[Infopoint] Infopoint website

[Tony Whitmore]

All,

It's good to see thoughtful replies and to know that people are still
listening!

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:16:47 +0000, alan c <aeclist at candt.waitrose.com>
wrote:
> Tony Whitmore wrote:
>> I'm happy to keep the domain renewed for now but the options for the
>> website are:
>> 1) Keep it as it is. (I'd rather not do this due to all the mediawiki
>> security upgrades.)
>> 2) Move to another wiki engine or CMS. I'd suggest dokuwiki.
>> 3) Replace the site with some static HTML pages.
>> 4) Shut the site down.
>
> Tony
> I probably am the only 'Infopoint' thing that moves just now, but the
> bracknell activity (regular monthly and for 2 years + and still
> counting) is going from strength to strength, so whatever you do, it
> would be important to maintain the 'branding' of Infopoint.The concept
> and objectives are excellent. A second helper sometimes turns up now,
too.

That's good to know. It's fair to say that there is either less interest or
fewer people able to donate time elsewhere though. Even in Hampshire, I'm
not denying it.

> The great benefit that I find as an activist is that the Infopoint
> site bestows a Project background, a branding, a point of reference, a
> credibility.  Even as a static site it will allow other activists to
> coalesce, hopefully the mailing list will be able to continue with
> little effort?

I don't admin the mailing list, it's still in Jono's name. So god knows
what's lurking in the moderation queue. ;)

> With so few other Infopoint activists currently there is little
> benefit in me keeping my activities up to date on the wiki, so I have
> not. I would not miss loosing the wiki as such, however I think that
> loosing a web based site would be a great disadvantage.

It's a Catch-22. If people see an out-of-date site like ours then they
assume that the project is stagnating. (Which it probably is, Alan's
efforts aside.) However, keeping the site up-to-date seems like a thankless
task, especially if you're the only one adding content!

> I would be happy to go for option
> 3) Replace the site with some static HTML pages
> if that would be less work. I would help if needed with some content
> although my admin skills are still near ignorant level, but it would
> be easy to feed some content to someone (yourself?)

I'm reluctant to go with option 3 because once the content becomes static
it becomes harder to update. I think the site would just get more
out-of-date! That and I really don't have a desire to go back to coding
static HTML! :) The nice part of the wiki is that the barrier to entry is
very low. Anybody who wants to can edit the pages. It seems like moving to
another wiki would ease my maintenance of the site and still allow access.
Alternatively a CMS like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla might make a nice
looking site which could be maintained by anyone on the list (if we issue
accounts to those who are interested). A slightly higher barrier to entry
perhaps though. I'd welcome further thoughts.

Tony