[Novalug] Novalug Website -- EVERYONE, please read this!!!

[Paul D. Bain]

gregory pryzby wrote:
> Website. Ok, so I have done NOTHING and haven't really pushed or
> prodded for someone to put a new site together. Maybe I will hack
> something together this weekend. 
> 
> If you have something you want to share, PLEASE DO. It is time to get
> teh site updated. There are no restrictions-- let your imagination
> flow.

Greg,

	First, NoVa LUG must make a decision. It must decide whether it wants 
to improve the content of the NoVa LUG website or, instead, whether it 
wants to improve our virtual, Internet community by installing some form 
of "community-ware" (CW), which is software whose purpose is build 
Internet-based communities (IBC). Certain CW (I cannot recall its name) 
will copy all email sent to a mailing list server (List Serv, e.g., 
Mailman or ezmlm) into web forum software (PHP BB? Again, I cannot 
remember), where the emails can be served by a web server and sent to 
web browsers. Such CW might help NoVa LUG avoid the fiasco that the LUG 
suffered last autumn when the List Serv stopped working for weeks at a 
time. Such CW might have provided the redundancy that the LUG needed in 
that situation because the web forum would have continued to meet our 
IBC needs even after the List Serv crashed. This particular CW will 
_also_ copy all posts made to the _web_ forum to the List Serv, which 
would email it to all list participants -- unless you configure it not 
to do so. IOW, we could have "two-way" traffic: every email sent to the 
List Serv would be sent to the web forum (and posted there as a 
comment), and every comment posted to the web forum could be sent to the 
List Serv (and emailed to the list's participants). Cool, huh?

	A third advantage of such CW is that it _might_ allow comments (in the 
web forum) to be moderated in Slashdot fashion (I cannot remember), 
allowing for richer interactivity and hence a richer community. Finally, 
such CW might also facilitate other community features, e.g., polls and 
surveys or other forms of member interaction.

	The reason that I am raising this issue is that, when you asked a 
similar question last October, some respondents indicated that they 
wanted an improved IBC, whereas others indicated that they wanted 
improved content on the LUG website, which would require a content 
management system (CMS). A third faction expressed a desire for improved 
collaboration (IIRC, some wanted a shared, group calendar), which is 
facilitated with "group-ware" (GW), a third type of software.

	I think that NoVa LUG needs to have a full discussion of this matter. 
What do we want? Better website content, a better IBC, or better 
collaboration among our members? We cannot decide which software to 
install before we decide this question.

Sincerely,
Paul Bain