[Wylug-discuss] Suggestion for website

[Dave Fisher]

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 03:54:52PM +0100, Chris Brown wrote:
> The blog simply provides upcoming information about WYLUG. 

> By the way - do you realise it is not linked from the main page? 

Yes. 

Actually, my plan was to use wordpress as a combined blog-cum-cms to
replace the existing (very crufty) static html arrangement for the whole
wylug site.  Which is why the blog content more or less duplicates the
static site.

Unfortunately, I've not quite finished the conversion of some talks and
have, therefore, held off from invoking the mod_rewrite magic to map old
URLs to the new ones.

As soon as the switch-over occurs, any WYLUG member will be able to
author content on the site (subject to the usual authentication/security
and editorial controls).


> The planet provides
> constantly updated POV from members. The main benefit I can see is that it
> gives a personal face to WYLUG. I'm afraid I do think that people new to
> Linux are intimidated coming to their first meeting and if they know a
> little about what may be discussed and the kind of things and thought
> processes that occur they will feel less threatened. When I attend there is
> always some discussion about what can be done to improve attendance - I feel
> this is one thing that most certainly can. Computing by its very nature
> lacks a human touch but now I'm starting to spout...
> It will also keep the site looking fresh.

Thanks for this and the previous explanation (snipped).

I'm happy with most of the above, including the justified criticism of
the current site and the image it portrays of WYLUG (see my future
posting about usage/development of the new site)

Is it possible to 'filter' the aggregation, e.g. limit the feeds to
FLOSS/Linux-related bits of members blogs?

I can see the benefits of presenting members 'in the round', i.e.
reflecting the wide range of their interests, but I'm a little bit
nervous that the basic focus of the site might be lost if most of its
content ends up being non-FLOSSy.

Given that we could conceivably be agregating hundreds of blogs, there
is a danger that the shere quantity of 'other' stuff could swamp
impressions of WYLUG (and not just Google's indexing of it).

> I am happy to host and embed the planet on the wylug site. My hosting is
> severely under-utilised anyway.

Thanks for the offer.

For the time being, however, I think most people would like us to
maintain the symbiotic relationship that we have with the university
school of computing.  

It's been pretty fruitful for all concerned, and (as I said) I don't
think that the Python dependency will be show-stopper.

Dave