[OHPV-list] The future of the OHPV Blog

[John Climaldi]

Hey Chris,

I think you are right on track for the future of the OHPV site. I  
have messed around with b2 weblog software (I think it uses  
WordPress) and it's very nice. Your personal site looks good, very  
clean, simple, and easy to navigate. I would push for an OHPV site  
that has a similar skin  design.

It takes a bit of time for readership to grow. I felt silly  
publishing the bent blog for the first couple of months, feeling like  
I was the only one reading it. Then things just popped. Every time I  
posted something I would get two or three emails, sometimes more. The  
emails usually come from outside our group, envious of the club we  
have or questions on bike builds. So I guess the point is that if the  
blog content changes every once in a while more people will read it  
(outside of our group). This will only be good for events like the  
PIR race, weekly rides, etc.

Just my $.02

John

On Feb 4, 2006, at 12:59 AM, Chris Leck wrote:

> Well, almost nobody has read my 'The future of the OHPV Blog' at  
> http://ohpv.org/blog/article.php?story=20060202132430530 . While  
> this in itself could be an answer to questions posed therein, it  
> could be that I am more interested in the topic than most.
>
> Setting up the OHPV blog got me more interested in blogware and  
> content management systems (CMS). As a result, I got to work and  
> rebuilt my own (minimal) website in WordPress (after a bit of  
> research). You may see it at http://chrisleck.com . WordPress is  
> blogware and is available for use at ohpv.org in place of Geeklog.
>
> Another way of looking at this: we could run the whole OHPV site on  
> freely-available blogware and get easier and better results --  
> without anybody needing an HTML editor to do so. (I can critique  
> the OHPV website -- I built it.) WordPress will be more versatile  
> and extensible than Geeklog for this. Although I am fairly new to  
> blogware (and am the exiting webmaster), I highly recommend taking  
> a close look at this.
>
> Using blogware (which I am not differentiating from CMSes) could  
> allow us to build a very functional, low-maintenance site, which is  
> light-years beyond the primitive stuff that I created for OHPV a  
> few years back.
>
> If I still was webmaster, I might make an executive decision to  
> migrate to WordPress. However, this decision now requires that  
> someone else manage the results. If there is enough interest, I  
> would be willing to lead the construction of the prototype. This  
> only is a couple of days of work, but help would be appreciated.
>
> If there is no interest, that is OK too.
>
> Just a couple of notes:
>
> WordPress doesn't have just one look or feel. My site works the way  
> that it does due to the particular skin' that I am using. WordPress  
> can be customized with skins that control look and feel.  
> Additionally, lots of different, freely-available modules may be  
> plugged-in to add features and functionality. (My needs are  
> somewhat different from the OHPV Blog, so my site doesn't have an  
> events calendar plug-in installed.)
> Compared to GeekLog (the current OHPV Blog software) , WordPress  
> makes it easy to post stories with HTML content. With GeekLog, you  
> can use HTML in stories and comments, if you care to handwrite the  
> HTML.
> I interested in everyone's thoughts.
>
> --Chris
>
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