website rant

[mrsbrown]

I had a terrible time at the meeting last night.  It was inevitable, but I could have prepared better.

I want the Stormhold website to be moved to a wordpress site (from Drupal), I want the currant admin to change and I'll take the job myself if I have to.

Doing that is fraught, as the current admin has had the job for the past 20 years (at least) and is emotionally attached to the job. 

I did a lot of work with the current admin about 8 years ago, when he was just as attached to the job.  I spent a lot of time and energy carefully making the drupal website look and have the best functionality I could.  It was a place I was happy to send newcomers to and I would regularly check what was going on and I had a person lined up who updated the events pages regularly.  I stopped being Baroness and attending council meetings and then, either  the main server crashed or he updated the version of drupal we were using and he lost the lot and had to rebuild.  Some of the pages I had carefully written and coded could only be retrieved from the wayback machine.

The new version of the website looks dreadful, it's not mobile responsive and the regular event updates are gone.  Also, I no longer have admin access and even if I did, now that I know wordpress I would rather use that.  The current website is too difficult  annoying for anyone to use.

Anyway, after a very confrontational discussion (with no control exercised by the meeting chair) it was agreed that we would prepare a pros and cons paper for the next meeting.  This is a typical approach to solving these sorts of conflicts - put it off until next time.  The problem is, the real problem is the current admin - he needs to go.  Hmmm maybe that's why I can't have a reasonable discussion with him about improving the website experience for the Barony - all of my language and posture show what I really think.

Maybe there's another way?  Can I get the Masonry team to ban drupal from the server?

Goals for the Baronial website:

1. Provide useful meeting and event info for members and newcomers
2. Be a place that gets people to visit regularly
3. Includes enough information for newcomers to be attracted and motivated to come to a meeting/event
4. Can have information added by any of our event stewards
5. Is easily updated by any of our officers
6. Is updated often enough that people don't have to rely on facebook for group information
7. Has a level of automation for event updates - google calendar feed
8. Can be used by local groups to plan their events around ours.
9. Can be used to contact us by the media etc
10. Provides useful resources for members
11. Encourages traffic to our members blogs
12. Looks good enough that people get the impression we know what we're doing

Here's a simple table version of a comparison between drupal, joomla and wordpress.

I'm convinced that drupal is too complicated for us to get a site which works for our weird community based organisation.

Comments

[villana.livejournal.com]

Oh I remember this pain well.

You left off 13. Mobile device compatible.

Good luck!

[etfb]

Banning Drupal from the server? You definitely have one ally in Masonry for that course of action! I don't have full access, but it looks to me like there's only one other site using Drupal, and that's the scribes site. At least one of its admins is sane (and at least one makes the fellow you're referring to look like the Dalai Lama, but that's life).

[tangent_woman]

So it'd be news to you that it is the intention of the Masonry team to move all Baronial sites etc to Drupal? Thought so.

Also; what is security like for Wordpress? How do we counter the expected argument that Wordpress has more/worse security issues than Drupal?

[etfb]

"News" is a euphemism for "lie" that I only expect to find in discussions of Rupert Murdoch.

Wordpress's security is *better* than Drupal's on our system, because we have a team applying the security patches regularly for the entire site and a bunch of tools monitoring it, whereas each Drupal installation is separate and needs to be maintained by the system owners. There's only one Wordpress installation on sca.org.au and every WP-based site uses it, whereas there's a Drupal installation for each site that uses that.

People who complain about the security of WP tend to be (a) Drupal users and (b) wrong.

[mrsbrown]

I'm so glad you've said that. It's one of his main arguments and you've just given me great words to use in response.

Thanks!

I nearly bit my tongue off.

[tangent_woman]

I felt a bit ashamed for not speaking up about the current admin's shitty remarks about your ability to maintain websites. (Right or wrong (and clearly wrong) he makes your point for you: anyone with half your skills and intelligence *should* be able to edit the Stormhold website without it being agonising. Wordpress permits that.) But I've argued with that person enough to know that there's no point.

On another note; what a crazy meeting that was! S has sworn off even joking (because he's only ever joking) about Cairn Fell becoming a Barony, if Baronial meetings are like that one.

Re: I nearly bit my tongue off.

[etfb]

That's why Lightwood is planning to skip Barony and go straight to Empire.

