Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community Communications Systems [was Equal Access [was Dropbox Limit Solution

[Henning Mortensen (hmortensen]

I think the solution is to have a few different solutions that are
suggested and supported. They do not even need to be self hosted. An option
could be to provide support on google drive with suggestions for how to
organize the data so it works. Wordpress is a definite, but since Wordpress
requires hosting, it would be good to run wordpress virtually.

You may be right about getting techies to collaborate. We do have our pet
technologies and of course with our investment in learning a tool, we are
biased towards what we already know.

I would suggest that some of the capabilities that we need to look at are:
my suggestions are included for each.  Add your own.

File storage - google drive, box, dropbox, ...
Web Engines - wordpress, wiki software
Calendar - google Calendar
Email Lists - groups.io
Accounting - ?




On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 5:50 PM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

>
> > On May 17, 2022, at 6:00 PM, Henning Mortensen <hmortensen [at] gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I have myself thought that
> > there should be a way where all of us techies can work together to
> provide
> > a service for all. I know that there are some good folks that have
> created
> > Gather and I understand that they need to charge for it in order to pay
> for
> > the development.
>
> What I’m wondering about is whether we could form a hybrid software like
> Wordpress that is open source and usable out of the box but it is supported
> by both volunteers and professionals who can be hired to manage sites for
> people and to personalize the software for specific groups and purposes.
>
> That would require a focus on one application so we don’t fracture the
> energy can create competition. I was trying to set up Wordpress to do that
> but it would require more than I know about writing plugins etc. Wordpress
> is too hard for most people to learn. Everything will have to be done from
> the front end. The minute  they see the dashboard, it is already too hard.
> The people who choose to deal with the dashboard are already doing some
> level of development. The others just want to relax. They don’t need added
> stress in their lives.
>
> > I can't help but think that if a group of techies set up a server in the
> > cloud that they could host many instances of the tools that communities
> > use. There would be a suite of services such as nextcloud and wordpress
> > that the tech-group would support and help communities with.
>
> I find it difficult to get techies to collaborate. The desire to build it
> yourself seems to come along with wanting to build it yourself your way. I
> still have not figured out the Coho-Us site and it uses Wordpress! Before I
> was trying to focus on Wordpress, I was working on a Filemaker Pro
> application that was very nice but I needed help from others to get it
> online.
>
> > NextCloud
> > encrypts the data so there would be no leakage of data from one instance
> to
> > another. The tech-group would make sure the system is patched and backed
> up
> > but a large part would be creating user guides and how-to's about how the
> > systems work. I anticipate that it would cost about $500/yr to rent the
> > machines, buy a domain name and pay for storage. If this were divided by
> > 100 communities it would only be $5/yr. If communities wanted, we could
> > increase that a little bit and hire a professional writer to do the user
> > guides. Techies have problems making them user friendly. The techies
> would
> > help developing content but the final wording goes to the writer.
>
> Yup. This could also be a service of Coho-US. But it also faces the same
> problem that every community faces on the question of customization.
> Commitment to go in a uniform direction first and customize later is hard
> to sell. They want the software to do things they way the community
> currently does things. So the integration piece is big.
>
> > See, you get me talking about this stuff and I find it difficult to stop.
> > There is always one more thing to say.
>
> This is good. We need to share information and coordinate efforts until we
> can agree, possibly, on a focused direction.
>
> Sharon
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>
>