ATAAW Site Build - Status Update

Just wanted to give a quick update on the progress of the new site plan for All Together as a Whole.

As most of you know from the discussions last weekend, Ning recently announced they would be going to a Premium paid service model and remove all free sites from their network. We are currently premium customers with our domain name, but that may not be enough.This change may not affect us really, but it made sense that if Ning is changing business models, and ATAAW is growing in a positive direction, we need to step up and get off this temporary platform and move to a full blown Joomla site.

So, we posted a question to the community here, what features you wanted to see in the new site.

You can view that discussion here, all 106 replies (in just a few days!):

http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/forum/topics/what-features-do-yo...

The response was overwhelming and we couldn't be more excited about the future of the new site! The features list was rather exhaustive as you can imagine with all the great input coming in. So I took it upon myself to enlist a few individuals to help me manage the new site build as we move forward.

Here's that list in no specific order:

Wilco Jansen

Amy Stephen

Mustaq Sheikh

Hilary Cheyne

Each of these great individuals hold the same values as I do in regards to the Joomla Project and growing a community that will support the project in any way possible. There's nothing we want more than for Joomla to succeed and for Independant Joomla Developers to have a place to communicate and share their knowledge and skills in a 'non-formal' environment. I want to thank each of them for their commitment to building a new Joomla based community site for ATAAW, and their insight as we travel through this process will be invaluable.

Currently we are working on the features list and trimming it down to 3 major categories.

• Must Have - Features that we all expressed we really want to have when the new site launches.
  
• Roadmap - Features that we really want for the new site, but don't have a solid 'ready to install' extension available to meet that need. We will need to develop it and implement it when it's ready.
  
• Wishlist - Features that would be nice, and we may implement them at some point when and if the need arises, but they aren't make it or break it features for the new ATAAW site.

Once we have each done the above, we will discuss each others lists and come up with a single list to publish here on the site for the community to review. If there's something that is totally out of whack and you want to argue a case for it, then by all means jump in there on the comments and we can discuss it.

Keep in mind, we would like to set a plan in place, acquire the needed resources to build it and have it launched within 45 days or so. That should be enough time to do it at a pace that we can all keep up with our day jobs, and still put out a good product. If we finish sooner hooray! If it's a little late, it's not the 1.6 release and no one is getting paid here.

Once this feature list is in place, then we will open discussions for what software we will use (hold on to your bootstraps Nelly, that could get exciting!) and then ultimately make a sound decision and move forward with that plan.

We are going to need your help building the new site, testing it when it's ready and finally enjoying it once it's launched.

I can't thank you folks enough for all your support through this process and am really looking forward to what we can accomplish in our new home. We have some ideas of what we would like to do for projects once we get there, and hopefully you will have ideas as well that we can all participate in and work toward.

Last but certainly not least by any means, we want to thank the large number of Joomla extension developers who have voiced their support for this initiative, and we will certainly be calling on many of you to help us through this build.

Thanks!
The ATAAW Site Build Task Force