Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
All Change at HOL?
When I started this site just over nine years ago, I didn't have a clue about what I was doing nor how the site would grow. I found the platform we still use today by accident and back in the heady emerging social media days of 2007 and 2008 they were great. The platform was constantly evolving and if I ever had any problems they were incredibly responsive.
However, the exciting (excitable?) social media buzz of those days has settled down to a background hum. Many tech companies went to the wall. Our platform hosts have survived, but were bought by a company which if it were a parent would long ago have been taken to court for severe neglect. This second-rate parent has just sold the platform on. Some accounts suggest that the new owner may be less parent and more modern-day slaver.
Worldwide, users of this platform are up in arms that our monthly fees are being doubled, but perhaps more than that, people are concerned about the viability of the platform in the medium term. So it seems like it's time to start contemplating some other futures.
If the platform closes down, not only would HoL face oblivion, but almost a decade of local community conversation will be lost for good. (This would be just one small part of what's being talked about as potentially the 'forgotten century' as all sorts of digitally stored archives disappear forever). That would be a shame for us now as well as for those who come after us.
To ensure our survival and the preservation of the rich tapestry in our archive, we may need to find a new home. As a first step I've reached out to the other Haringey sites that patterned themselves on HoL and used the same platform.
But, whether we do it alone or work with other sites, any move would mean specifying a new platform and then finding someone to make it for us. So two questions from me at this point:
1. In terms of the features we have and the ways things look, what would you like to change and what stay the same?
2. Can anyone help out on the technical side? As you can imagine the site is not blessed with huge wealth! (But we have won multiple awards and are well known in communities around the world....and...and....I guess any solution you make for us can be applied to a huge number of other people currently using our platform and also looking for a new home).
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks IJP. I filled in the form on the British Library Website last night. I heard back from them already that they want to include HoL in the British Library Archive.
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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Afraid I don't have a very constructive contribution to make here. I think you just have to start by exporting the content from Ning and trying to export into some platform which claims to import - socialengine? - and just see what happens.
Whatever platform you choose, I'd like to see better threading management. I seem to remember Ning's "flat" option was tried a few years ago here, and it was unusable, though I can't remember exactly why.
One problem with Ning threading is it's easy to miss replies to an earlier post once the discussion is a few pages long, unless you check the Latest Activity section of the home page continually. Or continuously. Another problem is once a post has 8 replies the Reply button disappears.
Of course the fact that both of these "problems" have the effect of curtailing discussion can also be a good thing. And if a discussion isn't exhausted then sooner or later someone will kick off a brand new post.
I participate fairly regularly on at least 5 other discussion forums. Only one of them has worse threading than Ning - it promotes more of a chatroom than a discussion forum vibe, though that is OK in its own way. 4 of the 5 were written by the site admin/owner, so it's not an option to migrate to them. The fifth one uses the proboards platform, which is quite functional but not sure if it can reproduce the What's On event listings we have here.
(In terms of features we have here, I think the Forum and What's On listings are most useful? The Blogs seem moribund and the various info pages of local info and public services etc. could either be ditched if better served elsewhere, or else replaced by discussion forum "sticky" posts which I think most platforms have. The ability to send direct/private messages to other members I suspect is standard on all platforms and better implemented than on Ning).
The only other platform I'm familiar with is phpbb, which is functional but again not sure if it has a What's On events section which users can post to. The phpbb platforms I've used all look a bit dated and seem to suffer a lot from spam posts.
Googling does not come up with an easy solution to migrate from Ning. One link says the Ning export/archive can suffer from malformed JSON. I'm technical enough to know that's a bad thing, but not technical enough to know how to solve it. I do know it means you should take any other platform's claims to a smooth migration with a very large pinch of salt. It means there are likely to be lots of problems - broken links, missing content or just bad formatting which makes the archive unreadable - which will take a lot of time and/or technical skill to resolve.
Again, sorry this is not more constructive!
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Permalink Reply by steve king on
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Hope I can add something of use, if only brief; I ran a phpbb board up to around 8 years ago, and the look hasn't changed much since then. Easy enough to stop the spam, but does require vigilance. They do now have ability to post to - or indeed unsubscribe from - different sections, such as a "what's on" forum; i'm still a collaborator on a sports site which uses phpbb and has been running there since 2005 - www.fiso.co.uk - which gives you an idea of capabilities, they have nearly 20,000 members and have 3 million posts registered. BUT - it does seem a very dated format ... could work for a couple more years but you might want to change again soon anyway?!
