Web Site Suggestions

[Jacob, KD7UPN]

I've identified three problems that continue to occur with maintaining
a club web site:

1) It is hard to maintain a web server. We've had problems with web
servers disappearing, maintaining internet connections to the server,
and keeping the server OS up to date.

2) It is hard to maintain a content management system. An easy to
maintain website requires a content management system of some sort,
such as drupal, mediawiki, etc. We've had difficulties running
something like this on the hardware with which we've had available,
and keeping the system up to date is also difficult.

3) It is hard to use a solution which various people over the years
can easily learn to maintain.

To solve these problems, I suggest the club move to use Google Sites.
The club has and currently uses google products. We've used Google
Groups, Calendar, Picasa Web Albums. Creating a Google Site would
allow us to tie and centralize our information from these sources.

I've created a demo site which shows how our club might use such a
Google Site. I set up a theme and copy pasted some old information
and connected in some gadgets. It is mostly meant to show the
capabilities of Google Sites.
http://byu.hamradioclub.net

My main motivation in setting up this demo is to present to the club
an option. If the club wishes to use Google Sites, I would be happy
to help set things up further. If the club decided that a Google Site
isn't the best way to go, then that is fine too. If you want to
discuss it further, I can help with that.

And let me address some topics about it:

*Migration: Most of our content is sitting in the club's Google Group,
and this content, including files, can be moved to the Google Site.

*Web Site Address: Any web site address can be used to point to the
Google Site, as long as a CNAME record can be created in the DNS to
point to Google's servers.

*Managers: It is easy to add any Google Account as a manager of the
web site, so there can be multiple people managing the site. The
club's google account (byu...@gmail.com) can be the permanent manager
for the site.

*Cost: Free

*Other questions: Just ask and we can discuss.

[Aaron Johnson]

I agree with Jacob's analysis.  Having done some webmastering myself for a research group for a couple of years, I think his description of the types of problems we face are spot on.

I also think that our club should have a web site.  It makes it much easier to get people involved if you can just say "go to byuarc.org" (or whatever) and have them find all of the information they need on the front page.

I checked out the site Jacob set up and definitely see a lot of potential.  I'm in favor.

Aaron Johnson
KE7WBS

See you at the meeting tonight!