[webdev] Re: xpZone Home

[Tom Hull <thull2@xxxxxxx>]

Dale W Hodge wrote:
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: webdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:webdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
>>Of Tom Hull
> 
> 
>>Question: why does aclug.neuralmatrix.org have a link called
>>"xpZone Home", which goes to an Ensim manager on some site
>>that looks to be in Australia?
> 
> 
> Humm...  The theme that's currently used was designed by an organization in
> Australia, and I just haven't bothered to change the link to something else.
> Originally the link went to a live site. I guess they have changed web 
> providers
> and haven't rebuilt the site.

Nice looking theme, except maybe I'd like a plainer background to the
header, or some more design effort there. I don't think any of the
horizontal menu bar is useful, since at best it duplicates the left
menus. IIRC, you have to go into the theme files and hack them to
change anything -- a prime reason for capturing all the changes in
CVS (or Subversion?). (PostNuke probably has plans for changing that,
but still . . .)

>>More general question: do we plan on preserving the database
>>info on aclug.neutralmatrix.org, or start again from scratch
>>when we move the site/machine?
> 
> 
> That's a darn good question.  I need to attempt to move the site and find out
> what the gotcha's are.  We do have a few users signed up, but not so many that
> we couldn't start over.  We can go either way.  It's not a huge job to start
> from scratch, and it may prove to be the best choice.  Maybe we can attempt to
> move it, and if we find too many problems we'll dump it and start over?

I'm inclined to start over, after we do a little content planning.
That's why I was looking at it today. It looks to me like we need a
plan for news topics and library sections first; also some discussion
about rss feeds. Calendar looks good. Links and forums might be good
if we can put some work into them (links is obviously easier than
forums). FAQs looks pretty useless. Reviews is useless without a
category layer. Classified ads is a nice feature; again, a little
planning up front is important.

This is just a quick rundown. People should try to look at the
prototype ASAP and think about how to stuff it with content in
ways that will make them want to use it regularly.

> --dwh
> 
> ---
> Dale W Hodge - dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Vice Chairman & Secretary - info@xxxxxxxxx
> Air Capital Linux User's Group  (ACLUG)

-- 
/*
  *  Tom Hull * thull2 at cox.net * http://www.tomhull.com/
  */