New Zealand Transition Initiatives Social Network

From oil dependence to local resilience

Deirdre Kent

This social networking site has a major decision to make about its future, please read

Transition Towns Social Network May be Moving House


Introduction

We have been informed by ning (the company that owns the transition towns social networking site we have been using for about two years now), that from July 31 we will have to pay for the ning service.

There are a number of paths we could choose at this point. Please offer your comments on this, by June 4th at the latest.

Exploring the technical options:




Some detail on the options
Keep the national Ning site and pay $200
This would mean setting up a widget on the front page of the site to attract donations up to $280NZ. Easy to do, has to be done annually, and would need to be done by July 31st. While there are cheaper options for having a ning site, their limitations would make them unworkable for our purposes. This same consideration (whether to keep or let go) is being had by a number of Transition groups around the country, who have active ning sites for their local region.

Use Facebook and their community pages
Timaru TT already uses it. Events are OK. Subgroups not possible but people connected to the main Transition Timaru group page, can be invited easily to join other groups that Timaru people want to setup as distinct group pages.

Content could not be easily imported into facebook - it would be an entirely manual process.

Facebook is extremely popular so many people already have an account and know how to use it - a very important point if we want to facilitate (make easy) the use of any social networking tool.

Can be quite busy - information overload

Some specific recommendations and guides would need to be written up, help people use this tool to advantage.

Upgrade the transitiontowns.org.nz site
Some automated content import may be possible but there could be some manual
copying over needed.

There are many social networking add-on modules that will get us 90% of the
functionality but some tidying up work may be necessary.

This web site is open source and not reliant on a profit making corporation for its existence so there will not be fees or similar problems cropping up again. Running costs still exist, but they are more under our control. Technically-minded volunteers are required to maintain the system and keep it running smoothly.


Build a new social networking site using Wordpress & the buddypress plugin.Would involve creating a whole new website. Buddypress looks promising and has nice pictures on it’s web site but it is somewhat of an unknown quanitity - we’ve never used it.

Similar to the upgrading of www.tt.org.nz (above), this is open source and not reliant on a profit making corporation.

Start using a new free social networking site
Wackwall allows importing of ning content. Still in beta. Might not be for free forever, either.


Please offer your comments on this whole discussion, by June 4th at the latest.

Tags: networking, ning, social

Views: 51

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Replies to This Discussion

Suzanne KendrickPermalink Reply by Suzanne Kendrick on May 18, 2010 at 6:10am
Hi I have been very involved with the online presence for Grey Lynn 2030.

First though thanks for all the work you have done and for keeping this site going. It is a huge commitment to run and maintain a community site. We have some money so could contribute to the Ning payment.

I can see lots of you don't like Facebook. For us, we are way more pragmatic. We go where our community hang out. Haven't checked lately but we have nearly 1,000 friends on Facebook. We get new members every day. www.facebook.com/greylynn2030
It is quick and easy for us to maintain. Our community are already on Facebook so it works for us. We get most of our new members from Facebook. And please don't assume it is because they are all young. All ages, stages and types of people are on our page.

Our site is on Wordpress www.greylynn2030.co.nz so of course am keen on the idea of Buddypress.

So willling to support.

Will post about this conversation on Facebook for you!

Suzanne
RimuPermalink Reply by Rimu on May 18, 2010 at 9:13am
Yes, I can see that is working well. Great stuff!

By the way, facebook's terms of service state that only real people can create accounts. grelyn2030 is not a person. A concept like grelyn2030 could be a group or a page, but not a profile. Check out http://www.facebook.com/terms.php in the "Registration and Account Security" section.

It would be a real bummer if facebook deleted your profile. Don't worry too much about it, facebook is unlikely to find out. But the point is, you're forced to live under someone else's terms...
SeanKPermalink Reply by SeanK on May 18, 2010 at 10:02am
My vote is against Facebook (even though I do use it and think having a link there could be useful). A cursory reading of the recent press surrounding FB shows a bunch of legal and privacy issues in play.

Extending the existing Drupal infrastructure would seem best to me. I'd be happy to help if possible (but I'm a Joomla! person, myself - does that count as "technically-minded"? :) ). The most successful community sites I've seen have used things like vBulletin but that's quite pricey.

Feature-wise, what do we need other than user registration, threaded discussion forums, spam moderation, events...?
MiriamPermalink Reply by Miriam on May 18, 2010 at 10:45am
I did some work yesterday comparing Drupal and Wordpress-Buddypress, and it looks like BuddyPress is the better option.