Good luck and all the best,
steve
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The fiso site looks to be built in Wordpress, with a phpbb forum bolted on. Something like that may be the way to go for HOL - the various pages of local info, public services etc (if still required) could be maintained by the admins via the Wordpress CMS, and all the user-generated content submitted in the forum.
I couldn't see a What's On page though - I don't just mean a forum where users can discuss events, I mean something structured so that what users submit gets displayed in a Calendar. The What's On today/this week/featured events function here provides useful information that isn't easily available anywhere else so would be a shame to lose that.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Rometsch on
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This is really good forum software. Not sure if there are any other requirements to the site but I use it in my company (we build sites and apps) and have found it really good.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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One feature you might look for Hugh is the ability to see which comments you have already read in a thread. Sometimes, when threads get long, multiple side conversation begin and other than clicking on every email you get which would take you to every comment it would be useful to see something like a colour code when you in a thread (like a web link does when you have clicked on it, for example).
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Permalink Reply by Richard Hulbert on
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Hi Hugh
You are not alone - there are many people who have decided to jump ship to another platform and a google search such as "ning to wordpress migration" will yield quite a few links. You will need to sort out hosting but this is not a huge cost (~£100 pm for managed cloud)
I suggest that you look at this with two goals in mind.
Migration of platform
I would look at Wordpress or possibly Drupal which have huge community support and a load of extensions which would allow you to deliver the sort of functionality you have going on in Ning
There are scripts (and paid for services) available to convert the database tables and transfer the files into a WP site.
Future development of the site
There are quite a few good suggestions in this thread - the trick is finding ways to assess and implement them this will be a load easier if you have more control over your platform.
I would suggest for all concerned to meet up and discuss the options preferably in the Salisbury.
Rich - (20 years of software development experience)
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IMO WordPress is totally the wrong choice. It is an excellent blogging platform, an abysmal cms and a third rate social platform. Choosing the right platform is a key decision in the move fowards.
I would suggest something more like vbullitin or phpbb. It really depends on what the vision is for the site. Define that first and the software can be dealt with after.
EyeSpy - (distributed high performance computing architect)
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It would certainly be useful to see a working example of a site in whatever platform might be chosen before making the final choice. There are plenty of nice looking Wordpress sites out there - but I haven't seen one with a busy discussion forum yet.
Incidentally one function I'd like HOL to keep is the ability to post images inline with the text. Some discussion forums platforms seem to struggle with this e.g. phpbb lets you add attachments but only displays a thumbnail at the bottom. I think possibly the Wordpress bulletin board also struggles with this. We need to see those lost cat pix!
On the subject of funding - generally I think the site currently benefits from being free to join and post, but a platform which allowed the admins to charge to certain types of member would presumably be useful to cover the hosting costs etc. You could have normal members allowed to join for free, but premium members pay a few quid which then gives them certain privileges like being able to post in the classifieds.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Sweeping, opinionated, binary 'declarations' aren't as useful as views you could add that were supported by facts. Those facts simply don't back you up. The 60% market share (nearest rival:6%) is proof that Wordpress is much more highly rated than you claim, that it's a popular CMS and an effective social platform so maybe it's your groundless judgement that's off?
vbullitin (sic) or phpbb are too niche - Liz and Hugh operate this huge site almost single handedly - do they have the time or inclination to become niche specialists in order to leverage neat features?
The intellectual investment could be in something where there is plenty of free support from HoL users who can draw on real experience, and from other admins ready to help (wordpress forums are full of examples of people readily supporting each other, promptly and for free). Coding expertise needs to be low-cost and widespread. There are thousands and thousands of free plugins for every imaginable use case for WP and plenty of HoL users with real WP experience- how many for the specialist bulletin boards?
>>It really depends on what the vision is for the site.
Defining a 'vision' that techies roll it out is what's wrong with computing. It always feels like male arrogance to me - 'bend to my will'.
Tech creates new possibilities, 'bending' it warps the 'vision', better: 'go with the flow'.
Leverage what exists and use it for what it's good at - drop any peculiarities and 'go mainstream'.
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