Geeks,
I was wondering if we want to set a date to spread word to the entire GG&M group and whether we want to create some sort of a milestone, defining what we need to get done before that date. Anybody have any thoughts on this? Please comment.
Thanks.
1. Get front page in place. Might just be the blog itself.
2. Pick a blog theme
3. Add a link for ‘About Us’ to the page.
I’m with Mr. Erlin. Same stuff, same order.
I’d say move the blog so it is the front page, or at least put in a redirector. We can still have other stuff as secondary pages (i.e. mailing list archives), but I can’t think what else we’d have that would warrant a front page.
For the About Us page, I was thinking something like a quasi mission statement (not a real one, but you get the idea), then short blurbs drawn from the “About Yourself” section of our profiles, perhaps with a picture of the geek in question (http://www.iconizeme.com/? Dither portraits like the WSJ?). I have a concept in mind, but would like the theme in place first.
As for themes, I installed those two and took a look at them. One of them didn’t work right, the other didn’t do it for me. They’re still in stalled, so we could take a look at them. I was going to try a couple others, take snapshots of the page using each of them, then put it up for a vote. I hope to have that done by end of the week.
Michael, I appreciate your efforts with the themes. No need to hurry – seems like we can always apply one later. Sorry the selected ones didn’t work out. I like the snapshot idea. That’s a great way to judge different themes. Maybe we can post a few on the blog and see what the response is (if any).
I like the idea of a redirector index. IMHO, the /blog directory is a good place to send someone for a blog. If we ever decided to do something else on a front page, we still could without moving the blog away from the index position. Let me know if you need me to help with any of the html stuff.
I could see having an “About” section, but I am not sure if everybody wants to be featured there, or has a blurb about themselves ready and waiting. I would see what the response is and go into that based on feedback. I like to add photos, to add some personal character to the page. If nobody minds, I am all for it.
This is fun. Thanks again for setting eveything up, Michael.
Front page redirector is in place. http://geekgather.org/ will automatically send you to http://geekgather.org/blog/ without delay. Dreamhost is pretty liberal with what you can do via .htaccess files, so I was able to use Apache’s rewrite engine to take care of it.
No problem at all about setting things up, playing Webmaster, and hosting our site. I love doing Web stuff, especially the admin side. I like doing the design side too, but I’m not very strong when it comes to visual design.
I’ll try to do a mockup of the “About” page. Of course, being featured would be optional, but I think it would be cool for us all to be listed.
Michael,
It’d be great if there were a feature where one could email a person from the blog homepage by clicking on their username – in case you want to send someone a personal reply that doesn’t necessarily need to be posted as a comment.
On that note, do you think that there is a way to receive an email when someone commented on your post?
Email Link: should be easy. I figure I can have that in place some time tonight.
Email notifications, there’s probably a plugin that will handle it. I’ll take a look and see what I can find.
Hi Geeks… I like the redirect. 99.9% of the time the blog is where I want to be anyway. I personally hate it when you go to a site and they have something retarded there and then you click on it and you get into the site. I like the way we have it. I think putting an about page is a good idea. I can send you my iconizeme image anytime for that. I have to work on the actually about me part though.
I think on the about page it would be cool to have a night shot of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area as the top image and then right a little paragraph as mentioned about us and the mission of Geek, Gather and Munch (or I guess just Geek Gather now). I would like to nominate Timmy G. to write it up since he is the English major. Anyone care to second? I’m sure he’ll be pumped to do it and will be pumped about the site. Michael, can you make sure he is setup on the site to login? It would be: timgrosshuesch
for the username and then whatever password you want to email him. You can email him at:
tim.grosshuesch@gmail.com
It would be really cool if we all had iconize me images to put at the bottom of the page after the paragraph about us with just our nickname and th eopportunity to click on us to learn more. That’s just my 2 cents.
All of this sounds good and we should keep this discussion thread going.
I also would love to see some screenshots of theme options up. Also, the rest of us should keep looking for good themes and e-mailing ideas to Michael.
Iconize me is the coolest thing ever and feel free to pull mine from the contact section of http://patrickrhone.com for use on the about page.
Guess I better get myself iconized now… Is that the ultimate testament to geek-ism?
This all sounds great, Geeks. I like the redirect also. Very logical.
I say we all take the dip and get iconized, if we haven’t already.
I”m working on it. I just need to get a decent (read: representative) picture of myself to send in. I’ll probably work with Patrick on that part since I’m likely to see him sooner than any other friend I’d trust to take a picture.