The discussion on Drupal is here: http://drupal.org/node/355040

Michelle, the builder of the Advanced Forum module for Drupal is setting up a Drupal Social Networking site (http://couleeregiononline.com/forum) , so she is trying to get Drupal to do it well.

She says "after cheerleading Drupal SN for the last few years, I've come around to the viewpoint that it's just not ready. If what you want is Facebook / MySpace where profiles and walls are dominant to all other content, you're better off with one of those apps that are ready made for that. Where Drupal excels is when you want a full website where social networking is part of it but the whole site doesn't revolve around peoples' profile pages.
Drupal has a lot of potential for being great for social networking but it's just not there yet."

I wanted Drupal to be the best option (being a Drupal developer), but given Michelle's 5 years experience with Drupal, her back-end expertise, and her expertise in the social/forum area, her words carry weight. If she feels it is hard work to get Drupal to do social networking, it probably is. (I have set up 1 social site in Drupal, and i found it so, but I am not a back-end programmer, and assumed that was what was making it hard.)

We need a solution that is fast to set up and and easy to maintain, and that does not grind to halt when paying work takes priority for the developer/s.

There is a commercial support option for BuddyPress, that is specifically designed to enable ning-migration. http://premium.wpmudev.org/
This costs $79us per month, but you can keep using the software after you have stopped the monthly subscription, so it can be seen as $79 for access to the software plus one months support. And another $79us anytime you needed another month's worth of support.

Cheers
Miriam
Jim GoodwinPermalink Reply by Jim Goodwin on May 18, 2010 at 10:45am
I support going with open source options.
I'm not in favour of face book as it may change as ning has
Jan BakuwelPermalink Reply by Jan Bakuwel on May 18, 2010 at 10:51am
Hi all,

Paying for a service isn't necessarily a Bad Thing (tm) :-)

After all there are real costs involved. Also finding a way to "reward" all the voluntary work that goes into making these services available (ideally not in "old-world" monetary forms I would say) might also help to allocate more resources. Where $$ costs are involved, these costs should also be fairly allocated to the community (and not carried by an individual).

Paying for a service that locks you in, is IMHO a Bad Thing though. What is now happening with Ning is something some of us saw coming when we discussed the merits of Ning over alternatives. I think we shouldn't make the same mistake again (of being locked in by a commercial closed party).

I think we should use a service based on open source software, using open standards that - by definition - will never suffer from what we call "vendor lock-in" in the ICT business. I also think the information should be hosted in New Zealand, ideally in a few different datacenters here. The internet heavily depends on fossil fuels and contributes significantly to climate change. It is not that far fetched to see interruptions in internet services in the near future.

My vote goes to building on the excellent work Rimu has done with the transitiontowns.org.nz Drupal site and form a small group of people to take this further. We should also think about reimbursing those people. Where $$ are involved (hosting costs for instance), we should find a way to pay for these costs. Voluntary work should somehow also be rewarded especially if people have high expectations regarding the service offered.

Which brings me to a related topic: I think we need a formal Transition Towns organisation that can apply for funds, can employ people (parttime), with the necessary checks and balances (accountability & reporting) in place.

Jan
RIck MansellPermalink Reply by RIck Mansell on May 18, 2010 at 11:21am
Great feedback and thanks to those involved in setting the NZ sections up and maintained. My preference would be a New Zealand site with links to other similar sites.
RimuPermalink Reply by Rimu on May 18, 2010 at 11:31am
I tend to agree that creating a social networking web site with Drupal will be a bit of effort, although it strongly depends on what you call "social networking". If BuddyPress can provide an out-of-the-box all singing all dancing solution with minimal setup then it is a compelling option - even though it would mean perpetuating the two web site split that we have been living with for the last couple of years. At least it would be open source and on our own web server.

Perhaps I should install it and set up a wee demo site so we can bash it around a bit, to make a more informed choice
MiriamPermalink Reply by Miriam on May 18, 2010 at 11:42am
Dimitri has set up site, but I want to get behind the scenes and fiddle, so I am going to have a go too. http://transition.puha.co.nz/
Maybe Dimitri might give us techys superuser privileges.
Cheers
Miriam
RimuPermalink Reply by Rimu on May 18, 2010 at 12:57pm
Nice work Dimitri!

I've had a go of it - looks like just a basic install at this stage. It needs more plugins before it will provide many features
MiriamPermalink Reply by Miriam on May 18, 2010 at 12:57pm
Maybe the existing drupal site migrates on to a new WP site - there is that option too, remember.
DimitriPermalink Reply by Dimitri on May 19, 2010 at 8:58am
Hi Miriam - have set both you and Rimu with full admin priveledges

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