>> 16th & 17th April. The Quanta website has not been updated since July of >> last year and my understanding is that there is little chance of it >> being updated in the near future. > Ah - a weekend *totally* full for me with Bach St John Passion (8-(# > Another AGM missed. >> >> Draw your own conclusions for the reason for this from Dilwyn's >> yesterday email about the lack of updating to the news items, >> > I thought I read here quite recently that someone had worked out the > logon and *was* updating it. > > Tony That was John Sadler saying he'd managed to recover the Scottish QL users group (SQLUG) website and nothing to do with the Quanta one.
You've seen Geoff's email about the website earlier on tonight. A little bit more on this... Quanta website is a source of frustration to me and I think to all of us. The various faults and incompatibilities have caused too much wasted time, too much time worrying about the SYSTEM at the expense of CONTENT. The faults meant it has been impossible to update some things like the News since the last item you see on the site, for example. It's a free CMS, and in my experience it's not been very pleasant trying to edit a site with it. Over my broadband, the editor is slow and clunky. Various facilities either don't work at all when I try them, or fail to work in various contexts. I get endless error messages. Pages show up differently on Internet Explorer and on Firefox (not tried other browsers). I have no idea if this is due to my own system here, the CMS itself, or the problems with the servers it runs on. Just look at the homepage of www.quanta.org.uk on the two browsers mentioned to see what I mean. This is an example of things I have moaned about in emails to Keith and Dan (until I'm sure they are fed up of me), which have proved difficult, or impossible, or very time consuming to fix. The webmasters will be at Quanta AGM in April (just spoken to Keith now). So if you are concerned about Quanta's website, go there to ask questions and get answers. I hope that they will be able to do a session on the website at some point over the weekend to explain the situation. Of course, the situation gives the impression that as far as members are concerned the website is just out of date. This is not inactivity or laziness on the part of the committee but a huge and endless struggle just to get the basic CMS working at all. Dan and Keith are people who have worked with IT for a living, so it's not a case of nobody knowing what they're doing either. However, the website situation is unacceptable as it stands in my view and rapid progress must be seen to happen now. The good news is that while I was abroad recently a committee meeting was held which took major decisions to move forward to a costlier managed service selected, which should free everyone up to focus on CONTENT, provided it works better than the free service used until now. However, the failure to explain all this publicly and the fact it went on for a long time without explanation does give the impression of negligence in updating the website, whereas the truth is that the whole sorry situation is actually down to the CMS not working as it should on the free server spaces used, making it impossible to provide a decent website while that system is in use. Too long was spent trying to get a free service working, so hopefully the move to a paid for service will improve the situation. Another matter is that I have resigned as Quanta Librarian today. I was trying to do too many things - News, Helpline, Library and occasionally website pages (when the CMS last worked properly). The rush to get things in to meet the deadline for the current issue before I went abroad (sorry, I rather monopolised the issue with my ramblings) and the subsequent decision to produce another issue with deadline 5th March convinced me the time was right to find someone with new ideas to run the Quanta Library properly and give it the time and attention it deserves. The Library is in need of modernising, especially as it is still intended that in time it will go online for members, which I haven't the time to do. I'll remain as caretaker Librarian until the AGM when I can hopefully hand the master disks etc over. This email has NOT been issued or authorised by the Quanta committee and is only the personal views of one frustrated committee member, sent with the best of intentions and without intending any personal criticism of anyone concerned. Dilwyn Jones _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
