[geeklog-devel] Geeklog Service offering

[Tony Bibbs]

Here is my rebuttal to Jason's post. You are right, I think that our 
development efforts are headed in the right direction, however, how we 
present ourselves to the world needs to change.  Here are some thoughts 
there:

1) I already touched on a site redesign and I feel this is pretty 
important.  I don't think it requires a ton of work we just need to make 
it easy for users to find information and do a better job making the 
'sale' (of course it is free but you get my drift).
2) Name change?  Think about this, if presented a list of CMS products you 
see something like 'PHP-Nuke' and then 'Geeklog', which link do you click 
first?  A step further, if you are an organization, does Geeklog suggest 
any degree of professionalism? (No, 'PHP-Nuke' doesn't either).  While 
Geeklog has plenty of name recognition I think we can keep it around and 
leverage a new name for businesses.  Thoughts?
3) Documentation.  I think a ton of work has really be done here and a big 
thanks to all who have filled in on my inadequacies there.  For the 
longest time I thought the plugin-api sucked but it turns out it just 
wasn't documented well.  I don't want to have Geeklog turned down just 
because of this so let's keep this in mind moving forward (this was 
already identified as a risk in the GL2 risk plan).

Jason, your thoughts on GL2 are right on.  We do need to push the envelope 
a bit and even if GL development isn't near as convenient for me as it use 
to be, I'm willing to sacrifice a few late nights to get some sort of 
alpha code out the door ASAP.  Marketing GL2 will be much easier 
considering the new design.  This begs the question how long should we 
actively continue developing 1.3.x?  Dirk has done a great job with that 
and has earned a good reputation (thanks).  My question is, should we 
consider freezing the 1.3.x code in the near future so we can all 
concentrate on GL2? I think the freeze still needs to allow for bug fixes 
but we could draw the line by saying absolutely no feature adds. Dirk, 
what are your thoughts on this.  Would you be open to this or would you 
prefer to keep on the 1.3.x track full-time?

Now regarding support.  I think offering what Jason outlined with paid 
email supportis a great idea.  I'd also like to see scaled support and 
per-use type of support. By scaled support I mean offer different levels 
for different size customers.  Anybody want to take a stab at some rough 
numbers for support?  I'm clueless in this arena.

-- 
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Tony Bibbs         | "I guess you have to remember that those who don't |   
tony at tonybibbs.com | hunt or fish often see those of us who do as       |
                   | harmlessly strange and sort of amusing. When you   | 
                   | think about it, that might be a fair assessment."  | 
                   | --Unknown                                          |
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