How would you build a local union web site?
Let's assume you are the President of a modest sized union of about 2,000 members with a budget of $3,000. If you were to create the ideal web site, what would you put on it? What kind of technology would you use? What features would the site have?
Hmmm...interesting
Great question and I have a good answer (I think).
To begin with, I would host with Unions-America.com @ http://www.unions-america.com/. They have great union templates available that take very little tweaking. To that I would add the local union management software from Working Systems.com @ http://www.workingsystems.com/products/lpower.htm and forums from Vbulletin @ http://www.vbulletin.com/.
Using and utilizing those programs would give you a robust site that was not only user-friendly but easy to manage as well, especially for the intermediate skills-level people that usually manage the websites for local unions. The capabilities using these would allow for nearly unlimited possiblities and the cost would be well within your budget, even allowing for the installation and monthly fees and set-up fees for a year or more. It would be a terrific investment for any local union, IMHO.
Glenn
What about open source?
I'm a big free software advocate so one of my key criteria is that the site should be based on free software. I think the labor movement is missing out by not promoting the really great free software that's out there. This site, for example, is run by Drupal. Now if they AFL-CIO invested probably only a pittance of what they are paying to staff and maintain their one web site, they could develop a product based on Drupal that would far surpass a Unions-America type site in usability and functionality. And they could distribute the software for free with no licensing fees and the ability to modify it at will. I'm a big advocate for this idea.
But to answer my own question, I would of course use Drupal software for building a site. Now I have to disclose that I do free lance web development on the side using Drupal.
I had never heard of VBulletin. I thought you were running your site on UBB. I would have to recommend the free software alternative, phpBB for discussion forums.
Hate to sound like a broken record, but the labor movement should also have an open source alternative to something like workingsystems.com. Something like that could be built on top of Drupal. That project would take some more effort and financing but it could be done.
But it's easy to see why the average union leader is going to be overwhelmed by all this technology and options. It's confusing as hell. I wish the International unions played a stronger role in helping local unions find the right technology for them. There simply is no unified strategy in place (with the exception of SEIU) that I know of for finding and employing web technology.
More nuts and bolts even.
Glenn, I am glad you are out here doing your thing. But boards like the ones on your site scare me! :-)
I do agree with Steve that I would like to see unions start working with online activists, the ones who build the open source applications. I am not sure about Drupal. I have been scarred by what I see as "Feature Creep." (too many features, overwhelming)
I am a wiki fan. (see this tutorial) But since wiki is hard to explain, I have become a big weblog and rss fan.
I do like to keep things as simple as possible, am looking forward to working with this site!
Best, Mark
p.s. I also like del.icio.us, flickr, and other "tag cloud" technology that allows regular people to create a folksonomy all our own.
Wikis
Mark, welcome to the site. Thanks for checking this out.
I have always been interested in starting a labor-related wiki. Very cool that you are into wiki technology, too. Maybe we could lay down some plans for starting one. I don't have any particular topics in mind. Maybe a labor history wiki? Or maybe we should start with a narrower topic area. I'm curious to see if the project would work and bring online labor activists together for a common cause. There's only one way to find out and that's to give it a shot.
You'll be interested to know that Drupal has a folksonomy module. I have only tested it briefly. I'm pretty new to folksonomy so I don't quite yet have a great feel for its usefulness. But just give me the word and I will install it on this site if you want to check it out. I'm definitely into experimentation here.
If you are not sure about Drupal, definitely check it out. It's excellent. Not perfect, but very, very good. The nice thing about Drupal is that it's modular in design so you can enable only the features that you are going to use. This will help you limit any feature creep. Also, I follow the Drupal development mailing list fairly regularly and I can tell you they are very careful overwhelming the average user with too many features. Some still complain that Drupal can be complex/confusing. I have certainly experienced some moments of confusion using Drupal. However, in my opinion, there's no question Drupal's payoff is definitely worth the occasional frustration.
But thanks again for dropping a line. Look forward to sharing ideas with you.
Great Steve, I have talked
Great Steve,
I have talked about it for a couple of years and have had a couple of false starts (http://www.nooranch.com/synaesmedia/wiki/wiki.cgi?WiredTradeUnionism)
and am currently playing with the idea of using a wikicities wiki.
http://activism.wikicities.com/wiki/Union_Wiki
Interesting
This is something will take some work to get off the ground. You are further along with wiki's than I am. My only experience has been contributing to wikipedia.
You should know I have the ability to set up wiki software on my Linux server that I own (which also hosts this site). I'm willing to host it for free.
Do you have any concrete proposals for how to proceed?
UnionWiki
Steve, I think this is a pretty good idea. Because of the few false starts that I have had, I would like the wiki to be a joint project of ours. So it couldn't just go away.
I have ideas about how to start. I think the best way would be for us to just start defining terms and union alphabet soup. I have a dozen outstanding wiki pages scattered over the place...
What wiki software is available for you to use?
I would download it
I can download and install any kind of wiki software you want on my server. Do you have a preference? What is the best known package out there?
I'm going to start a new forum topic on this
Title says it all.
It's up
See http://www.communicateordie.com/node/32
IWW switches to Drupal
I just noticed this morning that the Industrial Workers of the World have switched over to Drupal. Their site is very slick and in my opinion utilizes Drupal better then most. The IWW sets a perfect example on how Drupal can best be used.
That reminds me
I want to start a listing of all union and union-related sites that use Drupal.
this is great, thanks for posting it.
Forgot this feed, opps
Here is a list of union weblogs, freindlys and other union info feeds:
http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=964
I started this a while ago, just added some feeds from:
http://www.uniondemocracy.org/AUDLinks/AUDLinks.htm
and my union category on bloglines:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/MarkDilley
Open Source
Wow, the site has really grown since I last visited. I have moved on myself, having shut down Labor Unions Online. It was just too huge of a project for one person to run with my other two site commitments. I undertook a job rebuilding IBEW MinuteMan.com and that has literally consumed me for the last 6 months or so.
In regard to open source...mmmm, I'm all for it. I have used phpbb extensively and especially like setting it up with the MiX portal program. It gets more stable as it grows and I feel totally comfortable with running it on a moderately large site. Even better, I like the SMF forums. It gives the admin a little more precise control but the downside is all that php language. With phpbb you can manipulate all the templates to your heart's desire but the SMF program gets really dicey when you try to change it to suit your tastes and needs. I'm not really that big a fan of php. It's just too darned temperamental for my tastes.
All in all, I still like the Vbulletin program over anything out there. It puts them all to shame, especially the IPB program which offers so little over the open source programs that I can't believe anyone would actually pay for it. Invision has no conscience whatsoever and treats its paying customers like shit. Been there, done that...never again.
I have used several other free source programs and have various experiences with each of them. I just installed a Gallery from 4homepages and a commerce program from ZenCart and love them both.
While I'm on the subject, try this one out --> http://www.nvu.com/
This is a 'killer' open source web authoring text editor.
Well, gotta get busy. Keep up the good works.
Glenn