[sudo-sys] Website Upgrades

[David Rorex]

You can install a separate mobile theme that automatically gets shown to
users on mobile devices. http://wiki.acemonstertoys.org/ is set up this
way, check it out on your phone or tablet or whatever. Note that pretty
much zero work has gone into the design/look of our wiki, it's just a plain
information repository.


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com>wrote:

> I forgot to mention that MediaWiki is not mobile-friendly and is
> prohibitive for mobile-based users to get the information they need about
> sudo room quickly from their devices.
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 5:58 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Jordan,
>>
>> Totally understand where you're coming from. We have discussed this in
>> the past. I didn't block when you made changes before because
>> do-ocratically you had a vision and a plan for improving the site (which is
>> great), and I was not able to deliver an alternative in a reasonable
>> timeframe. However, I think you'll find that my proposed upgrades are worth
>> it and provide a viable alternative to using the wiki alone. Also know that
>> I've spent quite a bit of time this week researching all the available
>> solutions to work with MediaWiki, especially while working on
>> http://wiki.omni-oakland.org and I found that there are few options for
>> our needs.
>>
>> Since you changed the landing page to the wiki, several folks have
>> explained they could not find the calendar or events. I'm not against a
>> wiki being the whole website in theory, but unfortunately MediaWiki has a
>> lot of limitations from a design, user experience, and functionality
>> perspective:
>>
>>    1. There is not a good, stable theme option for using a top menu.
>>    This vastly constrains navigation for new users and users unfamiliar with
>>    MediaWiki.
>>    2. The editing interface (while getting thorough attention after
>>    years of neglect
>>    https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Visual_editor) is far from
>>    being as usable as WordPress's or other CMS's editors. This is especially
>>    relevant for embedding media and images, plus the nightmare of mediawiki
>>    markup (formatting).
>>    3. Feed, comment, and spam-comment management for blog publication is
>>    nearly non-existent with MediaWiki, compared to WordPress which was built
>>    with this at heart and performs at the state of the art for web-logging.
>>    4. Event management is not a commonly desirable or very supported
>>    feature for MediaWiki. I think the best option is what I implemented on the
>>    Omni wiki, but it is very limited (no recurrence or feed/export)
>>    http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/w/Calendar and I don't think suffices
>>
>> But even after thinking about these limitations, I wasn't sold on simply
>> keeping the WordPress site. However, in my research, I found an event
>> management / calendar solution that provides a unique feature
>>
>>    - Event Booking with the "Events Manager" plugin:
>>    https://wordpress.org/plugins/events-manager/
>>
>> This has been the missing piece of sudo room's event management since the
>> beginning--allowing folks to register for our workshops, classes, meetups,
>> etc. You can set multiple ticket types, and even list them with prices
>> (e.g. material costs). Users with accounts on sudoroom.org can register,
>> but also anonymous users with just an email address. This way, event hosts
>> can not only get an idea of who is showing up, but they can maintain
>> contact information with these folks and follow up in the future.
>>
>> After testing this out on http://dev.sudoroom.org/ I was sold. I really
>> think this is a feature that alone makes it worth keeping the WordPress
>> site.
>>
>> That being said, providing clarity to new users through a clean landing
>> page (without the MediaWiki template) is the other primary reason this
>> makes a lot of sense to me. I'm looking at something like i3 Detroit as a
>> bit of a model: http://www.i3detroit.org/ and I think Counter Culture
>> Labs captures this "landing page" feel accurately as well:
>> https://counterculturelabs.org
>>
>> Finally, as we're discussing Sudo Reboot, the Omni, etc, I realized
>> something. We should expect to build more web and digital infrastructure,
>> more applicatoins, and more services. As Jenny has begun to coordinate, we
>> desperately need a membership-management system like SeltzerCRM
>> https://github.com/elplatt/seltzer and I think it's a great option given
>> the adoption and growth it has had over the couple of years since I first
>> looked at it. In this way, the priority is not shrinking the number of
>> applications, but instead, figuring out ways to make them inter-operable. I
>> believe the primary challenge for us going forward is an authentication
>> solution, and I don't see any viable alternatives other than Persona:
>>
>> https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Persona
>>
>> // Matt
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Yar <yardenack at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > I plan to have www.sudoroom.org direct users to a landing page on
>>> this site,
>>> > with clear donation and calendar information, rather than directing
>>> them to
>>> > the wiki (as it does now).
>>>
>>> Why can't we just work to put clear donation and calendar information
>>> on the wiki?
>>>
>>> You probably know that my preference has been to deprecate wordpress
>>> and eventually move everything onto the wiki. I put a lot of work into
>>> that project after first seeking input from everybody else involved. I
>>> think the wiki format has potential to be more transparent and
>>> hierarchical.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sudo-sys mailing list
>>> sudo-sys at lists.sudoroom.org
>>> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-sys
>>>
>>
>>
>
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