[Wylug-admin] Getting the site moved - wordpress.com ?

[John Leach]

On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 20:10 +0000, Tom Hall wrote:

> After a brief private exchange with Mark we have decided to stop using
> the University as a venue in future. I hope we still see Mark down at
> future talks and am grateful for his continuing the arrangement for so
> long after Jim and Dave stepped down.
> 
> Going forward, I propose:
> 
> * Move the site, who has the domain name etc? Volunteers?

James Holden is the man to go to for domain stuff, so we'll tap him up
once we've made a decision (though I'm sure he'll have some input before
then)

MX records for mail go to lug.org.uk, so that can remain.

Regarding hosting, I'm recommending we use a 3rd party, rather than host
it between us.  As a proof of concept I exported the data from the
current site and imported it into a hosted blog at wordpress.com:

http:// wylug dot wordpress dot com

This is just a *proof of concept* and is set not to allow indexing by
search engines (and you'll notice I didn't like to it above) so we by no
means have to go with it.

We can still give editorial access to whoever needs it and the whole
thing is obviously managed by the Wordpress people - so we can just
concentrate on the content (which of course will still belong to us).

It supports pointing domains at it (properly, no redirects or
anything). 

However, it does "occasionally serve ads".  Ads can be disabled for
about £2.5 a month if we're not happy about that (and I'm sure a group
containing so many IT professionals can afford that :)

It comes with 3gig for uploads (in our case most likely photos and
slides) and more can be purchased - though we might want to consider a
separate service for photo sharing (there are so many available).

Some might argue that we're losing some freedom and control going this
hosted service way (and rms would agree with you :), and they'd be right
- but I think it's so minimal and the benefits good (nobody likes
maintaining Wordpress ;).

Anyone disagree?

John.