Website ideas and thoughts

[claydoh]

I'll sort of recap some bits from the Website Offline (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1150504) topic.

What do we need for an Ubuntu Maine-iacs website?


What system should we use?

Drupal is well-known, well-supported, and has already-existing LoCo tools/theme (https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-drupal), etc that are well polished

Joomla is similar, and has a theme or 2 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1546639) as well, but not the tools the ubuntu-drupal folks have done

Wordpress is also well known and supported, has some ubuntu theming

Drupal is relatively complex (though not difficult), and Joomla is probably similar as well, mainly due to their nature as content management systems.

Wordpress is much simpler to use, but due to it's nature has somewhat fewer features/addons

So the real question here is features/content would we want on the Ubuntu Maine LoCo site?

For ideas, the LoCo list (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamList) is an exhaustive list of worldwide LoCo teams. We can see what other teams with varying sizes and activities use

[matt74]

Of all the LoCo sites I looked at I was most impressed by the Florida LoCo site. The are using WordPress and have a couple of neat features, like a Team Calendar :D, picture galleries of their events, a section with tutorials and have a plugin that connects to their IRC channel via the website. (Very cool.)

Ubuntu Florida LoCo (http://www.ubuntu-fl.org/)

[claydoh]

I am liking the Drupal theme and setup in places like the Ohio LoCo website (http://ohio.ubuntu-us.org/)

A similar text/logo would be pretty easy to replicate, plus it has the most current Ubuntu look n feel plus the features as well

[Jeff Anthony]

Drupal and Joomla are essentially the exact same thing - I prefer the Drupal but any Joomla mod/admin/dev can easily understand Drupal backend. Publishers of content may prefer the Joomla backend.

Wordpress seems to be quite limiting yet is the most secure according to a report on open source web frameworks I read recently

As far as using this Ubuntu forum for threads I do like that idea in principle. If we start attracting heavier traffic, however, we should seriously consider phpbb3, which Drupal has a fairly simple integration module already available.

[Jeff Anthony]

Pertaining to Calendars

http://doctormo.org/2010/08/09/loco-team-calendars/

[DoctorMO]

The wiki is slowly being deprecated in favour of the loco directory for both the teams index and the event listings.

It would be really awesome if your website could use the calendars from the loco directory.

btw, the MA site is run on django/python

[claydoh]

Wow, with all the heavy lifting already done with Drupal, I will go with that - we can always change to something else if necessary. I will just do a simple layout/setup for now, then once we get rolling, we can add more things as we need/want.

The LoCo Directory is nice, actually. Calendar and events listings are a plus.

[Jeff Anthony]

Website is looking good!