us to carry on
> meeting there. So the site should mention our normal venue and provide
> details of busses, facilities, address, postcode and link to a map, again
> whilst advising people to check on the mailing list to confirm.
>
> * Archives of lecture notes go stale quickly; people rarely upload them
> anywhere other than to their own separate website, or as an attachment to
> the mailing list. We'll end up with a load of lecture notes from two years
> ago and then... nothing, again, which will look stale, again. I'd get rid of
> _hosting_ of lecture notes completely, and instead...
>
> * The only manually-updatable content I'd really like to see would be a
> links page, with categories which can also be updated. So you could have a
> category such as "Lecture notes" which could link to presentations hosted
> elsewhere, plus other categories such as our favourite tech sites.
>
> * RSS feeds I'm rather ambivolent about. Unless you choose carefully, and
> stick to major sites, they tend to stall and make the site look stale. If we
> stick to the Slashdots and Ars Technicas of the web, fine, but if it's a
> bunch of eclectic occasional feeds that stall two months before anyone
> notices, they can make a site look worse than if they weren't there at all.
> Worse yet are feeds that get off-topic dilution, such as personal feeds
> which are usually techie, but occasionally family/friends blogs. It's just a
> case of picking the feeds wisely.
>
> * Basically I think we should accept that our strengths are in our mailing
> list and our meetings, and not try to pretend we can provide regular fresh
> new content to a website every week- because we won't; it'll go stale again.
> Our website should be minimalistic and play up to our strengths; the mailing
> list and the meetings.
>
> * "Just because we _can_ do it doesn't mean we _should_" ;-)
>
> Curses, that was a lot more words than I intended.
>
>