Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

philwareham · 2012-07-31 11:51:17

@wet

So do you think can get Dean to transfer that domain to you? Stops the risk of textpattern.com not being renewed each year.

Destry · 2012-08-01 15:58:52

thebombsite wrote:

Well I’m quite happy to go along with future plans and remain as steward of “Textpattern Themes” so yes, please keep me in the loop.

Okay, great! I’ll get you into planning soon.

philwareham wrote:

…if we can get textpattern.com transferred to Robert we can simply use subdomains (which dont cost anything extra) and save everyone some cash. Otherwise those domains are going to need regular renewals which might become expensive long-term.

This begins to sound like your going to ditch .net, .org, and textgarden and put the underlying projects into subdirectories of .com. While that’s one way to do it, I guess, that wasn’t what I thought was the plan. Rather there would be some aliasing done instead so that if someone went to textpattern.net, for example, they will really be there, but their URL would appear docs.textpattern.com. This is possible if all the domains are owned by agreeable parties and DNS are accessible. Others will certainly know the mechanics of it better than me.

Also, though it could have changed recently, serving content from an actual sub-domain used to impact the SEO of the content in the root domain. Maybe that’s not a big issue anymore.

Lastly, what happens to those dumped domains? They’re actually pretty valuable, and if in the wrong hands, they could turn into something that hurts the project, not helps it. Thus, if you keep them, then you might as well use them.

We’re talking about a community of people contributing to covering the cost of domain ownership for… what, five years at a time for five domains? That’s not very much if you spread it out over a 1000 people, for example. :)

The question really becomes: how are the domains managed as project leads come and go? I.e., if they go under wet’s name, which I don’t think he minds, what happens to them if/when wet leaves the project? They get passed to the new chief in command?

wet wrote:

I think that most of today’s open source projects are either one-man endeavours, or backed by a foundation

Ah… foundation … now that’s interesting (wouldn’t you agree, Les?). That might be something to talk about more, actually.

The Economic Case for Open Source Foundations

Destry · 2012-08-01 16:13:25

Destry wrote:

We’re talking about a community of people contributing to covering the cost of domain ownership for… what, five years at a time for five domains? That’s not very much if you spread it out over a 1000 people, for example. :)

Better still… we think of ways to improve a modest stream of incoming funds that don’t solely rely on donuts.. er donations. That’s probably planning discussion; certainly is as far as it concerns the magazine and competitions. ;)

philwareham · 2012-08-01 16:15:24

I’m not saying that the various domains should all be sacrificed for subdomains, it’s too late for that (though if I was starting this project from scratch I would probably do that solely for the benefit of having everything housed under a single domain).

However, all the domains should be owned by the current project lead or even better a foundation, if that is viable.

philwareham · 2012-08-01 16:21:42

The donations funding system probably needs a rethink, that’s for sure. Don’t know how it can be done though.

wet · 2012-08-03 04:59:51

philwareham wrote:

So do you think can get Dean to transfer that domain to you?

Tried and hit radio silence.

Don’t know how it can be done though.

We need advertisers, not donors. Donors are an almost extinct species.

philwareham · 2012-08-03 06:19:03

The textpattern.com redesign might help in that respect, the adverts section has been moved in the layout I currently have sitting on my computer. I’ll have something to show in a few weeks.

colak · 2012-08-03 06:51:42

wet wrote:

We need advertisers, not donors.

Should there be a link on all textpattern.com pages leading to a page where instructions are shown on how one can advertise there?

Destry · 2012-08-17 00:53:19

Bloke wrote:

I believe it still has to be a person, corporation, charity or some other entity.

wet wrote:

True. I think that most of today’s open source projects are either one-man endeavours, or backed by a foundation (WikiMedia Foundation, Document Foundation, WordPress Foundation, Drupal Foundation, jQuery Foundation).

In Austria this is called a “Verein” and requires a bit of legal paperwork and a little bureaucratic overhead (not very much: every brass band, group of five pet activists, ninja chess fighters… has their own “Verein” here).

If we reach some sort of consenus among all participating parties I could talk to a lawyer to gather more details about cost and obligations. Let me know.

I originally just meant a collection of contributions from the community that would be forwarded to the owner of the domains (if taken out of Dean and Jason’s hands). E.g., if Robert owned them, the community would ensure he got funds via PayPal or whatever to keep the domains intact, so he didn’t have to cover the cost of them, only the administrative care.

However, a foundation could, perhaps, be useful for other financial activities too, like monies from advertising in .com and the magazine, competitions, events, whatever is cooked up to keep things afloat.

Just thinking aloud.

colak · 2012-08-17 03:44:30

wet wrote:

If we reach some sort of consenus among all participating parties I could talk to a lawyer to gather more details about cost and obligations. Let me know.

Under Cyprus law at least we have associations (equivalent to vereins in Germany and Austria) and foundations. An association needs a ‘constitution’ and a min number of 20 signatures, a foundation needs to have €340,000 in cash or other assets. The process for registering associations here is also simple.

Let me know if I can be of any help

gour · 2013-01-28 09:59:52

philwareham wrote:

I’m not saying that the various domains should all be sacrificed for subdomains, it’s too late for that (though if I was starting this project from scratch I would probably do that solely for the benefit of having everything housed under a single domain).

I’m looking to use some theme (for the beginning) from Txg and wonder what is the current status in regard to the discussion in this thread, iow. is 4.6 still considered as ‘important’ release in the light of consolidating Txp sites (themes, plugin, forum,…) ?

philwareham · 2013-01-28 10:29:41

Development of the project (v4.6, v4.7 or whatever) is always going to be a priority over any other plans such as redesigned brand sites. We’ve got quite ambitious plans for v4.6 so the redesigns on these sites have taken a bit of a back seat (and I’m also incredible busy with client work until April, which doesn’t help).

gour · 2013-01-28 10:59:59

philwareham wrote:

Development of the project (v4.6, v4.7 or whatever) is always going to be a priority over any other plans such as redesigned brand sites.

Sure.

We’ve got quite ambitious plans for v4.6 so the redesigns on these sites have taken a bit of a back seat (and I’m also incredible busy with client work until April, which doesn’t help).

I hope to be able to help someday, but now am just curious about Txg site and its affiliation with protextthemes
web site.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#31 2012-07-31 11:51:17

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#32 2012-08-01 15:58:52

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#33 2012-08-01 16:13:25

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#34 2012-08-01 16:15:24

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#35 2012-08-01 16:21:42

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#36 2012-08-03 04:59:51

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#37 2012-08-03 06:19:03

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#38 2012-08-03 06:51:42

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#39 2012-08-17 00:53:19

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#40 2012-08-17 03:44:30

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#41 2013-01-28 09:59:52

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#42 2013-01-28 10:29:41

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

#43 2013-01-28 10:59:59

Re: Themes, competitions, and Textgarden

Board footer