Open Records / Site News

A blog with website data from the administrator, WikiAdmin.

Hosting Bill

Polls

Apr 2, 2009

Rennovation! (Again) Hopefully the new design is easier for people. Although the toolset it greatly reduced, I think it's more powerful than before because of the simplicity. Let me know what you think via email or CommentsAndSuggestions.

Also, it appears that Dreamhost has updated their servers. This site runs much more quickly than before, even at peak times. Thank you Dreamhost!

Jan 5, 2009

I'm faced with a tough choice... The wiki hasn't been used much yet, and I intend to use it this summer. Should I keep this version of Twiki, or should I upgrade to the newest one?

I really don't like the Twiki upgrade process. Their upgrade guide tells us to install Twiki in a new place, and configure everything to be the same. Then, install and configure all the plugins that we need. Finally, move over all the data files. This process was a pain the first time I did it, and it's something I'm not looking forward to!

They really need an easier upgrade process!

I think I'll go through another round of simplification as well. I'm trying to include too many features, and it ends up creating clutter. I wanted to include a lot of "social web" features, like friend lists and a place to send messages to each-other. Other places have these features already, and I can't compete. This isn't a social web; it's a collaboration tool, and I will focus on making it a better collaboration tool!

June 11, 2008

Still going slow -- If a group would be willing to try the wiki, I'm sure they'd grow to love it. But since none have made the leap, it's hard to point to any success stories.

Anyway, I'm still developing features. Things to work on next are:

• Badges
  • The 'pioneer' badge, for all current (first-generation) wiki users.
  • The web-of-trust badge.
  • Land Badge, others. (future work)
• Make better RSS feeds. Currently, you can subscribe to ALL updates, or specific search queries. It would be nice to subscribe to topics or regions. I'll probably implement this as a toolbox in the sidebar with the following options:
  • Subscribe/Unsubscribe to email updates for this topic.
  • RSS/ATOM link for this topic only.
  • RSS/ATOM link for this topic and all children.
• Improve MazoBeach? , so maybe they might try using it.
  • I also need to make a sign to display there.

If you have any other suggestions, visit the HelpCenter and post them!

May 30, 2008

It's pretty much complete, and I really hope that it goes somewhere now. It has the basic social networking tools of Facebook/Myspace, has a simple knowledgebase like Wikipedia, and has the venue listing potential of most bug nudist sites. That should be a recipe for success, right? I have doubts, but I also still have hope. The power of the wiki is in it's users.

April 27, 2008

Renovation! This site isn't appealing enough to new people, so I'm redesigning it to be a whole lot easier to use! Learning TWiki is complicated, so I'm attempting to automate as much as I can with buttons and forms. Here is a checklist of the items I intend to complete:

1. Install and update plugins.
2. Patch the action tracker plugin (to enable "delete" button)
3. Create basic form templates for common stuff. (expand as needed)
4. Create regional web template.
5. Create regional club listing, populate with current data.
6. Delete all regional webs.
7. Revamp profile template.
8. Convert all current users to new template.
9. Organize other topics in Main web.
10. Send newsletter with details.

January 20, 2008

I admit, things have been going slow. Part of it deals with work, part with school, and part with my blog -- all of which seem to get priority over updates here. It should all be changing though... One of those priorities will be over before too long, and another will be slowing down. Also, with spring-time in the air, I'll be making another big push to get people involved with the site.

November 17, 2007

This site opens! Honestly, I'm excited, but I may be leading up to disappointment. My dream is that people will flock to the site and make use of it soon after I announce it. Realistically, people don't like to change their ways and don't like to try new things, which could spell doom for this radically-different type of website. I only hope that people realize the true potential here. When it catches on, it could drive a lot of positive change!

I'm preparing for this "catching on" phase already. I set up some simple caching to make the twiki pages render faster, and to reduce my CPU load. I also told the robots (google's web crawler and all the others that auto-index pages) to limit requests to once every 15 minutes so they don't hog resources, to not crawl the twiki and sandbox webs, and to not crawl image files and other attachments. So if you put your pic on your homepage or on a regional web, the search engines aren't supposed to index it in their image searches. I've been tweaking and tuning everything I can for at least the last month -- far too many things to list here, and another large list of future plans.

September, 2007

Here it is, another idea of mine has come to life! Will it survive, I wonder? I guess that's entirely up to the users. It's sort of a gift from me to the entire nudist culture, and it's up to them if they want to keep it and use it.

I've always believed that people should be more open about things. Many of the clubs that exist say they're on a shoestring budget, but never say any details about it. It leads us to wonder - what are they hiding? Is a majority of my money going into the owner's pocket? Are they saving up for that new pool that everyone wants, or just telling us that they are? Is it possible for me to give them $10 and specify that it's for the pool? Generally, the owners keep all that information to themselves.

I believe in having open records, and I'll prove it by doing the following:

• Showing future expenses as a progress bar with how much money is allocated them.
  • Note that if this site is active, I'll fill in the rest of the hosting expense. It won't be abandoned.
• Adding a Poll for each considerable "You should..." suggestion. If most people think it's a good idea, I'll do it.
• Listing any technical or personal issues which may affect the site.

To start with, I should mention the current technical state of this site. I started this site on Dreamhost  with their cheapest plan: $200 for 2 years of basic hosting. "Basic" isn't really the word though, because what they offer is far beyond what I was expecting. They made setting up TWiki (this open-source wiki tool) very easy, and offer extreme amounts of disk space and bandwidth which is increased weekly. They proxy my DNS registration info, and give me the option to register a different domain each year for free. So if you don't like "wwncw.org", mention it and we can vote to change it next year. I'm very happy with Dreamhost, and would recommend it to anyone!

Settings:

• Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_ENDDATE = 2009-09-01
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_GOAL = 200
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_PLEDGED = 20
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_PLEDGEDMSG = $20
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_TOGOMSG = $TOGO to go
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_PREMSG= Money donated for next hosting bill:
• Set FUNDRAISINGPLUGIN_POSTMSG = before 2009-09-01