[PLUG] pdxlinux.org site remodel online for comments and review

Paul Heinlein heinlein at madboa.com
Sun Jul 4 14:40:14 UTC 2010


Thanks for the work, Nathan. It's a nice, clean look -- albeit quite 
wordpress-y -- that's easy to understand at a glance.

> regarding WordPress. it is a really nice CMS for getting things set 
> up quickly and making maintenance easy for groups that will be 
> co-maintaining. if an honest assessment of the likelihood of 
> multiple persons volunteering to help maintain and stick with it 
> seems to merit, i say go for it, if not, i'd sooner see a static 
> site with the variable content separated from page layout and 
> managed by editing a few text files.
>
> wordpress has a habit of slowing down after time, is subject to SQL 
> injection (though the WP team does an excellent job of trying to 
> prevent this), and is subject to occasional random MySQL 
> corruption...

That's a very good discussion to have! A dynamic site (ala wordpress) 
is most appropriate when the content changes frequently and/or there 
are multiple editors. Otherwise, site-maintenance chores -- security 
updates, database cleaning, testing of templates with new updates -- 
disproportionately outweigh data-maintenance chores.

My assessment is that the PLUG web site has historically been largely 
static, with meeting announcements the only content that changes on a 
regular basis. I'm not sure how many folks update the content, but my 
impression is that it's only one or two over any given timeframe.

If that assessment is correct, a static site seems the lower-cost 
solution. Perhaps the site could be committed to a git or svn 
repository. PLUG contributors could do commits, with commit messages 
going to the site maintainer(s) who would review the changes and then 
push them to the live site.

On the other hand, if PLUG members were willing to do things like 
summarize problem-solved threads on the mailing list as articles and 
post them to the site, then a full WP implementation becomes 
worthwhile. My only warning is that few things scream "rot and decay" 
like a blog with no article newer than six months old...

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com



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