[SLUG] Geeklog

[Paul Teasdale]

The beauty of Geeklog is it saves much hard work and delivers a comprehensive, 
fully working and tested system very quickly. Geeklog can also be skinned 
thus with a little work could be made to look less Slashdot-ish.

HOWEVER (on the other side of the coin):

Based on Al and Jamies comments I have took the initiative to (quickly) look 
at other LUG sites via http://www.lug.org.uk/lugs/. I have reached the 
conclusion that most other LUG sites do lean more towards what Al and Jamie 
envisage based on the current comments I have just read. 

I am not taking a total U turn here as I do like the Geeklog site but we could 
go for something more half-way-house. We could for example start with the 
page that Jamie developed with a few changes to make it more dynamic; I'll 
explain with one example. Each time a new meeting is announced Jamie probably 
found it a pain to have to change the HTML and re-upload the changes. We 
could develop a web site much to the existing style with a passworded admin 
area that the normal browsing public don't see. Only a few priviledged people 
have password access the this area (LUG members basically). In this area you 
can (via a web browser) change the meeting date which then gets held in a 
database table. This automtically gets included on the SLUG main page each 
time someone accesses it - no HTML editing - no uploading - always upto date 
so long as someone remebers to update if. The browsing public would never 
need create an account, to login or even accept cookies from the site.

This is a very simplistic view but could be extended to allow LUG members to 
upload their screen shots, add polls, add links to both LUG users and other 
external sites and so on. The draw back of this is that this stuff takes time 
to develop. I am no expert web developer but I am fairly good (lol...quick 
get me a trumpet) with HTML, PHP, SQL, templates and all that stuff. Given 
time this could be acheived; I could and would be willing to do it but don't 
want to push others (such as Ian in particular) out of the loop.

This is not shameless advertising (because I am not giving you the address) 
but I have already done this on a currently live website for a friend that 
owns a computer business. He can go into an admin area, see whos visted, add 
new computers, peripherals, consumables or whatever, changes prices, change 
specs, feature systems on his home page, display special offers on his home 
page and lots more. As he changes stuff in the admin area the website 
dynamically displays his results to any browsing user that may come along. It 
did a take a while to do however. I would be willing to show you this site in 
action if it helps to visialise how the SLUG website could look. 

Why the change of heart? Well I haven't had a change of heart as such! I would 
be happy to go with Geeklog if that's what everybody wanted but obviously 
some people have what I consider to be well reasoned and valid concerns. On 
the other side of the coin I am relatively new to SLUG I don't want to upset 
anybody so while I will make my thoughts known I will be happy to go with the 
flow.

kind regards,

Paul.