Re: [Planner] Re: [Planner Dev] Community web site

[Mikael Hallendal <micke imendio com>]

tis 2003-11-18 klockan 15.06 skrev Brian Christensen:
> Mikael suggested that I move this message into the planner-dev list so 
> that we can all discuss it.

Great thanks.

> Also, I have put together a Planner web site that incorporates some of 
> these ideas at:
> 	http://www.simpleprojectmanagement.com/planner/
> 
> Please take a look at the site and share your comments.

Not sure exactly what to comment on here, looks, contents? 

> For example: one user segment would be "new project managers
> who would like to use planner to manage their first projects". In 
> addition to instructions on how to use Planner, we should also provide 
> information on the essentials of project management and how Planner
> fits in. Our goal should be to help them to have a successful project.

Yeah, I think user documentation and forums will be wonderful here.
Would be awesome if we could get a "discuss project planning in general"
part of the site aswell, so that it was useful even for people not
currently using Planner.

> Another segment would be "talented programmers who would like to
> improve Planner". We could provide a technical overview of the
> tool, coding standards, and suggestions on how to get started. We
> could also provide a prioritized list of enhancements they could work
> on. If we provide support and encouragement they will be more likely
> to succeed. I agree with you entirely that we need to "lower the
> step needed to start helping out."

Yeah, we used to have this on the old site, didn't really get us many
contributors but I guess we can continue to try. :) 

I think the old "Hacking on MrProject" document that I wrote was more
frightening people away from the project. We should probably (and what
seems to work really well for Gossip, another project we are
maintaining) do is to keep the discussions mostly on the list so that
people feel more involved.

We've tried doing that some in the past and when we've done it has
generally worked nicely. What I felt was hard back then was that we
worked full time on the project and bouncing everything over the list
was sometime slowing us down. This won't be a problem now since we'll
mostly hack on Planner during evenings/nights ;)

> If we design the web site correctly, each kind of user should be able to
> find what they need without being scared off by what others need. It
> should be obvious that you can use the tool without learning how
> to change it.

Yep, that was my idea with the design mockup I did at:
http://micke.hallendal.net/planner-web-02.png

> Are you interested in working with me to define our target users and
> to decide what we should offer to each group? What are your
> interests? Is there a part of the web site that you would like to focus 
> on?
> Who do think should be helping us with the site? Any ideas
> about how we should divide the work?
> 
> I would like to focus initially on three areas:
> 
>      1) Identifying the user segments we will target and what will we 
>         offer each.

Sounds great! Would be great to take this discussion here on the list so
that we have archives about the reasoning on how we derived our main
target group and which groups we focus on.

>      2) Providing information on project management and how planner fits
>         in.

Sounds terrific.

>      3) Building the web pages for the above.

Sounds good, I'll try to setup the infrastructure needed for you, us and
others to help out developing the site. Currently I'm planning on
looking into Drupal (http://drupal.org/) since it provides everything we
need (Blog/News/Forum/Content management). 

My other idea is to use Movable Type which works really well too. We are
using it on two of our other project site (http://loudmouth.imendio.org,
http://gossip.imendio.org). 

> You're right that we do need to a place like this for our users
> to form a community. In fact, we need at least two: one for our 
> developers and one for our project management users.

Developers should discuss on the mailing list. So the forum will be
targeted towards users and project managers.

> > Anyway, just wrote a mail about the community web pages that I'd like 
> > to hear your feedback on. My suggestion is that we get something up that
> > either you or us can update and manage. Not sure what would be the best
> > approach, there are a couple ways we could go.
> 
> I don't know what the best approach is either. I like the flexibility 
> that it gives us if any of us can make updates, but we need to be careful of 
> overlaying each others changes. I like to have a test version of a web site on
> my development machine and then use scp to install a new update to the 
> server when I am sure all of the parts are correct and are working
> together properly.

I think we should use another solution than scp'ing/ftp'ing pages since
then we'll have to open up our servers to external people and I don't
feel too comfortable with that. Many good CMS supports uploading files
through there interfaces (or through webdav, which would could use
instead of scp).

I'll try to take a look into CMS system and get something up and running
tonight. Will also try to spend some more time working on the design.

Best Regards, 
  Mikael Hallendal
-- 
Mikael Hallendal               micke imendio com
Imendio HB                     http://www.imendio.com
Phone: +46 (0)709 718 918