The old site was so clunky, so hard to get around and so difficult to maintain that I have long wanted to move it to my beloved WordPress. Also I know WordPress would bump our google ratings so that more people who need us could find us. I was holding out for BuddyPress to come out of beta but the more I read about it, the more I knew that it would be a huge new learning curve and meanwhile the hosting account for the old OAS install was about to come due. So I had to do something.
I decided to go ahead and make the leap figuring I could do a lot with plugins that would give the community functionality and hopefully up our participation. So the new site is here: http://www.openbookblogging.com (the OAS.com domain will go live there on Valentine’s Day).
Anyone has the ability — nay, the RIGHT — to post on the blog. Logging in will take you to a truncated WordPress dashboard and you can add blog posts and events. You can’t edit anyone’s posts but your own (and no one’s comments but your own) but you can see them all there. Don’t freak out — you’re not on the true backend and you can’t break anything. Also when you login, you will automatically have access to the forum.
The forum is for members only. I thought about making it read-only for folks outside the community but decided against it to encourage greater sharing. I can create more forums if people need them but after talking to Brandy and Jenna, I decided not to break the forums up by triad members. (I think this makes things more divisive and Brandy & Jenna, who have much more adoption forum experience, affirmed this.
Things still left to do:
- I was able to bring over all the content but when I imported it, it came in with me as the author. I’m working on fixing this. It also stripped the names from comments and that I can’t fix. Anyway I need to remap the posts.
- And I need to add the links.
- And I need to write some how-to info for members.
Those of you who are members can login with your old username and password but you should edit your profile details. If you have trouble getting in, let me know. (If you have trouble with anything, let me know.)
I’m using an alpha (not ready for the wild) version of BBPress, the forum software, because it’s the only one that integrates so well with WordPress 2.7. Which means it may have some bugs and it doesn’t have some functionalities I wanted (private messaging). I hope this will change as the software improves.
Anyway! Try it out. Let me know what you think!
I have to be honest. I miss the old site and I am totally confused by the new setup. The things I posted in the forum are gone and I wanted to re-read them.
Right now I don’t like the new site.
Maybe I’ll change my mind or maybe its because I just don’t like change.
I know you are working hard to make it better Dawn.
I’ll come around, maybe.
Hang in there, Cindy! It’ll start making sense soon — this will actually be much easier to use. Try writing a blog post and you’ll see!! I’ll try to move the old forum posts over soon but I’m kinda swamped so it may be a bit. I’ll have to copy and paste ‘em by hand.
I still can’t comment on your site but you asked for prayers and know I’m sending them your way!!!
(posted on blog and via email)
I don’t want to make a blog post yet because I like doing the more private-like forum discussions.
I feel like if I posted a blog entry then alot of non-members would see it and I really only want to the members to read my thoughts right now.
I already feel silly that I posted so much before.
Sometimes I worry that what I have to say might scare people away. I find that happens in real life sometimes.
I just really want to do forum only because its members-only.
I know you have some things to work out.
I need to learn to be more patient.
Thanks for being patient with me.