portals

[Jonathan Hutchins]

I really apprecite all of you sharing your explorations in this.  I haven't
relly been able to go much beyond the basic setup of that calendar-only
piece.

I've been thinking about the requirements, though:

First, we want a public web page that provides general information and
promotion of the organisation, public events, etc.  Mostly static stuff.
Then, in some sort of password-secure internal page:

Calendar is most important.
Mailing List is next - something just like what Yahoo groups does where you
can select digests, individual messages, or view the messages on-line.  This
would work a lot better than an online-only forum, because we need to reach
out and prod members sometimes, not just wait for them to log in.  If the
calendar can send reminders via the mailing list (like yahoo), all the
better.

Next, we need something like a photo gallery.  Categorized thumbnails with
descriptions, clickable to larger photos with text.  This is actually a
catalog of club-logo items, but we are really too small to justify a
full-blown shopping cart with credit card support.  People can send email
requesting items and can pick them up at the next meeting.  This should
probably be world-readable, if any non-member is interested in memorabillia
we'd be happy to sell to them.

Eventually, I'd like to see a classified add function, but that's not part
of the reqirements yet.

So having defined the scope of what we need, it looks like it might not be a
bad idea to go ahead and let Yahoo handle the calendar and mailing list, and
maybe even use their photo gallery for the catalog.  I think we'd like the
pride of our own web page, but I suppose we can link it to Yahoo so as not
to incurr the whole expense of hosting something like this.

I feel like I could manage a site like this myself, and I could teach myself
enough to set it up pretty quickly, but we'd have to find a way to host it -
I don't have the well-connected server space to set it up, we'd either have
to get someone to donate a colocated server or buy it somewhere.  Paying a
company to host it means we're paying someone for the skills and time I
could otherwise contribute.

Let me know what y'all think about this.  I'll probably press ahead with
PostNuke toward the weekend unless someone comes up with a better idea.