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WebGUI for a City Website?
User stringer
Date 10/12/2007 3:11 pm
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stringer
Date: 10/12/2007 3:11 pm   ·   Subject: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: 1

I am considering using WebGUI for a new site which will be used as the official website for a medium-sized southern city (like Memphis, Little Rock, Nashville - example: http://www.itsatrip.org). I would like to know if WebGUI and it's modules will be able to deliver the type of functionality I will need. Modules I will need will cover the following:
  • Robust calendar functionality with many options, find events during certain dates, list events by category, front page calendar, larger Calendar, etc.
  • Jobs module where community business may list available employment opportunities
  • Extremely user friendly back end for site admins to create pages, links, and enter content (WYSIWYG)
  • Membership module so that the public may view members of the Chamber of Commerce, and their business information
  • News module
  • Photo Galleries
  • Meeting Planner
  • Event Planner
  • Site Search
  • Mailing List
  • Newsletter


Will WebGUI and it's modules give me these kinds of functionality, or do I need to look in another direction?

Thanks so much for your time and consideration

Cheers,
Charley

--- (Edited on 10/12/2007 3:11 pm [GMT-0500] by stringer) ---



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colink
Date: 10/12/2007 3:28 pm   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: 1

I am considering using WebGUI for a new site which will be used as the official website for a medium-sized southern city (like Memphis, Little Rock, Nashville - example: http://www.itsatrip.org). I would like to know if WebGUI and it's modules will be able to deliver the type of functionality I will need.
 
Short answer: 95% of what you want is available in WebGUI today.   See detailed comments below.  One other thing to note that what you are calling a module is called an Asset in WebGUI terminology.

  • Robust calendar functionality with many options, find events during certain dates, list events by category, front page calendar, larger Calendar, etc.
Certain dates, yes.  Categories, no.  Same calendar in different styles and locations, yes.  WebGUI's calendar can also aggregate multiple calendar's from on site and off-site into master calendars via iCal feeds.
  • Jobs module where community business may list available employment opportunities
Yes.  This is available through the Collaboration System.
  • Extremely user friendly back end for site admins to create pages, links, and enter content (WYSIWYG)
Yes.  All content is versionable and go through optional editorial sign-offs.  Content is entered a configurable WYSIWIG editor similar to what is used in this discussion board.  You can also easily customize the UI based on a given admin's skill level.
  • Membership module so that the public may view members of the Chamber of Commerce, and their business information
There is no direct "membership module", but you can do this with a SQL Form, which is used to build database backed applications.
  • News module
The Collaboration System also functions as a news module.  You've seen an example of this on this very site.
  • Photo Galleries
Yes, also via the Collaboration System.
  • Meeting Planner
What is a meeting planner?
  • Event Planner
WebGUI comes with an Event Management System that is used to handle online registration.
  • Site Search
Yes.
  • Mailing List
Every Collaboration System can function as a Mailing List, and also has RSS feeds.
  • Newsletter

Yes, WebGUI has a built-in Newsletter Asset.

I would encourage you to dig around more on this site, especially in the Wiki, because WebGUI's built-in functionality is well documented there.

The books here: https://www.plainblack.com/store/services/books2 will also give you an excellent overview of WebGUI's capabilities.

Finally, you can also tinker with a demo site at http://demo.plainblack.com.  Demo sites expire after 24 hours.

--- (Edited on 10/12/2007 3:28 pm [GMT-0500] by colink) ---



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stringer
Date: 10/12/2007 4:36 pm   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: 0

wow. thanks so much for such an informative answer.  I'll be browsing around here for quite some time.  Thanks very much!

Cheers Laughing,

Charley

--- (Edited on 10/12/2007 4:36 pm [GMT-0500] by stringer) ---



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colink
Date: 10/12/2007 6:33 pm   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: 0

You're welcome.  If you have specific questions, please be sure to post questions back here.

There's also an IRC channel where you can often get real time help.

--- (Edited on 10/12/2007 6:33 pm [GMT-0500] by colink) ---



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stringer
Date: 10/16/2007 4:51 pm   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: -5

Thanks so much for your response. 

Going through the WG site I find it to be a robust complex system.  While I like the functionality of WG and the available tech support, I will NEED the administration to be very simple and straightforward for my non-technical end-users who will be updating pages, calendar events, etc.

Is the administration of WebGUI simple enough for non-technical users to administer?  I don't want them to be overwhelmed by looking at a page full of icons or have to go through numerous steps to create and update a page.  Does that make sense?

thanks again for your help,

Charley

--- (Edited on 10/16/2007 4:51 pm [GMT-0500] by stringer) ---

--- (Edited on 10/16/2007 4:58 pm [GMT-0500] by stringer) ---



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baylink
Date: 10/17/2007 9:58 am   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: -6

I understand your concern, and, admittedly, as WG has grown in power over the last 3 years, certain parts of it have become slightly more complex than they used to be.

But it is *free*: my best suggestion is, spend an hour putting one of the support Linux distros on a spare P3, spend about half an hour putting WRE 0.8 (which I believe has been promoted to beta) on top of that, and play around with it a bit.

This is the best part of Open Source:  you can have a full, no holds barred test period of the software without encumbrance.

My personal outlook, as someone completely unconnected with PlainBlack Software would be "wow; having a city website to point to that runs WG; that'd be a really cool thing", in consequence of which I'll be happy to answer any specific questions about a running instance (or its installation) that you have, for which I have answers. 

One note that might be pertinent: your example site is a CVB site (which are prone more to style over substance sometimes), as opposed to a municipal site (one operated for the *residents* of the municipality.  Which one's your target? 

--- (Edited on 10/17/2007 9:58 am [GMT-0500] by baylink) ---



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colink
Date: 10/17/2007 9:58 am   ·   Subject: Re: WebGUI for a City Website?  ·   Rating: 1

For 8 years, I was the volunteer webmaster for a church website.  We often found it hard to find people who wanted to work on content week after week, so we began making parts of the church website editable to staff and other leaders in the church.

Our "sponsor" user was a 65 year old bible study teacher was was computer illiterate.  We taught her how to upload files to a WebGUI website in 15 minutes, and that was with the full editing interface.

If the interface is still too intimidating for your users, I would experiment with the UI level.  UI level is the way in WebGUI to simplify (or richen) the WebGUI editing interface.  By default, admins have their UI set to 10.  Most content managers get along pretty well with 5, which, if I remember correctly, is the default.

To see this, try these steps:

  1. Create a demo site on demo.webgui.org
  2. Create a new user called "fred".
  3. As admin, go into fred's user profile, and set their UI to 5.
  4. Add fred to the Content Manager's group.
  5. Now, login in as fred.
  6. Turn on Admin
  7. Play with editing various parts of the site.
  8. Now, tinker with the UI and see how you can trade-off simplicity for functionality.
Also, while it's for pay, the printed WebGUI books, especially the WebGUI primer, may really help your users out.

--- (Edited on 10/17/2007 9:58 am [GMT-0500] by colink) ---



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