Re: [LUG] IRC: Freenode -> Libera

It's not often that I will raise my head above the parapet, however this is one of those times.

I feel that Paul has done amazing work for the LUG over several decades (organising and running meetings, website maintenance, maintaining the IRC presence, etc), and having someone put down what he's worked on mostly off his own back, despite there having been a number of requests for help and input, is simply not acceptable. I can empathise with Paul's feelings about being in a no win situation, I've been there and experienced that also.

That aside, I do think that the site might benefit from a bit of a re-theme... I am also not a graphical designer (I am also a sysadmin), it does feel like it's wanting some TLC in that department... exactly what though, not sure. Personally I like dark themes, I've spent too many hours/days/years staring at CRT and LCD/TFT screens to appreciate the dazzle of bright websites, though they do tend to look rather crisp... I will take a look through the Wordpress gallery to see if I can find a few themes I like... if other people could also do similar then we may be able to find some common ground and get an agreed way to progress this. Wordpress is a great tool for content management, I've setup a number of sites on it (none particularly difficult) so I'm a little familiar with some of its capabilities, yes there are other tools out there... but the plugin and theme availability from WP is outstanding. Yes you get the odd bit of wp tracker code, most of that is for analytics though (visitor stats mostly, similar to that which you get on many other sites). I'm not sure why there's an objection to linking to the LUG Twitter/LinkedIn pages, but widgets like that can be removed if so desired.

If people would like a discussion forum for a website rejig/refresh please join #DCGLUG-Website on Libera and we can have a sensible chat about what we want to do. The site is the public face of the LUG, are we happy with how it is, or do we feel it's time to change it somehow... If you honestly don't mind how it looks, just sit back and see what happens, if you do care, join the discussion.

Does anyone know who the appropriate person(s) is (are) to discuss changes such as theme and plugins (Simon?) ?

Chat soon,

Neil

On Wed, 16 Jun 2021 at 20:03, comrade meowski <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 16/06/2021 18:33, Simon Waters wrote:
> On Wednesday, 16 June 2021 17:37:32 BST Jon Davey via list wrote:
>>
>> Oh I didn't know there was a group on IRC. How do I find that ?....
>
> Paul updated the website
>
> https://www.dcglug.org.uk/moving-to-libera-chat-irc-network/

Oh god I made a terrible mistake and out of curiousity I clicked the
link and for the first time in many years beheld the DCGLUG website in
all it's glory.

I'm going to exercise some self-restraint and delete my original
questions which were a bit... sarcastic and try and be polite instead.

Ummm, is the site supposed to look like that? Has anyone ever looked at
the page on a 4K/high-dpi screen before? Those wordpress trackers are
supposed to be there right? The prominent links to Twitter and LinkedIn
aren't ironic jokes or memes but are actually supposed to be there?

I could go on. And on.

Just to be clear I don't care what the site looks like: no skin off my
nose. I'm also a sysadmin and not a webdesigner so hell no I'm not
volunteering to fix it. I imagine it only gets about 3 hits a week
anyway and it's not like it's important to me or presumably anybody else
in any way.

But does it have to be _that_ awful? I'm genuinely embarrassed for it.
Even though I'm not a webdesigner if I was unfortunate enough to be
responsible for it I'd immediately 503 the service and redo it by hand
in vi in 5 minutes. The result wouldn't necessarily be any better but it
would certainly be infinitely less bad: it wouldn't render incorrectly,
have trackers on it or advertise a Microsoft product on the front page
at least. When the bar has been set that low it's difficult to see how
much worse it could possibly get...

So, anyone got an explanation? Anyone want to defend it?

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