[sudo-sys] Website Upgrades

[Matthew Senate]

I just implemented this MobileFrontEnd extension, which will get more
upgrades as MediaWiki 2.23 comes out:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 6:34 PM, Matthew Senate <mattsenate at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> sudo-sys mailing list
>>>>> sudo-sys at lists.sudoroom.org
>>>>> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-sys
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sudo-sys mailing list
>>> sudo-sys at lists.sudoroom.org
>>> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-sys
>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-sys/attachments/20140430/cb35bbb2/attachment.html>