Forums
Active forum topics
Blogs
Recent blog posts
Scheduled Classes
Monday Feb 6th
Tuesday Feb 7th
Wednesday Feb 8th
Thursday Feb 9th
Saturday Feb 11th
Sunday Feb 12th
Tuesday Feb 14th
Wednesday Feb 15th
Thursday Feb 16th
Saturday Feb 18th
Sunday Feb 19th
Tuesday Feb 21st
Wednesday Feb 22nd
Thursday Feb 23rd
Friday Feb 24th
Saturday Feb 25th
Sunday Feb 26th
Tuesday Feb 28th
Wednesday Feb 29th
Thursday Mar 1st
Saturday Mar 3rd
Sunday Mar 4th
Monday Mar 5th
Thursday Mar 8th
Saturday Mar 10th
Sunday Mar 11th
Tuesday Mar 13th
Thursday Mar 15th
Sunday Mar 18th
Monday Mar 19th
Saturday Mar 24th
Sunday Mar 25th
Thursday Mar 29th
Friday Mar 30th
New web forum proposal
(AKA: Too much whining, not enough doing)
As the most active forum topics here seem to be some form of complaining about the forums, I say it's time to actually step up as a community and make change happen. Heck, we are Techshop -- we build stuff.
So here's the current plan:
BACKGROUND:
I've recently been working with Erick (our webmaster) and Scott to help improve the mailing list situation -- basically anything to allow Techshop to get a message out to a large percentage of members/potentials as efficiently as possible. This is my primary focus, but it's given me a chance to get a feel for the current technology behind the website.
Our current hosting situation is a bit suboptimal, so I've volunteered a virtual private server (VPS) as a the base resource for the mailing list overhaul. There is no reason we can't use it as a home for a more agreeable web forum system. Since it's mine, coupled with the open-ended nature of a VPS, we have complete freedom to install anything which might benefit the Techshop community.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
As I've heard enough screaming about phpbb, it's automatically on the short list of possible forum replacements. That said, it is usually more productive to state the problems we're trying to solve, and not simply demand our favorite solution. That all said, I'm all for phpbb if it does the job. Here's what I have on the wishlist so far:
Stuff that is key to a good system:
- Personal messaging (PMs)
- RSS feed
- Mailing list integration. This is mine. Please understand that some of us despise the web forum mechanic (and some hate mailing lists), but I neither want to bifurcate the community nor leave half of it out completely. I'm shooting for seamless integration so you can use whichever makes you happy.
Other ideas:
- Combine with HQ. Noble, but we have already had trouble getting things moving. Adding another layer of management/approvals/coordination isn't going to help. Not to mention HQ has had 3 years to build their online community and have little to show for it. They're not actually an asset here. Let's show them how it's done.
- Unified login. I'm not really thrilled about the fact that my member registration, web site login, and wiki login are completely separate.
NEXT STEPS:
Now that Techshop packing is done, the first and foremost focus for me is to finish up the mailing list overhaul. While I'm waiting on other people, I'm going to spend some time evaluating phpbb and friends. If you have suggestions for software or features, now is a good time to let me know.
I'll be happy to entertain offers of help, and will be looking for people to test out various parts of the system as it starts to come online. Email me (it's like a PM, but old school) if you're interested.
Finally, many thanks to Erick for helping me understand the current system and poke around. Let's continue to work together to make Techshop RDU's online presence worthy of the community it represents.
- Jeff (jeff AT schornick DOT org)
I did not whine. Nor did I
I did not whine. Nor did I scream. I stated problems and suggested a solution. Here's another suggestion: chill out.
Additional ideas form the other thread
In attempt to keep this in one place:
From JC / RedEngine:
- Clean design, w/o a lot of junk that takes a long time to load and makes it visually cluttered.
- A good front page w/ all the subforums in a row, that graphically shows what forums have new messages.
- User icons: these are not just cute pictures; they serve a function by allowing a user to quickly scan and see who has responded in a thread.
From brettking:
- PHBB works reasonably well with my iPhone
Apologies
I meant no insult with my more colorful choices of language -- your suggestions are good ones. I'm sorry if you chose to take my phrasing as a personal attack. In your own words... "chill out".
