[ubuntu-in] ubuntu India website redesign

[Soumyadip Modak]

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I fail to see how locked-down pages cannot be considered to be static
pages. If I'm not mistaken, the home page of ubuntu-in.org is a
locked-down page, which means it effectively is a static page. Having
a separate non-wiki section would be a complete waste of time.

Regarding Pratul's suggestion of using Drupal, the problem (IMHO) of
using CMS solutions like Drupal and Joomla is that it leads to a lot
of administrative hassles. Suppose I create a page. Someone wants to
make some modifications that I do not like. Can/Should that person be
restricted? What sort of control do we exercise over content, and what
sort of priviledges we give to a creator, a contributor, a member who
has registered, etc. If we think carefully, Drupal (or any CMS) is
(again IMHO) not the correct solution for a community site, where you
encourage people to sign-up and contribute. CMS software are mainly
for company or organisation websites, where you give out information
about yourself/your company/your organisation, but you do not expect
the community to be the primary contributors. Ubuntu-in lives due to
the community contribution, which necessarily points to a wiki based
solution. In fact some of the categorisation in the
http://www.ubuntu-in.org/wiki/Web2007 page is frankly amusing. FAQ is
supposedly a static page, pray why? Is it something set in stone? Why
should newbie users and developers sections be static? Shouldn't we be
encouraging them to contribute back? How different will they be from
Documentation and Tutorials that they merit a non-wiki infrastructure?
Is the Team set in stone? Don't we have new people being added there?
If I remeber correctly, when we started, all the sections had only two
names. Only Gora was the third IRC ops and Barkha the third mailing
list admin.

Vivek Khurana wrote
>Why not start writing a collaborative book on the ubuntu India
>website ? Any takers ?

Shouldn't our primary goal be to contribute more content to the
Ubuntu-in site rather than write a book about the site itself? There
is hardly any effort to create meaningful content on the wiki itself,
why do we have to waste our energy pursuing other goals? Going through
the statistics from Google Analytics, I find that of the 11000+ page
hits we have on ubuntu-in.org every month, more than 30% goes to the
page I created on SATA RAID way back when Dapper was released (around
4000). The sad fact, the bounce rate is 82%, which means that
percentage of people visit just one page and leave, within about a
minute and a half.

Nan budh, you are talking about Newbie sections, go ahead, the wiki is
there, create a section, contribute content. Can I consider you as the
contact point for the creation and development of the Newbie section,
please? Can't someone contribute articles on setting up a home server,
a firewall box, a media center, etc. with Ubuntu? Even articles that
deal with common system administration work that people need to do
regularly?

Why don't we see articles on properly enabling Indian language
desktops (there are issues with input methods, especially SCIM, which
is Ubuntu's default, and OpenOffice.org)? Why don't we see articles on
programming? Articles that talk of setting up the perfect Python
development box, with IDEs, nifty libraries, etc., using as much
software from the Ubuntu repositories as possible? The perfect Java
Web (and even Desktop) Development workbench? PHP? Ruby? A page on "10
cool things you can do with Bash, sed and awk"? Making your Ubuntu
desktop look like MacOSX or Windows (yes, there are people who would
read that)? How about a page on the games available in Ubuntu, howto
organise a lanparty using Ubuntu and OpenArena? Creating Free maps for
OpenArena/Nexuiz/Tremulous? There, I hope I have thrown up enough
ideas for people to chew on and start working upon. Crack your
knuckles guys and gals.

For Events, can we use this plug-in:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Calendar_(Barrylb) ? Maybe
there would be problems with the MediaWiki version, which I admit we
website/server admins have been too lazy to upgrade. G0SUB, your
inputs on this?

Sorry for ranting, but I feel there is way too much talk and not
enough work. Maybe that's symptomatic, seeing the experience of the
FOSS.in organisers. I certainly feel proud when I see how The Team
page has grown to include new people, and I see people being involved.
I am proud of the people who have organised the Debian-Ubuntu Project
day at FOSS.in, and will undoubtedly make it a success there. But
somewhere, there is a slip between the cup and the lip. We have hardly
been able to recruit people who would start contributing back to the
community, in terms of code, documentation, etc. which does make me
feel sad.

Those who I have mentioned by name, please do not take this
personally. Vivek and Pratul, you have been exceptional in making the
forum see the light of the day. Nan budh, thanks for being the gadfly
and pointing out that we have not had focused articles on newbies.
But, this is an appeal to all of you there, please start stretching
the current infrastructure to its limits. As the old-timers will
testify, starting up something is not terribly difficult, but
sustaining the enthusiasm and nurturing the creation to the point
where it is self-sustaining, is certainly very difficult indeed.

- --
Soumyadip Modak
soumyadip.modak at gmail.com
soumyadip at ubuntu-in.org
http://soumyadip.freemind.in/blog
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