[TAG] Fwd: Re: LG - what's next?

[Ben Okopnik]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:59:31AM -0400, Ted To wrote:
> Not sure why but my email was rejected by mailman...

I had a problem with my server yesterday, and the provider rebooted it;
today, all of a sudden, I'm maxing out on memory (thus, the mail, etc.
failures.) I just killed one of the auto-started processes (clamav), and
that seems to have handled the memory problem - I hope. I'll be watching
it pretty closely for the next couple of hours.
 
> On 06/10/2011 08:45 AM, Henry Grebler wrote:
> > 
> > -->Perhaps I'm just too preoccupied by this big pillar I see in front of
> > -->me. :) Which thing, or category of thing (to do justice to the metaphor)
> > -->are you seeing as the elephant?
> > 
> > Has anyone decided which - I don't know the terminology - publishing
> > platform is to be used for future issues of LG?
> > 
> > Is WordPress a done deal?

That would certainly be my recommendation; please see further.

> > Is there documentation? If not, who is going to produce the
> > documentation?
> 
> I would be willing to maintain a Wordpress site for LG.  I do so for
> several small sites for my family and I do a pretty good job making sure
> everything is up-to-date.

Ted, that's a great offer - thanks! I'm pretty good with WP, but it's
not (shades of my earlier email about cherry-picking) my absolutely
favorite way to spend my time. This would fill in a very important spot,
and make the rest of LG administration a staff matter rather than a
technical struggle (which the current production system very much is.)

I already have a template, about 90% done, for doing LG on WP. If the
current staff decides to go ahead with that, I'll be happy to give you
whatever access is necessary.

> I could even moderate comments (if LG wanted
> them enabled) to filter out spam (akismet and bad behavior do most of
> the work).  I don't know that there is an easy way to integrate
> tag at lists.linuxgazette.net with Wordpress comments.

That would be one of those staff-level decisions. I'd suggest -
certainly initially, for ease of conversion - continuing to use my
conversion script. It takes a Mailman archive and produces a series of
linked pages that could be easily loaded into WP.

> Unfortunately, I
> have 2 small children and couldn't commit to do more than that.

Again, this is my favorite way to see people volunteer. "Here's what I
can do, and here's my limit" - just terrific. As far as I'm concerned,
your offer will fill that slot perfectly.
 
> Creating pages is pretty self explanatory -- there is a dashboard and
> everything is gui.  I imagine there is a way to ensure that pages are
> not published until the editor(s) approve.  I'm not sure that anything
> else is needed.

It would be easy enough - although it would take a little time - to
document the step-by-step process. Again, mine is a minority opinion,
but I urge *very* strongly that the current production system not be
used at all; it's a nightmarishly-complex dead end, and learning its
quirks would be time far better spent in learning to use the WordPress
system (which is intended to be easily usable from the word 'go'.)


Ben
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