Feel free to contact me off-board if you have more to say on this particular matter. A public forum is no place for personal battles.
thanks for stepping up
Jeff,
Thanks for stepping up and taking initiative. I'll be happy to help if possible - though desire and ability are often not related :)
When you talk about "Mailing list integration", there's two sides to this: 1) mail sent to a mailing list gets added to the forum and 2) forum posts get sent to a mailing list. Are you talking about one or the other, or both? I think having any TS blanket emails get posted to the forum automatically is a great idea. As for having forum posts get sent via email, that could be a bit dicey, and having conversations exist both in email and on a forum seems even harder. So, what were you thinking exactly? (take a look at this phpbb plugin - http://mail2forum.com/ - not sure if it works or not, but it's a start).
I agree with your assessment about combing w/ TechShop Corporate. I checked their forums today and they looked pretty dead - lets make them want what WE have :)
Finally, are you hosting the VPS yourself?
-William
Heck... I just asked a question! ;)
I'm sorry if you chose to take my phrasing as a personal attack.
Hey, RedEngine... I gotta say, I was insulted too. All I asked was a question about PMing... now I'm whining, lacking in "doing," and screaming. Nevertheless, I'm OK with chalking it up to poor use of "colorful language." ;)
Jeff-- Take all that above as tongue-in-cheek. ;) I want to thank you for taking this on. Despite my apparent whining and not enough doing, it wasn't for a lack of desire. Being new to TS, I was unaware of how this site or the wiki were administered. BTW, I noted your appreciation for the 6 hours I just spent redesigning the wiki... so, I'm all for "doing." ;)
Heck, we are Techshop -- we build stuff.
Ya know.. this is exactly what I was wondering about. You said in our Wood Shop SBU that you were a sysadmin. I was going to ask if you knew anything about the administration of this site. I would love to assist. I'll contact you old school via email (ironically, I used BBS PMs before email.... back in the days of CompuServe). :)
Tense but productive
This is precisely what we need. Yes, let's make HQ want what we have.
I am so grateful for Jeff stepping up with the email solution. It is almost ready to use I am told. I can't wait.
And now it looks like we will have a solution for the forum as well. Pointing out a problem, suggesting a solution and implementing the solution are three different things. The first two won't help if I am the only way to accomplish the third. I simply do not possess the skills to do it. Having the community solve the problem and implement the solution is just what will make TechShop RDU the leader in this and I cannot thank you enough. I mean really thank you. Just for the record, the nationwide community idea has been with us since the beginning, but no one has had the time make it happen.
I was in charge of "building" TechShop Durham and am presently in charge of "building" TechShop RDU, but it is you that will make it what it will become. I'm drawing plans and placing machines. Your input and our experiences with TSD have weighed heavily on all the layout and space allocation for TSRDU. It is really you that are in charge. You are the community and why we build the facility. It's all about you.
Many of the suggestions we received at TSD went unanswered simply because there was not enough time or money or skills to address them. We had some pretty rough financial times. There were months of uncertainty and rumors of doom. But that is all behind us now. Things look great for us and I expect we will take off like a bullet in this new location.
We are, more than anything, a community of people who like to make things. Making TechShop exactly what you want seems perfectly logical to me. Don't just tell us how you want it. Make it how you want it.
Thanks,
Scott
Looks like a great start! Go,
Looks like a great start! Go, Jeff!
PS: sorry for whining and complaining your ear off while we were moving the other night. It's what I do best. I'm tired and just want to get back to the woodshop!!
Thanks for the support, continuing on...
(and let's see if I can say more than 10 words before I insult someone this time...)
William --
The goal is to make the integration seamless, which means both implementing both halves of the story. Mail from the forum goes to the particular forum and associated list and vise-versa. The end result is that the conversations are "whole" regardless of which interface you chose to use. In addition, those who simply want to watch the action can be included via RSS feed. I've used systems which implement this technique successfully after accepting a few minor limitations. Not every list/forum necessarily needs this duality, but there should be at least one big happy online place that involves everyone.
In the end, I feel our userbase is too diverse to either expect everyone to participate in one particular way. Action on the forum is taking off again, but we're probably only at 20%(*) of the potential participation due to the login requirement. The diversity is good, but the potential to ignore folk or split the community is quite high.
I've already looked at Mail2Forum, and it is exactly what I'm looking for with the unfortunate exception that it only officially supports phpbb2. Support for the new hotness phpbb3 is coming, but I'm not holding my breath. Truth be told, I don't think it adds much based on our requirements. Many admins still chose run phpbb2, if Wikipedia is to believed. When the time comes, we can upgrade. Alternately, there is very early support for phpbb3 with M2F2.0, which I'll need to evaluate.
Another contender is FUDforum, with a built in mailing list gateway. Once again I need to spend some time with it.
Other thoughts?
(*) statistics completely made up for effect
Jeff... I carefully reviewed your post...