[mimdancer]

Criticism noted.

If you still have a problem with me, I am sure that the Kingdom Seneschal should know.

However, I had already been speaking to her about it the website & already have plans to help move things forward.

[mrsbrown]

I don't have a problem with you, certainly not anything serious enough to refer to the Kingdom Seneschal!

True, I'm not entirely comfortable with how the meeting was managed, but please don't worry about stuff I write as a stupid off the cuff comment in an emotional rant. I will talk to you in person if a problem is really serious.

Please keep me up to date on your website stuff - I sort of figure that I'm putting myself up as the bad guy so the rest of you can get on with working with him while he focuses on me. Last night was a bit harder than I thought it might be and I'm a it bruised.

[etfb]

Controlling certain people in a meeting situation is... a challenge. Isn't there an expression about emptying the ocean with a teaspoon?

Discussion on the Masonry list is occurring, and as seneschal, you'll hear the result as soon as there is one. I'm confident it won't be an unpleasant surprise.

[etfb]

It would appear that the verdict is likely to be that we'll be keeping Drupal, because it's got enough supporters to make it worthwhile, but the strong encouragement to drop it in favour of Wordpress will continue, and we'll try to make sure that as many Drupal sites as possible use a shared multi-site instance instead of maintaining their own. Competent Drupalists will be allowed to carry on, but may be co-opted into the Masonry Team if they're not already. Incompetent ones will, of course, be shot.

[tcpip]

I'm a 100% firmly embedded Drupal fan-boy but...

(with no control exercised by the meeting chair)

.. that has to happen to have a sensible discussion on such matters.

[pheloniusfriar]

Wordpress = win
Drupal = endless sadness and despair

I have to use Drupal for the web site at my work/school and I have Wordpress installed on my server at home. Not Drupal. There is a reason for this. We also moved to Wordpress for CAN-CON (yes, this is a Wordpress site), and it enabled a collaborative approach to maintaining the web site (especially since stuff changed as the event approached). One of the best decisions I've ever made (I'm not involved with running it now, but it has served the new crew very well... it's 100% volunteer run/non-profit and making it easy for volunteers to contribute is critical to any hope of success). Seriously though, friends don't let friends use Drupal.

I wish you all the best in your struggle!

[sjkasabi]

It seems to me, as a general principle, that you won't be happy about the outcome until you address the real problem. In this case, the person's role wrt the website, by the sound of it. Is that right? It sounds like there is a general perception that the website is dysfunctional (I would agree). Is there a general perception that tHe person's role and how he fulfils it is the issue? (I am lamentably and frustratingly cut off from real world interaction with the barony atm) If so, it sounds to me like something that the seneschal and b&b need to do something about, as no amount of beautifully defined goals for a website or research about technical options will actually address what you have defined as the problem.

I understand that so many years ago it's painful trying to think about what the date might have been, stormscroll was born as a handy, quick, regular newsletter, and another zine, that I've forgotten the name of because it's long defunct, became the supposedly more prestigious long form journal of the Shire, because it was understood that the problem was the Person (in fact the very same person) and not the zine per se; the Person got to do something he wanted to do and was genuinely respected for, and the shire got the outcomes it needed. I say 'I understand' because I picked most of this up as a newbie from gossip, and it's possible I got a one sided or inaccurate idea of the situation.

But I mention this because, if truly the problem is that the Person is doing this role and truly the only solution that can work is to take it off him, it is only fair and honourable to give him an honourable retreat. Something, perhaps related, that he wants to do, and even more importantly, can be respected for. What are the technical options for that these days? Could he maintain a Drupal baronial website that is essentially a collection of links to resources, other good but fairly static stuff, perhaps including a nice photo gallery or some such, and a frame/ front page for a wordpress baronial blog that contains all the action and is edited by someone else? I bet the Person would love to put together an historical online photo gallery, you know. Seriously.

I suppose I also think, on principle, though, that if the Person really is the problem - in the sense that he is generally perceived as such, not just for you, I mean - then it is actually not respectful to him to let him keep pissing people off and doing a crap job for the barony. It would be much more respectful if the barony - and I guess it is the senschal's role, but it would need to be clear that the b&b and great officers were in agreement - were to thank him for his effort and long service and tell him it is no longer needed. That''s the bottom line.