Forums need an upgrade...

[Rose Springvale]

Bumping this to the top... any chance of a more user friendly venue here? Discouraging how quiet it is here and how hard it is to find things.

Can we try Ning or Blogger or any of the other sites? what about a facebook page for CDS,Twitter, etc? With so many in CDS at the forefront of social media, we have a bit of a fossilized presence. The Web site doesn't even have anything on Al Andalus... that's going on six months now, and there is no place we can go specifically for land sales or announcements. Could the web experts please consider bringing our web presence up to date?

[Arria Perreault]

I think that the updating of the Website of the CDS is a duty of the Executive Branch, especially the Public Information Officer (PIO). As member of a former Executive Team as PIO, I have worked with other people to the creation of the Website. It is made with a well-known Content Management System (Typo3) that is easy to use. At the end of the term, we have "given the key back" concerning all the redaction work. I had only the intention to make some content for the New Guild and Faculty. I did a few and I am not anymore active in this organization currently. Brian Livingstone has worked a lot to bring informations in the Portal. For reasons I don't know, the Portal was not updated despite the fact that it had big changes in CDS. There is no page about the new sim Monastery and about the different sims of Al Andalous.

http://portal.slcds.info/

The forum has an other aim for the CDS community: it hosts the public debates. The forum is an old Internet application, but still in use and popular. It should not be used to publish public information. In my opinion all RA stuffs (except the debates we do sometimes in the forum) should be in the Portal. Same for all informations that come from the Executive Team or the Scientific Council. Each branch should organize the updating of its page, at least by transferring them to a webpublisher.
I would recommend to the Executive to use more the Portal. It exists and it would bring nothing to start an other project. I can only tell that it took a lot of time and energy to make it from zero. The tools are available. If there is any problem in this domain, I am ready to help . The only thing we have to do it to give an access to some people who can update pages. I am volunteer for that.
I am glad that you mentionned social networks like Facebook. A Facebook page can play an important role to make us better known and attract people to us. I would strongly recommend it. Same for a Twitter account. Contents from both plateforms can be heritated in the other. I would like to mention that CDS has a Flickr group and several citizen share their pictures with it:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/_cds/

A blog plateform can be used to make a website with a simple structure. I am not sure that it would be possible to transfer the structure from the portal in Blogger or Wordpress. A blog is chronological. To find again information it is important to use a coherent list of keywords. It is not impossible for the CDS, but it needs some reflexion. Not always easy. A plateform like Ning has more tools (blog, forum, etc...). The transfert of important informations like our law corpus will not be easy.

I use Wordpress for the Monastery Internet presence :

http://ammonastery.wordpress.com/

I use also other platforms in connection with the blog:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alpine-Me ... 8739868895
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ammonastery
Flickr (group): http://www.flickr.com/groups/themonastery/pool/

More recently, I have used You Tube (no specific channel): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VNXyTnwglc

My recommendation is:

- update the CDS Portal
- organize a group of people who can update specific informations (many of us have the know-how). The rights can be defined easely in the CMS.
- improve the dissemation of informations of the Portal with the use of RSS
- make the update of information easier by the integration of datas from other platforms and tool. We already have some examples: citizen list or event calender. If a Twitter account is opened, it can be easely integrated in the homepage. The PIO uses only Twitter for short notices and the Portal is updated automatically. It would be also easy to integrate the pictures from Flickr, so anyone can add pictures.
- restrict the use of forum to debates
- open account in some social networks: Twitter and Facebook come first in the pipeline. The use of these plateforms are mainly to advertise CDS. Not every citizen can be requested to have a Twitter or Facebook account.
- use SL information tools (group notice and events calender)

[Rose Springvale]

Personally, as a person with communication expertise and plenty of jobs to do in SL..., and more than a little experience using social websites, I will respectfully disagree. I find both the forums AND the web portal to be clunky and unfriendly to users. Perhaps we can get more input from others... but if you examine the number of people who actually log in, post or read these forums, as compared to the number of people who are officially in CDS, i think you'll have to agree that we are not accessible to most of our population and that has nothing to do with whether then know about it.

I continually hear this "advertising" term thrown around and wonder if that is really what you all mean. Exposure of our project is done in many ways, and we've had many positive write ups in SL newspapers and blogs that we don't pay for. This kind of "advertising" is much more valuable than taking out ads and spamming Facebook, in my opinion. This happens by continuing to have creative, relevant.. or fun... programs. But it doesn't do any good for us to go through the effort of marketing our sims through things like Winterfair, SL6B, burning life, etc. when people come to the sims and find them empty, which remains the biggest complaint of our newer residents.

Or worse, come to an event that has been "advertised" and find no CDS people there. Events are scheduled and promoted well in advance... especially this time of year, whether it be the snow party that was initially preempted by a later scheduled RA meeting, or a Saturnalia festival that no one seems interested in within the sims. If you want more exposure, as a community, then we absolutely need to PARTICIPATE as a community... and support the things we do 'advertise.' Depending or expecting one or two people to "handle it" is really unfair.