I thought I would take some time to respond to the comments about the
website and give you a little background on how and why I made certain
decisions. I'd signalled late last year that the site needed a rejig. I
wasn't happy with the main page as I felt that it was becoming too
cluttered and didn't really allow me to showcase any specfic news or events.
In particular, I wanted to be able to run the occasional news story (like this one) about events happening here in New Zealand or further afield. I should point out though that this doesn't mean that I'll be posting news on every Mac event or product launch. I simply don't have the resources to be able to to that.
Even before the site survey that I ran, I was wanting to bring in changes that made the people who use the site become an even greater part of it. In that sense, to build upon this idea of "community supporting community". It would also be (I freely admit) a time saving approach for me. Why spend time putting up information that people send to me about events (for example) when I could just allow you to add those events straight in to the site?
So although I've made a start on that approach, I'm still a long way off from getting all those things working. But we'll get there....after I work out a few bugs
So on to the technical stuff. Early on I knew that I wanted to use an open source content management system to run the site. For those unfamiliar with what that means, "open source" is effectively software or systems that are open and free to use. You are also free to alter the code of the systems for your own benefit, but you never own the system. You can feed back into the community any changes or modules you might develop, but the idea is a communal sharing of ideas and talent. In most cases, that talent is someone else's and I rely on them heavily....there are some amazing developers out there working on these things and I try to support them by donating to all the open source systems that I use.
A "content management system" is just that...a system that manages content. So as well as what you see and read on the site, there's a "back end" (an administration side) to the system that allows me to set up stories, define publishing dates, who has access etc etc.
For the latter part of last year and for some time this year, I was planning to use a CMS known as Xoops (www.xoops.org) but as luck would have it, I was writing up an assignment I had due about whether institutions should use open source learning management systems, when all hell broke loose with Xoops. One of the major players in its development (and remember, most developers are doing this for love, not money) had decided he had had enough and quit working on the system. That made me stop and reflect on Xoops development and look again at another system called Mambo.
Mambo (www.mamboserver.com) it became clear, has a much more obvious roadmap (where it intends to go in the future) makes more sense in the way you use it and, to be honest, looks a hell of a lot better then Xoops. I then also discovered that one chap had developed a component for Mambo that allowed me to bring in the forum members into the site from the forum system I had been using previously. My forum runs using a system called phpBB and he had developed a phpBB component for Mambo.
Although Mambo currently isn't XHTML or CSS compliant, it's going that way very soon. It'll mean ultimately doing away with tables in my coding and a site that just loads and looks a whole lot nicer. Of course of the main problems with this is to ensure that the modules you use (the extra things you can add in to your site, such as the events calendar) are XHTML and CSS compliant also, but Mambo developers seem to be more keen to take this big step then Xoops developers.
Xoops has become somewhat confusing and its roadmap for the future seems to have undergone changes in the past year that haven't ever really eventuated or don't clarify what is going on. It's interesting to note that Mambo actually has a developer core who run a business that uses Mambo at it core and some developers charge money for some of their modules. Is this a bad thing in the open source community? You might say Yes, as Open source should be free....but if people are making money from their add-ons, isn't that also showing that people are spending time and effort on Mambo and making money out of it....and therefore, Mambo will be more likely to survive?
So Mambo was selected and I was easily able to move the static content (the pages that had been on the site before) all over to the new site. The forum is at the heart of the site and it was the biggest challenge getting that information (users and posts) to come over. Thankfully the developer of the component was one hell of a nice guy and amazingly supportive at crisis points along the way.
For those interested, a lot of the development of the site was able to be carried out locally on my Mac by installing a better version of Apache, installing php and MySQL, using packages found on this site...(check out the software downloads section)
http://www.serverlogistics.com/
...and it was then mostly a case of customising a few modules to work the way I wanted them too.
For the future I still have a few bugs to sort out, then I can start to add in more functionality for you all. The events system has a few quirks that need ironing out. I want to be able to add in a better bookmarks section and a 'Yellow pages' like section so that we can start putting in better information for you all on services that are available to you.
I have a few other ideas that I don't want to share at this point, but they build upon the feedback I got in the survey and a few things I have been mulling over to make you all the heart and soul of the site. With the end of the sponsorship by Macguide I feel I'm in a position to go out and drum up a bit of support from advertisers and others in the Mac community.
The site (as I have said before) is not a money earner...it'll never cover the loss in time and effort that the site requires, and this was never really intended to be that anyway. So, what I'm thinking of doing is a approaching a few people and get specific support for contest, events and sections on the site. It may not be until the latter part of this year or next (I'm pretty flat out at the moment) but I hope to bring in some contests that not only get content appearing on the site, but gives you guys the opportunity to grab some neat stuff as well.
For me, one of the least productive (and most disappointing) areas of the site is the "Local Voices" section, where you can post a commentary on anything Mac related. The section received a lot of good feedback in the survey, despite the fact that it hasn't had any entry all year...so I'm leaving it up and really trying to get contributions in to that section. If you've got an opinion you want to share, why consider sending me something for it? Get in touch and we can chat more. If you have an idea about how to get people contributing to that section more, let me know.
And there you have it....a few more details about the change that you see here at NZMac.com. I hope that answers a few of the emails I've received and I'll certainly keep you posted as more changes come about.
Oh...and that reminds me. Previously the newsletter system was used to announce any changes to the site. Obviously, it's not a good idea to bring out a newsletter every time there is a new story on the site, so I'll only be using the announcements mailing list for major announcements from now on. Hope that is OK.
Please feel free to continue the discussion about the site redesign in the NZMac.com Forum
.
Regards,
Philip Roy
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