[NRV Rocketry] Website

[Tweeks]

On Friday 13 May 2011, Chuck Neff wrote:
> Tweeks,
>
> If it's decided that another forum is not needed, we could easily set up a
> section on VAST's forum dedicated to NRVR.  The wiki sounds interesting but
> I don't know a lot about them.  Care to explain the differences between a
> forum and wiki?

Well Chuck, as you know.. forums are nice for thread based discussions around 
a topics. But normally, if you want to be seen as an authority of a topic, or 
have a place for public facing documents.. then you don't want all of your 
group knowledge to have to be stuck in forums as it forces folks to have to 
wade through years of forums (or mail list) posts to pick out the useful 
nuggets of information.  

So in addition to forums, a wikis create the place where your group's 
documentation is kept and maintained.  Compared to forums, wikis are great 
because they represent a single repository for:
 * Your group's shared knowledge around an area (or multiple areas)
 * wikis creates a browsable tree of topical knowledge and documents
 * As group wiki ownership increases, contribution & correctness increases
 * Information is easily cross linked for nice, click through browsing 
   on topics
 * Wiki's are used (by some) for project related pages 
   (e.g. documented rocket builds, plans, schematics, etc)
 * Can be used for centralized launch logs for your individual members

There are also challenges to maintaining a public facing wiki. but combined 
and managed along side a forum, it's a powerful tool that gives your group 
much more "destination appeal" and a very squared away feel (as opposed to 
forums alone). 

Various popular wiki suites include:
	* MediaWiki (what Wikipedia uses, PHP/MySQL back end)
	* Dokuwiki (http://www.dokuwiki.org/ PHP/flatfile wiki I'm looking at using)
	* MoinMoin (a Python based popular wiki http://moinmo.in/)

Other comments/thoughts?

Tweeks


>
> Thanks,
> Chuck
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tweeks [mailto:tweeks at rackspace.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 10:07 AM
> To: Mike Ficco; nrvr at nrvr.org
> Subject: Re: Website
>
> Hah.. thanks..
>
> The photos might be "ok".. but the web site is just an ugly place holder
> page
> right now:
> 	http://nrvr.org/
>
> I'll be giving it a face lift here over the next couple of weeks.. and
> seekin
> input from you all.
>
>
> BTW All.. for now.. we can use the nrvr at nrvr.org email alias (that sends to
> all of us) to all communicate for now (if you like). I'll be setting up the
> real mail list in the next couple of nights.. and over the next couple of
> weeks be installing a nice forums package (called SMF) and possibly a wiki
> too (called DocuWiki, where members can document flight stats, have their
> own
> flight logs published, document construction tips, etc).
>
> It all very grandiose.. we'll see how much of it comes to fruition.  Where
> I
>
> probably need the most help is with aesthetics! hehe.. I'm an Engineer with
> a
> leather pocket protector.. and can barely match my socks. My taste for HTML
> is right out of 1994 and the "redball.gif" era! So please.. give me honest
> feedback. Chuck's VAST site looks freaking amazing compared to the raw HTML
> and tables that I usually generate.. ;) The only reason that the photo
> section came out so nice was that I used a photo-->HTML exporting tool
> built
>
> into Linux. :)
>
> Tweeks
> p.s. Let's try to get to know eachother..  here's a little bit about me:
> http://theweeks.org/resume/bio.html
> What's your history and what field(s) do you work in?
> (maybe we'll start a Bios page on the NRVR site?)
>
> On Wednesday 11 May 2011, Mike Ficco wrote:
> > Hey Tweeks,
> >
> > I think your website looks good.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Mike