[Theforum] evolt.org revamp comment period open

[Garrett Coakley]

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On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 19:11:54 -0800 Marlene Bruce wrote:

This thread is a lot quieter than I thought it would be, so I'm
just gonna throw in some bits to see if we can't kick off a discussion.


> * better facilitating community ownership, participation and
> communication,* revamping our back and front ends,

Agreed. We're nowhere near fulfilling our potential on the community
front.


> * dramatically lowering our costs, need to fundraise and resulting
> risk, increasing the certainty of evolt.org's continuation,

+1000


> As you can imagine, these are major undertakings. Come this December
> evolt.org will be celebrating our 5th birthday,

Holy Moley!!

5 Years... damn I feel old now.


> HOSTING:

[snip]

> * To reduce the number of boxes required to 2 (likely one for leo,
> and one for all the web content & apps)

Agreed. I'm not on the Finance group (can't even balance my own cheque
book, so this is a *good* thing) but even I can see that we're burning
up money that we don't have. That's not fair on our members, who we
have to keep tapping for money, or Ron, who's effectively carrying us at
the moment.

Reducing the hardware is one way to do this, and something I think we
can do easily without affecting our level of service to our
visitors/members.


> TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE:
> * To move the backend db to another technology (either an OSS
> solution such as Postgres or MSSQL). MSSQL will likely require a
> Windows-based provider who will also supply necessary license for
> operating system and DB. To maintain the current CMS will also
> require finding a CF license supplier.


If we want to reduce costs, is looking at a platform where licensing
fees are involved (ie: Windows2000/MSSQL) a good idea? Would we be
looking at the provider to give those licences gratis? What would happen
in the event of us growing and needing another machine? Could we
guarantee that we would be given another license? What are the current
Microsoft licensing costs?


> * To make such changes as are necessary to the CMS layer to cope with
> that change. This will be a major undertaking as it has a large
> amount of Oracle-specific code.

Well that's jeffs area. Jeff? I didn't see anything in the steering
thread about this. Is there any abstraction between the logic and data
storage? I'm guessing the work to move from Oracle to any db (PgSQL,
MSSQL etc) is going to be pretty much the same?


> MEMBERS.EVOLT.ORG (MEO):
> We don't think that the current meo service is sustainable or develops
> the evolt.org community much,

It's like it's own little island. My vote would be to drop it and make
the evolt.org member features more involved, so they come more under the
weo umbrella. Pretty much as you laid it out.


> FRONTEND & CONTENT:


XHTML1.0 and CSS2 please.

(Yeah yeah, I know... that'll be discussed in the requirements phase,
just wanted to get my vote in now)


Well, thats kicked us off.... c'mon people.. this is *our* baby, get
talking.

G.




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