[sudo-sys] Website Upgrades

[Matthew Senate]

ah you're using this WPTouch skin circa 2012
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Gallery_of_user_styles#WPtouch


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 6:28 PM, David Rorex <drorex at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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>>>> sudo-sys mailing list
>>>> sudo-sys at lists.sudoroom.org
>>>> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-sys
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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