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Wall Paperssince eglug was created i think it has been doing reasonably well offline, but online, it sucks big time. many suggested a redesign of the website before , but always their attempts ended up in vain.
recently i've been thinking about it, and i tried to spot clear points of failure, and came up with this list:
1- the theme is nuts!
i don't remember who it was who came up with this design, but i remember many people not liking it at all, including myself since day one.
2- clumsy usage of the cms features
i think it was very easy to go wrong with drupal here, having all these modules available for free , both of charge and of effort, probably more than 3 modules are being used on eglug for no good reason , which take up much space and make the site all the more incomprehensible
3- not having specific goals for the website
for instance, in its current shape, what's the purpose of the wiki?
4- original contributors apparently gave up on it(or maybe got lives? :p)
imo, the source of all these problems was that many decisions were taken upfront , way too early, and never been seriously reconsidered later. also that many debates about stuff like licensing, member roles , policies and such cosmetics took much more time than they should have, leaving the substantial issues way down on the list of priorities(which was ditched altogether later, maybe people got tired by then).
it's not all bad tho, i'm sure there are things that worked, but even if all didn't, it's a good thing we can now know what doesn't work and do something about it.
so what do you think guys and otherwise?
My 0.02
Seems I'll have to either reply now or never.
Eglug is not doing well at all neither online nor offline. Guys, find a place and start organizing things again. I can't help or do anything. I'm not in Egypt and even when I was, I didn't have much time.
It's pretty obvious that the last few events organized by eglug didn't attract the ammount of people we used to. The last event turned into a flamewar.
1) I don't know what's wrong with the theme colors. They are fine with me. Go and create a new theme instead of ranting. Don't create a mockup, create a theme otherwise nothing will change.
2) Which modules are you talking about ? I'd rather ask you to be clear here and state which, why and what to do.
3) A wiki is a wiki! A place for people to collaborate and when their work is complete, it gets pushed to the articles section. It's also a place for eglug related material that can change.
4) Original contributors ? Who are these ? I don't really get it.
I don't think that we as a community should reconsider the whole thing every few months. If you don't like something or feel something is wrong, raise it and then it should be reconsidered. I wouldn't reconsider the whole thing now because we do not have the community we used to have. Even if you agree to rebuild the whole thing from scratch, you will end up with a half complete thing because you will get tired in the middle. Build and push instead of throw and build is what I like.
Untill now, I don't have a clear vision about the list of problems you are talking about.
WWW: The place for organized randoms!
from your reply i can tell
from your reply i can tell you also see the need for radical change
1- well, i probably was a bit carried away here, but i still think the design is not really fitting , maybe we should ask visitors their opinions , for we can't really make a guided opinion based on what we like and we don't. also experimenting with other themes can't hurt
2- heh, would be easier to list what i'm _not_ talking about. for me, eglug.org == home page (which i don't like) + recent posts .. you might argue that some of the available modules can be made useful , but to my knowledge , that just didn't happen
3- this is a _lug_ wiki, and not just a wiki , what that means? i think it depends on how we define the goals of the lug(the website in particular). which is the point i was commenting on in the first place, lack of general direction
4- most content on the website was probably contributed in the first year after we launched. despite my opinion that the content is disorganized and second to useless, people were actually trying to push something anyways
now you think we shouldn't reconsider the whole thing every couple months. i say we should, only if the alternative is to remain stale for three years
of course if the website was doing at say 60% (whatever that might be), it would be more appropriate to improve instead of rebuild
cheers
Yes, I see that we need a
Yes, I see that we need a radical change but offline not online.
1) I doubt we really have a lot of visitors to ask. Beside, we have been doing nothing except polls and votes. I don't like to create another one because our few visitors might decide that it's the end of it. I still think that you could create another theme and submit it. It can be added as a second theme. If we have a lot of people using it as their theme, we can then use it as the default one.
2) What's wrong with the recent posts page ? What's wrong with the home page ? I can say that I don't like something but without saying why, there's not much to improve. And again, I don't know which modules aree you talking about.
3) It's a LUG website. It is used for whatever the LUG members want as far as it doesn't conflict with the AUP, vision or the MCAP.
4) Yes but because we were also active offline.
Maybe I was wrong, We can't rebuild it every few months.
My opinion remains: Get active (to the LUG not you). Find a place and be active.
WWW: The place for organized randoms!
volunteers to create new theme?
but i still think the design is not really fitting , maybe we should ask visitors their opinions.
This point has been raised several times, and some ppl agree with u that it needs to be changed. That's not the important thing.
We can keep discussing how bad the colors or the design are, and how we want to change it, but in the end it needs someone(ppl) to take an action and actually create a working drupal theme.
If that's done, I dont think anyone will object to uploading that theme and making it available for users as an alternative, as Msameer said. If it proves to be good then we can vote on making it the default theme. But, voting whether the current theme is great or horrible will change nothing.
I wouldn't really say
I wouldn't really say EGLUG is bad online.
1. I think the theme is ok, I only dislike the colors. we should however start expirementing with other themes (available but non-default to registered users) for users. i think the one at ardour.org looks awesome.
2. Agreed. I guess the projects module was never used.
3. dunno
4. yea. I guess there is much FLOSS activity by core and senior members but they just don't reflect on this website... which is bad. We need more HOWTOs.. in Arabic. It's not much use to copy something written in Eglish elsewhere i guess. So more Arabic Howto translation/authoring should be core goal.