...and it appears to be 100% Insult Free. Kudos! :D
I'd like the ability to edit
I'd like the ability to edit your own posts.
Edit
Erick says he will look into it.
Scott
Post editing is a std feature
Post editing is a std feature in um.... "commonly used open source BB software."
We do what we can
Jeff,
As stated before, it is really easy to define a problem. It is often easy to suggest a solution. It is not always easy to implement that solution.
If we do not appear to move on getting the solution you suggest in place as quickly as you think we should, please understand that we will address each and every concern that each and every member has mentioned as quickly as we can. If my priority list does not appear to be in the same order as yours, I truly apologize and I am NOT being sarcastic. I really wish I could make everyone completely happy with TechShop and all that happens here. I have said it before and will say it countless times again, "This is your TechShop, not mine". I want to respond to the community whenever possible and as quickly as possible.
You may notice that most of the rooms in the new facility are larger than the ones in the old facility. This is 100% due to member requests and comments. The sewing room has been expanded from 247 sf to 416 sf. The Laser room from 144 sf to 335 sf. The wood shop has tripled in size. We do listen.
Erick has done a tremendous amount of IT work and continues to do so daily. Every day. I continually throw problems at him and he always responds as quickly as he can.
I have shared the members frustration with our website, with our mass email setup, with being underfunded and with pretty much every other thing that is not perfect with TechShop. One by one, we will make them better. And along the way, I expect to lose a few members because we don't do it like they think we should. I simply have to shrug my shoulders and remind myself that you cannot please everyone every time. Some of those that drop out simply did not "get" what we are. They have some other idea of what we should be and if we do not meet their expectations, they move on. I actually think this is good. On the other hand though, we want to remain open-minded and change where it will help the community. I hope we do a good job of differentiating between those who don't get it and those who have genuinely valuable suggestions. I will tell you this without hesitation. We always try to do what is best for TechShop and for the community.
Thanks for caring enough to make the comments. I hope our solutions will please you.
Scott
Scott Saxon wrote: Jeff asked
Jeff asked for help in that first post. I am not aware of any help that stepped forward at that time so we probably need to wait for him to finish the email thing.
I contacted Jeff via email and have offered my assistance. I'm also under the impression though that the email thing is his top priority, so I'm waiting to hear on next steps from him. Since he asked to be contacted via email, he may have received other requests to assist, too. Jeff?
You're it, sushinut
Lately, the IT crew has only been Erick and myself. As such, Mike's the only additional volunteer who has stepped forward, and I look forward to his help when we get the new forum rolling.
Meanwhile, the move had disturbed a few critical parts of the extended TechShop network, temporarily throwing a wrench in the mailing list progress. I stopped by the new shop today to iron out one of the pieces of that puzzle, and we should be back in action once the local server is in its new home. I'll hopefully be back on site Monday afternoon to take care of that last bit.
We're pretty close. Hang in there and we'll get to the fun stuff.
If you still need help, I can
If you still need help, I can lend a hand... drop me an email otto dot hammersmith at gmail.
That'll get my attention sooner than a post here.
I'd been standing back because I thought there were a ton of people who were gonna lend a hand from the member mtg a while back... didn't want to make for too many cooks in the kitchen.
Drupal
Paladin pointed out in another thread that he is running Drupal on his site:
www.clanofthegreywolf.com
Paladin-- can you give more details on your entire hosting platform including OS, backend DBMS, and software versions?
RE:Drupal
So sorry for the delayed response. I will try to get as much information as I can for you and post it in the next day or so. I run my website with 2 other guys, and they have done all of the set-up work. I just create content for it.
There are quite a few suggestions for the site already. Has anyone suggested linking the equipiment list to to a scheduling/availiability calendar through the website?
Forum Module
We currently use "Advanced Forum" for our forum module, but both my co-conspirators are looking at switching to phpBB.
Here's what we're running
MySQL DBMS on an Apache server, with a cPanel interface running php 4 (hopefully soon to be 5). We are currently running Drupal 1.5
Thanks for the info, Paladin
I talked to Jeff a couple weekends ago about the drupal forums here, and now understand that it wasn't so much an issue of the forum construct, as it was the various other functionality and opportunities for integration. I haven't had a chance to talk to him since, but as you've seen in this thread we've been kicking around phpBBv2. I told Jeff that I'd volunteer to consolidate all the "requirements/requests/nice-to-haves" into a single document, so they could be assessed against any proposed solution(s), as well as for testing. I'll add your request to the list. If you and your co-conspirators make progress with phpBB (or discover anything interesting about it), be sure to post here! Thanks.
