Committee:
Web Design
Meeting
Date:
Wed, 10/24/2012 - 00:00
Location:
Agenda:
Planning ahead for site redesign and mobile.
Groups audience:
Attendees:
Georgette, Melissa , Bill, Walt
Status of Minutes:
Draft
Minutes:
DRAFT for WebTech from GWeir
Planning for 2013: Communications
Re Website, Oct. 24, 2012 web tech meeting
I attended today’s web tech meeting in order to get a first-hand update on website status and insight on
what to expect when planning for 2013 communications efforts. What I heard is, I think, relevant to the
entire organization given the heavy reliance that the Trail Conference puts on the web to accomplish
goals and objectives in the areas of volunteer recruitment, training, and support; membership and
development; pubs sales; and overall communications. In a nutshell: our two lead web tech volunteers
recommend that the organization add a staff position in 2013 dedicated to web and other tech
support.
We focused on four questions.
How long can we continue to run on D6 without problems
Q1.
August 2013. This is the target date for Drupal to launch version 8 and, according to Walt, when that
is launched, D6 will no longer be supported. (The date could slip, but he says Drupal is pretty much on
track.)
Q2.
What are the problems that we risk encountering if we don’t upgrade in a timely fashion?
Walt writes:
1.We are increasingly "out of date"/"not-with-it". We can't take advantage of new technologies. D7 is
relatively minor changes. There are major changes coming in D8. D7 is fully supported until D9 but as
we have seen with D6, the patches slow down because the active people are always working on the new
thing. We are already seeing a slowdown in D7 changes because the superstars are all working on D8 at
this point. What we do see is some backporting of D8 to D7 features to give early access. An exciting one
we may seen is much better WYSIWYG, as that now has some alpha testing on D7. That needs lots of
user experience testing and the only way to get that is doing it where the customers are.
2. I think I have seen an occasional D5 security patch even though it is our of service window. Most of the
work of doing security patches is figuring out a fix so backporting is usually not too hard and sometimes
happens.
3. D5->D6 was hard. D6->D7 is harder. I fear D7->D8 will be harder still because of the large changes
they are making. They have not started looking at the upgrade issues yet so it is hard to guess. As you go
through upgrades, there is always some old junk left laying around. I suspect that for D7->D8 we will want
to go the import old into clean new rather than upgrade route. The import technology has been improving.
Note: Consensus of Oct, 24 meeting participants is to focus on D7 upgrade and put off consideration of
redesign/mobile use until the upgrade is made.
What is your timetable for completing the upgrade, including configuring the store for use?
Q3.
Walt: “It will happen when it happens without additional resources. Realistically not before January unless
we add in mobile and site redesign then longer.”
Walt will know by January if he can configure the new store correctly. If the answer is No, then we need
to seek another solution. We briefly discussed options for using other vendors (Amazon for ex). He
suggested involvement in this decision by Pubs Comm.
Bill expressed concern about impact on back-office functioning and about TC resources for testing the
store and rest of website before launch.
Q4. What resources will be needed in 2013 for planning web upgrade/redesign and adapting for
mobile?
Bill: concerned that the organization is relying more and more on the website for a full range of its
activities and reliance on volunteers may not be wise. He sees the need for some one person who is
driving the organization’s web vision, maybe has some tech knowledge, but someone whose job is to
focus on/worry about the website and a vision for the future. “We have lots of good ideas, but don’t think
we can do it with volunteers. Even when we test things, there are not enough resources.”
Walt: We need a great technician. We will supply the vision—we have the right people to drive that. But
we need a more technically oriented person. It would be prudent to plan to hire such a staff person in
2013.