Xfce web site maintenance

[Russell Dickenson]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/2/1 Jérôme Guelfucci <jeromeg at xfce.org>:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> At the beginning of this development cycle I had volunteered to take care of
>> the maintenance of xfce.org. Unfortunately, I have not been able to give it
>> as much time as it requires and things aren't going to improve now that I
>> started hacking a bit on xfce4-session and xfce4-settings and real life
>> stuff planned.
>
> The hacking is a good excuse, I used it too ;-).
>
>> I would like to hand this task to someone else, I don't want to slow things
>> down here. I know Nick has been working on a branch to improve the
>> translation system but I really think core developers shouldn't take care of
>> things like that, their free time can be better used on Xfce coding. It's a
>> great way to get newcomers involved and there are a lot of Web developers
>> out there, I'm pretty sure we can find one who uses Xfce and has some free
>> time.
>
> To be honest: i think we should drop translations on the website (and
> a bit ot; also the wiki). That is the part that makes most updates too
> time consuming and it's not a shame if the website is english only
> (from a quick look, gnome.org and kde.org are also only available in
> english).
>
>> What do you guys think about this? I would particularly appreciate some
>> input from Auke (as our sysadmin) and Nick (as our Web site guru ^^), but
>> other inputs are of course welcome. If people agree with this idea, I'm
>> ready to write an email to the Xfce users list and a post in Planet Xfce to
>> try to find someone who would be interested, I could ask on #xfce too.
>
> Of course we can also look for a new website maintainer, but I think
> we should downscale the work first. The translations was a nice idea,
> but since we really lack the man power it is a good time to drop it
> and work towards a smaller website.
>
> Nick

As an occasional Xfce user, here's my 2 cents' worth. I agree with the
idea of dropping back to an English-language-only site, given the load
of maintaining translations. I am completely ignorant of the current
method for maintaining the web site, so please forgive me. I wonder if
it would make the job easier, and therefore encourage participation,
if a simple CMS was used? This would have the usual advantage of
separating content maintenance from design maintenance. For a
little-known distribution I write the newsletter and am happy to do
so, but I would have no hope of doing so if it required technical
skills.


Regards,

Russell Dickenson