[lug] Website work for BLUG

[Dhruva B. Reddy]

A couple of disclaimers--I'm not a designer by any means, and I don't
visit the site very often.  I, for one, like the simplicity of the site.
It's refreshing to have such a lightweight homepage, that you can
download through a dial-up connection.

I can't really think of anything I would like to see, content-wise.

On Mon, 17 May 2004 at 15:42 -0600, Chris Riddoch soliloquized thusly:
> Hi, folks.
> 
> I'm beginning to think that the website is a bit of an embarassment to
> me; I don't update it regularly enough.  I realized, though, that
> there are a number of things that could be done to make it work
> better, in the way of automating things.  I've got some ideas of my
> own, but I'd like to see what you might like to do differently on the
> site as well.

If you want more automation, have you thought about a more formal
content management system (such as Zope)?  I don't have a solid
understanding of CMS's, but I would think it would be possible to set
this up without imposing any undesired restrictions on who can edit what.

> 
> First, I don't want our site to be too redundant.  If there's already
> a website out there that already does something similar to what we'd
> *want* to do, I'd suggest a prominent link instead of reinventing the
> wheel.
> 
> Most of my own ideas have to do with simplifying management of
> information about speakers and talks, so that the front page and
> meetings page could be generated from a simple database.  I've
> basically taken care of that.
> 
> Most of what I want is: a volunteer to spend a little time on the
> appearance of the site.  The basic feel of the site hasn't changed in
> most of a decade.  Nothing too fancy, I like subtlety and
> functionality above much else.
> 
> I'd *love* to have a better Wiki engine that can do merges when
> multiple people are trying to edit at the same time -- this has been a
> problem at hacking society.  The existing Wiki's interface takes up
> far more screen space than it needs to; I think it's ugly anyway.
> 
> I'm thinking some simple document management could work for book
> reviews: people could paste a review into a big form, and I (or
> others) could approve or delete them appropriately.
> 
> Other ideas?
> 
> Oh, and a technical decision: Perl, HTML::Mason, and PostgreSQL.  Yes,
> I know there are A Zillion Ways To Do It, but this combination is what
> I've become very familiar with, and it works quite well.  Mason is
> worth it, trust me.
>