Rolling it out
We're looking at rolling out phpBBB over an upcoming weekend. I'm wondering if there's something I can do to help?
Help
That may be VERY good timing. Jeff is the brains on this. I just offered to help him. I'll contact him via email, so he knows about your offer. Thanks, Paladin.
Experience, help, and war stories certainly welcome
Thanks for the offer of help, Paladin.
Now that I'm done cavorting about during break, it's back to business. I've thrown some quick information down on the wiki:
http://wiki.techshoprdu.com/index.php?title=NewForum
Mike, since you probably have a better sense of how such information might be organized, feel free to go to town on that page. I simply felt it was time to start getting things out of the forum and random emails, and have a place to point future contributers.
Paladin, anything you learn during your migration will be great information. That said... Drupal 1.5? Aren't the current versions of the software something closer to 5.0+?
Doh!
Ummm.. of course it should be put on the wiki. Doh. For some reason, I didn't even think of that. I've spent hours organizing and updating the wiki and didn't even think of making a page for the New Forum work.
I see you've done the dirty work already! I'll look through the thread here another time and check requirements against what you've put on the page there.
EDIT (6/6/10): I moved the NewForum page to a new title. The page was getting a LOT of defacements, and I suspect they were do to the naming of the page. Old page does not redirect. New page is:
http://wiki.techshoprdu.com/index.php?title=New_TSRDU_Web_Site
Umm Whoops...
We're running Drupal 6.14. Our Admin menu is 6.x.1.5...which I think is the source of the "1.5"...
Aside from improving the features available in the forums, is it too soon to start discussing changes to the website as a whole?
Paladin - completely
Paladin - completely unrelated - but you're 2 versions of Drupal 6.x behind (current release is 6.16). Upgrade lest ye get hacked!
LOL
Yeah, we know. We're not too concerned right now.
Website
Aside from improving the features available in the forums, is it too soon to start discussing changes to the website as a whole?
I don't know what, if any prior discussions may have taken place. Why don't you start a new thread, if you have suggestions... then we can keep those suggestions separate from the ones for the forum. After that thread gets some feedback, we can migrate them over to a wiki page to track as well.
Since Erick is the webmaster, hopefully he'll comment in that thread re: any suggestions.
also...
...might want to make it clear that you are talking about the main site... and not the forum functions that are in this thread (so some people aren't confused by the new thread). ;)
Adding a "Shops" Forum
More of a feature Idea, but how abot Squeezing "Shops" in between General and Q&A?
This forum could be further divided by Woodshop, Metal Shop, Plastics lab, Sewing...etc?
Good Idea
More of a feature Idea, but how about Squeezing "Shops" in between General and Q&A?
This forum could be further divided by Woodshop, Metal Shop, Plastics lab, Sewing...etc?
I think it's a good idea. Does anyone else have anything to say on the subject before I make the change?
Shops
I totally agree. I was thinking we would brainstorm on specific forum rooms once we moved along a little further.
When I was working on the Wiki, I called them "Work Areas" based on the Categories on the Classes page:
Casting
Electronics
Laser Cutting & Etching
Metal Shop & Machine Shop
Other
Plasma Cutter
Plastics
Software
Textiles
Vinyl
Welding
Wood Shop
Wood Shop - ShopBot(CNC Router)
I have some ideas about reorganizing these categories, but for now, they work pretty well.... I'd like the classes, wiki, and forums to all be organized the same.
Computer Lab?
Need a spot for the computer lab?
Reorganizing
Need a spot for the computer lab?
sushinut listed "Software".
I think that's probably a better category than "Computer Lab".
I have some ideas about reorganizing these categories, but for now, they work pretty well.... I'd like the classes, wiki, and forums to all be organized the same.
Those are the categories that I came up with while adding classes one by one over a large period of time. I tried to group them so that there wouldn't be too many or too few classes in any category, however, the CNC Vinyl Cutter, CNC Plasma Cutter and the Plastics class were too important to put in "Other" so they have their own categories.
After giving in some more thought right now, I probably should have made the categories "Plastics & Vinyl" and "Welding & Cutting" or "Welding & Plasma Cutting".
Changing the categories in the classes area is extremely quick and easy, so I welcome any suggestions on reorganizing them.
software vs. computer lab
It may be a better category. I would only try to persuade you that highlighting the fact that TechShop has a computer lab and that we should try to call attention to that is as important as what software we can run on those computers. That's my reasoning for making the distinction. I see that the computer lab information could be tucked the into the software section as well.