[theforum]

[David Kaufman]

perilously risking a me-too post...

Tara Cleveland <evolt at taracleveland.com> wrote:
> * The whole point of this exercise was to get off Jeff's hosting.

+1 - the impetus for (what became) the current "redesign" was simply to 
pick up the site and put it down somewhere else.  My biggest concern was 
then, as is now, that taking on the goal of changing the front end of 
the thing in between picking it up, and putting it down, would cause a 
significant delay.

> * We all had plenty of chances to make comments about the design.

+1 - the only thing worse than a change in plans is a last-minute change 
in plans.


> * [...] Making and then not meeting deadlines ... is not good. It 
> makes all deadlines into a joke and hurts morale.

yup.


> * I'm not satisfied with the design either. It's not the best we can
> do. I think a design competition is a *great* idea. But holding up the
> launch for months is *not* a great idea.

yup and yup!

> * I agree with Martin [...] that if we launch with the
> announcement that this is an interim design and we've switched CMS
> and platform etc. then I don't think that we'll get terrible comments.

How hard would it be to skin the drupal site to look as much like the 
old (current) site as possible?

It may sound like a silly idea, but if we announced that we'd moved to a 
new operating system, on a new server, on a new hosting provider, with a 
new CMS platform, it would certainly be understandable when we announced 
"some changes" in the site's functionality.  Rather than a opportunity 
to look bad, it would an opportunity to look good.

The, once we are there... the big news would not be the server move, but 
the redesign contest!

> I agree with you all that the design is less than ideal, but worries
> about external comments is not IMHO a reason to launch or not launch
> - especially since making the design change wasn't really the reason
> for this project.

Thanks for reinforcing this, Tara.  I want to see a super-slick shiny 
new evolt as much as anyone, and maybe the current design is not that, 
but launching with it achieves the primary goal of the project, to move 
to a new server.

Due to the hard work of the current butt-kicking team, *a* redesign has 
been done, and it has (so far) only delayed our server move by one month 
(two if we don't launch this week!)  But surely additional design 
iterations can only add additional months.

I should point out that our monthly Google ad revenue is consistently 
covering the hosting costs of only *one* of our two servers, the current 
production WEO (hosted by Jeff) *or* the new development machine (hosted 
at ServerMatrix).  As long as we maintain both we are eroding our bank 
balance.

So, whatever we do, consider this a vote for doing the thing that gets 
us off the old box sooner than later.

-dave