[SWLUG] website upgrade

[James Edgeworth]

Paul Connell wrote:
> I think we would benefit from a good quality forum - mailing lists fail
> at threading (well, most do) - and IRC is too transitory.  A good forum
> would fit well between the two extremes (IMHO).
>
>
>   
I second that. phpBB3, as far as I know can 'bridge' with Drupal, so 
that anyone registered would not have to login to the forums and drupal 
seperately. Last time I looked (about 6 months ago), it was still a work 
in progress though (but people were able to install and use it well).

An RSS module could be used to list topics which in turn, people can 
access through an email client. It does mean opening a web browser, 
logging in, clicking reply, then posting the message which is a lot more 
long-winded than clicking reply in the already open email client. Unless 
quick-reply is installed on the forum, which takes out a step :p.

The biggest problem I could see is that, if people want to keep using 
the mailing list, and others want to use the forum, it kinda breaks the 
benefits of a forum keeping messages structured. Again though, if 
everyone was happy to move to a forum:

- Good message structure
- Potential new users have a very easy time looking over our discussions 
and can see for themselves that they're not exactly jumping into a shark pit
- More content to the website
- All of the above :p