At 3:33 pm -0500 4/3/02, Stuart Meldrum wrote:
>Ref: http://duncan.smeed.org/2365
>
>Hello again,
>Most of the creating and uploading of pages is done by me but there
>are a few people who write what's going to be there. Until we get
>our own room with some sort of 'to do board' this seems to be the
>best way to do it so that pages aren't altered and uploaded twice.

Sounds to me like you need some sort of version control mechanism.

>Last year Dougal did a great job of setting up the site but didn't
>really have any people interested in carrying it on, eventually one
>person was kind of cornered into it and he had a heavy 2 hr session
>with Helen learing how it all works, unfortunately we found out that
>this isn't the way to do it and that it wasn't really the right
>person either. I got to do it because of some nagging from Mr King
>and me realising that I'm going to have to have something to fill in
>free periods.

Isn't that always the way. Actually I am surprised that there's not
more interest from pupils helping out. It's a valuable skill that
you're learning. But if the learning curve is too steep...

>We already have next years ed in place but we'll have to sort out
>people to work with him (people like Mark Smeed who I think you
>might know!)

Hmm! Name rings a bell. But the correct spelling is Marc ;-)

>The software that we use most is Frontpage, mainly because most
>people have it at home already but we've been using Dreamweaver 4 a
>bit recently as well and should have some copies fully installed on
>the machines at school soon; the ftp we use is Ipswitch ws_ftp pro
>which Mr King picked up somewhere; for the little photo editing we
>do, we use paint shop pro 4 or 5 - i can't remember which.

I think this is where one problem lies in that the likes of FP and DW
are not really geared up to support for multiple editors for a
website AFAIK. I'm caught on the horns of this dilemma too since I
would like to share editorship of a couple of site that I maintain
(irregularly) but the logistics of keeping the site and internal
links consistent is a major pain.

>
>The club idea was just one we mentioned on Friday - maybe 2-3 people
>from each year creating and maintaining a news page for thier year
>group - all we want to do is get a few people used to the basics and
>interested so that we can get them ready for the real thing when
>they're in s6

That would be a good idea for starters. Devolve responsibility and
get people on-board early on. hat's why I think some (simple) form of
content management system would be beneficial to help coordinate
these efforts. But the fall back is for each group to have their own
subsection of the site largely independent from the other sections
but tied in with some consistency in the navigation.

>
>The cgi was just another thing I've become vaguely interested in
>since taking over the site others that I've been looking at are
>flash movies, creating streaming media, shockwave games; java....
>I realised pretty early on that it wasn't going to be an alternative
>to school master and was really just something I'd like to know more
>about.

Personal exploration is to be encouraged and providing the server has
the necessary bandwidth/performance the use of such technologies
would indeed make the site more attractive to (some) prospective
users.

>
>I don't really know anything about how weblogging works but I'm
>interested to find out to see what the differences between it and
>forums are. How would they reduce the need for censorship?

Weblogs are basically personal websites that are geared for ease of
updating and (generally) have a diary/journal element so a calenda
metaphorr is often uses as for navigation. Weblogs seem to be able
to avoid the excesses of forums. The reasons for this seem to be
more sociological as people tend to be more respectful in your 'own
personal space' rather than in a public forum. Think of it as being
invited into someone's home. You are much less likely to be abusive
and rude and more likely to be tolerant of another person's opinion
in this situation.

I'll try and dig out some URLs that explain this phenomenon.
>
>Thats really all I have to say for now and maybe it would make more
>sense if I had included the text of the last message but I don't
>know how to do that, is it something to to with the html validator
>at the bottom?

I can configure the web-based interface to include the text of tthe
message you are replying to I believe. I'll try that out as an
experiment.

You can also subscribe to Duncan's Jotter by e-mail. Go to:
http://duncan.smeed.org/members/settings/preferences$conversation=smeed&plugin=Email%20Interface
and select 'yes' for the subscribe to this conversation by e-mail
option. This may be overkill for you since you are only interested
this thread I guess.

I've taken the liberty of cc'ing this reply to you. If you want any
subsequent reply to this to go to DJ make sure you use
smeed-site@free-conversant.com as the reply address.

Cheers,

Duncan