[LGM] The LGM website

[ale rimoldi]

Hi,

personally, I'm getting very tired with all those people who are not
happy with the tool(s) installed on the LGM server and keep bitching
around.
(And I'm not happy about the server not working correctly, either).


Since it seems that nobody likes the Wordpress that is currently
installed on the server, we need to remove it before next year's LGM.

I'm not ready to maintain the server for another year under the current
circumstances.


Now, the reason for removing Wordpress are rather simple: it is a
blogging tool and nobody feels the need of doing any blogging on the
LGM site.

And:

- Nobody thinks that using WP as a general tool is a good idea, either.

- Nobody things that using WP for information management is a
  good idea.

- The forms plugin installed (Gravity Forms) not only is a
  commercial plugin that we should pay for each year, but it's also the
  best solution available for WP and is not good enough for us
  (no granular access to the forms).


So: we clearly have the wrong tool installed.



Now, the first step for building a solid site is to find out what we
need. The second step will be to propose and then choose the tools to be
used.


For what I know what we need (and mostly somehow already have) is:

- A website presenting the LGM (currently the lgm/ wordpress instance)

- An information management tool for the LGM (currently the lgm/
  WP instance, partially as public, partially as private pages).

- A website presenting the next/current LGM (currently the 2014/ wp...
  and 2013/ wp, 2012/ wp...).

- An information management tool for the specific LGM edition
  (currently the mediawiki intance on houz' server).

- A form/list editor for gathering the information from the
  participants (currently the non free Gravity Forms for Wordpress).

- An aggregator of tweets and co. about the LGM.


My questions to you are:

- Do you know of other needs for the LGM server? (existing needs or nice
  to have)

- Do you know good tools for meeting those needs?

And, on top of it, under certain circumstances, we will have to find a
new server for hosting those tools... so if you have any proposition...



As a personal note, I'd like to install and maintain one single tool
that happens to meet all our needs *or* install several small tools
that all match one of the needs.
I'd like to avoid installing a tool like Mediawiki, which is somehow
the same as Wordpress, but starting from the wiki world instead of the
blogosphere. Somehow meeting each of needs, with no clear boundary on
what it can and cannot do.
... except if you can convince a majority of LGMers that it's the best
tool to match one of our needs.



I'd like to see a few ideas collected before the LGM, then discuss
it in Leipzig and find good solutions for the future of the LGM server.


Have a nice evening and sorry for the long mail... I could not write it
shorter.

a.l.e