NYCPHP Meetup

[Gary Mort]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Chris TheEnd <chris at theendrecords.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> So I was hired on months back as a freelancer to manage this New York
> school system site. I wanted to reach out and get some recommendations if
> Joomla would be up to the task of managing this site.
>
>
Yes and no.  Here is the issue, a lot of the functionality on that site is
actually straight component stuff.

For example, any of the CCK's, moset trees, sobi2, k2, etc could be used for
that directory you mentioned, and there are comments and search modules for
them already.

While I have worked with sobi2 and k2.....I would actually NOT recommend
them at the moment as both are designed very much with certain 'mindsets'
that just would make life more difficult for that function.  As such, I'd
recommend Mosset's trees as I know it is used successfully on the Joomla
extensions directory[which has comments, favorites, etc built in]...as such
I'd suggest reaching out to Donna Vincent, http://www.iteachme.com/,  as she
has done a lot of work with Mossets and you want someone who can hit the
ground running.

Also, knowing that the extensions directory get quite a bit of traffic, you
know that you should be able to handle the traffic issues with Mosset's.


> This current development of the site is a hybrid of using simple machines
> forum for forum and the user database, and than a wordpress blog. All of
> this is wrapped together running a custom CMS, and  this crazy index12.php
> file.
>


So you can keep using Wordpress for the blog, as it can integrate to Joomla.
 Continue to use SMF for the forums.  Add in Jfusion to link all the systems
together and your good to go with just replacing the CMS part and making it
the hub.

Yeah, I should not be recommending Wordpress for the blog, it feels
"cleaner" to make the blog in Joomla, but end user experience after end user
experience says Wordpress is easy to use and intuitive for users.  And if
they already know how to use it, why bother forcing them to learn a new
system?  In my book, minimize user learning, don't complicate it.


>
>
> I am tasked with making a development proposals, so i would be looking for
> componet developers and a graphic designer  hoping to get someone from the
> list as everyone involved  so far is New York based.
>
>
As I said, talk to Donna I think her experience is right up your alley.
 She's worked on high traffic sites with Mitch Pirtle and is very familiar
with Mosset trees which implements the directory functionality you want.

And hey, if you have some custom coding bits and pieces, I should have free
time next month...once the kids start camp and my current projects get
closed out. :-)


> I am wonder anyone else know of site  running joomla that gets  around 7
> million page views a year? i am hoping this to increase after the upgrade to
> over 10 million. I am worried about performance. maybe joomla.org?
>
>
>
Joomla.org is a good example of what Joomla is capable of in this traffic
range.  Note, Joomla.org doe


>
> I am just trying to get a total estimated cost for the over hual and a
> feature list of "why" to justify that cost.
> Chris
>
>
>
The why is a good question.  Personally, if their site is working now why
should they upgrade?

Perhaps a better question would be what are their needs short and long term,
that their current system doesn't provide that they could get initially with
low cost from Joomla?

For example, the favorites list, rating and rankings, reviews, etc.  All of
this has already been done with Joomla and mosset trees, so they get it for
"free".

Plus allowing user tagging of schools would be good.  For example, I know
there are a number of special schools in NY dedicated to promoting specific
topics.  Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science for example emphasis the
sciences[no debates over which school is best, it's obviously Bronx
Science.]

There are other schools that emphasis arts/theater, or take strong stances
against bullying, etc.

Being able to tag school specialties would be good.

How is their tracking currently and what future needs do they have?  There
are a lot of Google and other analytic functions with components for Joomla.

Social website integration would be high on my list, and with Joomla and
wordpress you can do that.  Don't require people to have a unique
userid/password but let them reuse their facebook one.  Use a module like
Plaxo Auto Invite to integrate OpenInviter and let users invite their
friends to the website.  Republish content to a Facebook fan page, twitter,
etc.

What are their goals for the site and what sorts of expansions are they
considering?  For example, when I was in the city, I'd love if that website
also included a section for private schools and philosophies.  As a personal
example, my family homeschools and follows the unschooling method[no debates
please].... as my wife's back has gotten worse, it just wasn't feasible to
continue...  As such, I would have loved a central website that consolidates
private schools in the city and also had them tagged so I would know, for
example, that the Booklyn Free School meets my educational preference[and
also would have a place for reviews as I have heard from many that there are
'issues' but without a lot of detail].

Obviously a mailling list would be good too[but then, I always plug setting
up mailling lists....  they are an easy way to entice return visitors]

Also a centralized calendar for those schools to post open houses and
informational meetings to[and heck, if we're going for wishes, if they
expanded here it would be great for InsideSchools to organize an 'open
house' meeting for schools city wide to send reps to and describe their
schools to parents!]

All this could be done with, say, mosset trees, their claim your listing
function to let schools claim their own listing and add rss/ical feeds to
it, and some tags for public/private schools.

Do they like the idea of private schools, but not on the main site?  Well
then, various multisite Joomla solutions could be used to use the same
database but restrict public school info to www.insideschools.org and
private school info to private.insideschools.org [though I would recommend
including the various charter schools, like Bronx Science, in both
categories].

And for my own "now" purposes, it would be great to have a "greater metro"
section...perhaps even broken down by county/region for data as well.  For
example, a duchess.insideschools.org, ulster.insideschools.org,
westchester.insideschools.org for regions of the state that contain a high
number of both weekend city residents and commuters.  As many weekend city
residents don't know of the educational options in the area weekend
at....and if they had options they liked in the region they might consider
changing to commuters[my own kids school, Hudson Valley Sudbury School, has
had a number of weekend residents join as their main reason not to commute
was school for the kids...knowing there is an economical[4500/year for the
first child, 75% of that for the second, and 50% for third+ children] option
THAT THEY LIKE makes all the difference for them.

Note, the multi site options in Joomla are on the weak side and require a
good bit of custom coding.  Wheras something like Drupal has quite a bit of
it almost "built in"[hey Forest, if your eyes have not glazed over yet, can
you take a look and let us know how much of this would be easy to do with
Drupal?]..... with Drupal though I find that implementing ANY function
almost always requires a coder to make some tweaks....maybe not an advanced
coder but a coder.   Wheras Joomla has lots of things that can be configured
by an implementor.

Lastly, I would strongly encourage considering upgrading the whole site to
HTML5/CSS3 and making it compatible with smartphones where possible.
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