Last Call

In a few weeks—a week or maybe two—we'll be switching over to a new Nashville Drupalers web site (this one, if you're reading this here). It's a Drupal 7 site and has been considerably scaled down insofar as content and features are concerned.

We decided to keep it simple. It's been stripped down to the basics of who we are as a group; events and meetings; social media links (for following our activities); and, for now, undecidedly, a blog.

If you are a long time member of the current site, here are two important things for you to know:

#1 We are not migrating our member accounts to the new site. Say again? No, we are not migrating our member accounts to the new site.

#2 There will be no mass communications—no email announcements, subscription notices (like the one you may be reading now) or signup reminders—emanating from the new site.

If these two changes result in howls of protest, then I welcome them. I'm persuadable, however, I'm not likely to be persuaded unless I hear from at least (but probably more than) 10% of the current member base. And I don't necessarily mean that I'll respond to an outpouring of email, either. If you've got opinions concerning how to improve our group and our web presence, please come join us at a meeting (more info about when and where on the new site). We particularly welcome feedback from those who will volunteer and help us to act on their suggestions. We've got a box full of suggestions on what "we" need to do. We need some more "we."

We do, of course, value the feedback and participation of our members. We especially value your live, in-person, active participation in our meetings and events. The thing is, it's been a long time since we've had much from many of you, insofar as the web site is concerned. When the site was first launched, in 2009, it enjoyed a tremendous amount of general user and non-administrative activity in the form of blog and forum posts. That activity dropped off significantly in 2010, and it's down to an almost non-existent trickle in 2011.

The only benefit in having a membership account on the soon-to-be-old Nashville Drupalers site is to allow you access to participate and contribute content, contact other members who you may not otherwise have contact info for, and to gain subscription notices when content is added to the site, including event notices, comments, blog and forum posts, etc. We've heard from many who say they never receive these subscription notices, while others feel they're being hammered with spam. Also, unfortunately, much of the recent activity that has been responsible for generating subscription notices has been from comment and forum spammers. It's been a bit of a no-win situation, so, no more mass communications on the new site. It will be there 24/7 for you to come see what's new and what's going on, whenever you feel so inclined.

If you do want to contribute content and perhaps even assist us in the ongoing direction and management of our group and website, then, by all means, please do sign up and join us on the new site. We're going to take a little more care in our process for activating new accounts. That is, membership will not be automatic, as it is now. That's in order to help us spend less time administering site spam, not because we have any other restrictions. On the soon-to-be-old Nashville Drupalers site, anyone can sign up and start spamming in seconds (yes, even with all kinds of spam prevention in place). I'd like to avoid that, going forward, so we can encourage
content contributions only from genuine, human users with an interest in Drupal and Nashville Drupalers.

We'll ask you to provide a real name. If it doesn't look real, then the account probably won't be activated. Only your user name will be available to unregistered users. Once your account is activated, if you'd like to contribute content, you can contact me and we'll get you set up for that.

On the new site, as on the current one, content will be publicly available. We will continue to post meeting and other event notices, and whatever else we have to share, and you won't need a membership account to access it. For meeting and event notices we will also (perhaps primarily) use our group-space on groups.drupal.org. If you like receiving subscription and signup notices, we encourage you to sign up with our group on groups.drupal.org, where you can manage your subscriptions as you please. We also make announcements via Facebook and Twitter, and the new site has information on how you can follow us via these other options.

So, there you have it. If you rarely visit our site and/or trash the emails that come from it, you might be in for a surprise the next time you come to visit nashvilledrupalers.com and try to log in. Otherwise, now you know.

You can find the new, pre-launched site at http://seven.nashvilledrupalers.com.