Re: New website for the PHP project

On Wednesday, February 6, 2019 6:21 PM, Tom Worster <fsb@thefsb.org> wrote: > Hi, > > I took internals off Cc in this reply. > > > > Like all the bold ideas in this thread, that alone would need some > > > serious planning and commitment. > > > Technically, it's easy - assuming you'd just install PHPBB / Gitter / > > > whatever, and not try to invent yet another wheel; but building a > > > community is hard. > > > For a start, off the top of my head, you would need to figure out: > > > > > > - Who is this community aimed at, and how will you attract them to > > > use it? > > > > > > - Who will moderate it, and according to what policies? > > > (Particularly > > > important if you're branding it as "the official PHP community") > > > > > > - How will it relate to all the existing community tools (IRC, > > > StackOverflow Chat, phpug.slack.com, these mailing lists, etc, > > > etc)? > > > If you can make it successful, I'm sure it would be a great > > > asset, but > > > there's a long and uncertain road between here and there. > > > Regards, > > > -- > > > Rowan Collins > > > [IMSoP] > > > -- > > > PHP Webmaster List Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > > > To unsubscribe, visit: > > > http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > > > > > > You are totally right. > > in my opinion the the community site should be targeted to all the PHP > > Community ( PHP Developer / Core Developers ) to ask questions about > > PHP, discuss the development of PHP and related topics. > > Moderation should be done by a Community Manager and Moderators. ( no > > idea for now who these would be, people we vote for or promoted by > > core members maybe ? ) > > For the software i would like to suggest > > https://flarum.org as well. > > "building a community is hard" -- Yes it is. In addition to strategy, as > Rowan mentioned, it takes time, persistent effort, and specialized > skills in community moderation and social media marketing. > > My suggestion was that you, as the instigator of this project, take the > lead. Start with the limited goal of building a community of people to > help you with your project. So the scope of conversations at first would > be narrow: how to build the web site and a community board with general > PHP interest. (This email fits the scope, for example.) If you can > "reach critical mass" on some limited goal like this, you should be > proud of a big step forwards. > > I said I think PHP needs this because I don't like to use the commercial > systems that co-opted and fragmented our conversations. I read SO, > Reddit etc. but I don't have accounts on anything like that so I can't > participate. Mistrust of commercial social media is growing so maybe > independence could be a selling point in itself. I hope so. > > Related success story: We faced difficulties organizing the Yii > Framework community in recent years. Forum traffic on yiiframework.com > was in decline and the community was fragmented over IRC, Slack, Gitter, > SO, Reddit, idk what else. I proposed[1] upgrading from IPB to Discourse > in Dec 2015. We spent more than 2 years arguing about implementation and > eventually CeBe integrated stock Discourse into our new website in Sep > last year. I think it's been a success so far. Traffic is recovering and > key experts are spending time there answering questions so quality is up > too. The recent and very good redesign of yiiframework.com website was > probably also necessary in the success. > > So consider Discourse. I think it's clearly the best option in terms of > functionality, user appeal, and minimizing complexity for the webmaster. > Being ruby it's likely to be political but if the team actually > contributing to your project doesn't mind then you can ignore that. Long > term maintenance is critical. Avoid the possibility that a webmaster > departs and nobody wants to take responsibility for what he or she left > behind. > > Tom > > [1] https://github.com/yiisoft-contrib/yiiframework.com/issues/84€d„çê9x1¿ > ö'ç55 I'm well aware of Discourse and it's amazing. but i suggested Flarum as it is written in PHP and we would find it easier to maintain. It provides most functionality that Discourse provides with the same modern look.