response 87 of 109:

Sep 16 02:24 UTC 2008

RE #25 >>CMSs are "certainly" not the way for Grex to go.

Here!Here! I cringe at the mention of CMS in the context of GREX. I 
have developed sites using both XOOPs and JOOMLA solutions and have 
found both to be an insult to knowledgeable web design. They are 
certainly capable of producing professional results but they strike me 
as very 'Rube Goldburg' in nature. 

The XOOPs site I did only to test the software. But the JOOMLA site is 
a current project. I did a bunch of research on CMS software and 
decided to go with JOOMLA mainly due to it's massive following 
(translating that to mean a greater support community.) I had always 
wanted to try a serious CMS site when my son came up with a website 
idea he wanted to try. He has no web skills at all and I set this up 
for him because at least the administrative functions are logically 
presented and well documented. 

The thing is so overbuilt yet convoluted. Everything was included in 
the basic setup except what you need. I added a "Simple Machines Forum" 
(SMF) forums module which is very slick but It is so much like 
everything else on the internet. If all you want is a forum site this 
is really a nice solution. (Bridging Modules? - OMG!) 

What GREX would do with any of this stuff is beyond me. But trust me on 
this incorporating a CMS into the current setup would be a programming 
nightmare! It would be far easier to rewrite GREX in PHP from scratch 
to do "whatever" than to try to customize a CMS.

I like the new GREX website. The clean cut CSS design fits in well with 
the true GREX tradition (Telnet + ASCII.) I was NEVER fond of the old 
web front. It just never felt like it was promoting the place I had 
known as cyberspace.org. 

Back talk is VERY NICE in that it makes the conferences so easy to 
navigate and contribute to. However, on the telnet side the conferences 
where always just tricky enough to limit posters to folks that I felt 
have paid some sort of dues to participate. I think some of that is 
lost with BackTalk but so much is gained in ease of use, it is hard to 
argue against it.  

One thing I really miss from my old bulleten board days is ANSI support.
We used to have a blast goofin' around with the graphics and sounds. I 
know they where just toys but we could really do some fancy screens and 
menus. We segregated ourselves into SIGs (Special Intrest Groups). I 
always thought the various conferences here where the next best thing 
but there has never seemed to be much purpose to contributing to many 
(most) of those available. 

Here's an idea:

What about getting active groups to collaberate on webpages to promote 
their special intrest and having their conferences only visible to 
logged in members. Keep agora publicly readable, of course. But the "I 
Like Gardening" conference takes place 'behind closed doors.'

For instance the "I Like Gardening" conference would have a webpage to 
promote itself and invite folks to come join the fun. Perhaps allow a 
500K limit on graphics for use on the page. This would reguire some 
limited graphics handling (for reviews and what-not) maybe give each 
participating conference/group 5meg or so of storage to cull their page 
from. Not only would this sort of thing attract attention from the surf-
by visitor it would encourage GREXers to develop their web design 
skills or at least bring to the group an individual with such 
tendencies. 

If we could evolve into a GREX of Website Designers as well as UNIX 
users we would find we could maintain GREX and build it ourselves into 
anything we wish it to be.