chuqui
12-10-2007, 09:59 AM
One of the reasons they brought me on board was to have someone who could spend time not just running the OpenLaszlo sites and administer things, but to put some time and energy into improving things. Now that I'm (somewhat) settled in and getting real work done around here, I wanted to open up discussion to the community at large:
How can we improve the openLaszlo.org site in general? What things would you like to see us do over the next six months or so? What are the best parts of the site? What parts need improvement? Be honest, I can take it. I'm open to any and all feedback, because it'll help me understand the needs of this place. I can't promise to implement everything you ask for -- but I'll listen and see what I can do based on what seems to be the priorities of everyone involved here.
I'd also like to ask the same question of the forums; are there features we can add to make things better? Do we need different forums or some kind of restructure of the information here? How can we make these forums more useful to you?
I'll tell you a few things that have caught my eye so far, just to start the discussion:
First, this community uses a lot of different tools, and none of them are integrated. Part of the web site is published via Drupal, while the forums use another tool (vBulletin), and much of the community content is in a wiki, but blogs are in WordPress and we also have mailing lists (using Mailman) and I'm probably missing a few technologies.
now, all of those packages are good ones -- but they all do their own thing, there's no real cross-connects, and each has their own authentication and accounts, and so you end up with this chaotic bundle of "where is it?"
At first glance, it seems we could simplify things by shifting to using Drupal-based versions of tools (like the blogging and wiki), or at least use an interface so those tools communicate with Drupal. It might make sense to move soe of the mailing lists to group blogs or forums as well. It just seems we have too many tools, and if I have trouble keeping track of which tool is used for what subset of information, how can a casual user? Thinking in terms of simplifying things so that users can actually find stuff -- it seems fewer tools and better integration is going to be a win.
But that's just my opinion. What matters is yours. Really. So let me know.
How can we improve the openLaszlo.org site in general? What things would you like to see us do over the next six months or so? What are the best parts of the site? What parts need improvement? Be honest, I can take it. I'm open to any and all feedback, because it'll help me understand the needs of this place. I can't promise to implement everything you ask for -- but I'll listen and see what I can do based on what seems to be the priorities of everyone involved here.
I'd also like to ask the same question of the forums; are there features we can add to make things better? Do we need different forums or some kind of restructure of the information here? How can we make these forums more useful to you?
I'll tell you a few things that have caught my eye so far, just to start the discussion:
First, this community uses a lot of different tools, and none of them are integrated. Part of the web site is published via Drupal, while the forums use another tool (vBulletin), and much of the community content is in a wiki, but blogs are in WordPress and we also have mailing lists (using Mailman) and I'm probably missing a few technologies.
now, all of those packages are good ones -- but they all do their own thing, there's no real cross-connects, and each has their own authentication and accounts, and so you end up with this chaotic bundle of "where is it?"
At first glance, it seems we could simplify things by shifting to using Drupal-based versions of tools (like the blogging and wiki), or at least use an interface so those tools communicate with Drupal. It might make sense to move soe of the mailing lists to group blogs or forums as well. It just seems we have too many tools, and if I have trouble keeping track of which tool is used for what subset of information, how can a casual user? Thinking in terms of simplifying things so that users can actually find stuff -- it seems fewer tools and better integration is going to be a win.
But that's just my opinion. What matters is yours. Really. So let me know.