Ginger, Mary,

Sadly enough, improving the speed of the site is a rather difficult issue - a multi headed monster. And NABUUR is not the only site suffering from it (google 'slow website drupal' and you get nearly 500.000 hits, 'slow website' over 40.000.000), but that's not satisfactory I guess.

The site was stress tested before it was launched, giving no indication of the problems that arose later.

What causes the slowness?
perhaps it's good to read my post of 03/11/2008 here
(I've also put it in the resources of this group)

Next to the reason mentioned there, over the last months:
- the site has been hit by SPAM bots a few times (yesterday as well)
- the server has been hacked once (which Kester found within 3 hours)
- for unknown reasons Yahoo keeps sending people to non-existing NABUUR pages (which causes extra server load)

What's being done about it?
- the google problem has been solved
- the server memory has been upgraded
- Frans and Kester have been working on tech issues related to site performance
- Siegfried has talked to Cisco to see if this is an area where they can offer support. Unfortunately they can't themselves (don't have the right knowledge in-house). We're trying to find someone else (expert) who can help

Pelle

Hi Raul

We are definitely going to miss you!

But I do know what you mean about the frustration and lack of motivation with how things are working out here at the moment... I share it, although I will stick around for now.

Mary

Voting for NABUUR's 1st Volunteer of the Year award is underway. Get to know the nominees, and cast your vote!

www.nabuur.com/volunteer-year-2008

hey Raul

You have to sometimes take a break to manage a long term commitment. Keep in touch, won't you.

:-)

Thank you so much for the info - at least I can point my finger at "slow website drupal" (sounds like a fatal disease!!) - even though I don't quite 'understand it' :) Good luck on finding the right expert -

--
Ginger :)

Hi Pelle and all,
I have never seen this page before and maybe it’s reserved just for facilitators, so apologies if I ain't supposed to be here.
Anyway, here are my comments on Nabuur as a website and no, I’m not going to mention speed or technical stuff like that.
My background is in marketing, so it’s from that viewpoint I’m coming. And yes, what I'm going to write is negative (though I hope in a constructive, helpful manner), so I better start by saying I do like the concept behind Nabuur and enjoy trying to help the villages I have worked on. I think that’s the fundamental idea of Nabuur, isn’t it ?

1. Homepage
In my opinion, it is poorly laid out and misses the point completely. Its job surely is to (1) attract in new neighbours and (2) make it easy for existing neighbours to get to their villages quickly. It achieves neither. Two very simple blocks / boxes should be on it, like this :

Choose by :
Country you are interested in : Drop down menu
Latest postings by village : 1 hour ago – xxx, Uganda; 1 hour 5 mins ago – zzz, Nepal; etc.

As simple as that. That way, the most active villages are ‘rewarded’ for being so by appearing on the top of the second menu and, where a new volunteer wants to work with a particular country, they can get straight there with the first menu.

You have got to entice new neighbours in by making it simple for them to get immersed.

2. Village pages :
Currently, if you hit the ‘Villages’ tab on the homepage, then choose ‘Africa’, then the first village that pops up is Nabitende. If you click on ‘Nabitende’, the first thing that strikes you is that the three headings at the top (first yellow block) are from over one year ago. There is no incentive to scroll down the page.
In my opinion, this is a big turn-off. Get rid of the big ytellow boxes altogether and get the active stuff up to the top of each village’s page so people can see there’s action.

New neighbours have got to get a very real feeling that something is really happening here on this website. Far too many of the villages give the impression that nothing is going on at all, which reduces people's desire to engage.

3. Neighbours :
In my opinion, you are under utilising your neighbours.
For example, if I go into a certain neighbour’s page, I find a little about him or her and his activity level, but not what villages he’s active in. So once again, you’re missing a chance to get neighbours involved in villages. I might like to follow a particular neighbour and get involved in more than one village because they are involved in it.

I could say a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that.
Keep improving - the basic concept is great.
All the best, Barry.

Hi Barry,

You're welcome to join here!
And you did keep it rather constructive. Thanks for the ideas.

1. I'll put your ideas for the homepage in the issue tracker (the tool that we use to keep track of the requested changes). I'm not directly sure of how easy they are to implement

2. Villages page: Frans is working on a new Villages (overview) page that shows the active villages and the villages that were just registered. There will also be the possibility to browse by country. I didn't check Nabitende but the reason that it shows up first, does mean there has been some sort of activity very recently... and all the last news items, discussions etc. do end up on the villages homepage.

Kester is now working on showing the actual status of projects and tasks more clearly.. and projects that haven't seen any activity over the last 3 months will be set to 'stalled'. That should help.

3. Displaying the villages on a neighbour's profile is also not a new request. I'm going through the priorities early next week and will pay attention to this one.

Thanks again,

pelle

Dear all,

You may have noticed that a new tab is now displayed: Volunteer Opportunities.
This tab shows the latest tasks, as well as the tasks that need urgent help.

Let's hope this makes it easier for Neighbours to find their way to active tasks.

Pelle

Thanks Pelle-

Personally, I think it makes a big difference-it "feels" easier to find things just with that simple change. Hopefully we'll start noticing increased activity in the villages from it. I think that's really probably the true test of whether or not it's working. I'm very happy with it.

Jen

Agreed, its a good idea. Would it be possible to put a link to it on the Home page as well? This would be a quick way for potential new neighbours to see tasks before deciding whether to sign up.

Mary

We like it too, Jen. :)

Mary, the tab is visible on all pages (including the homepage) even if you're not logged in, so potential volunteers do get a chance to shop before buying. :)

Thanks Romina

Apologies, I didn't notice it was there last night, but I can see it now!

Mary

Today I created a wiki in Kayole-Soweto so that we can work on revising the hospital strategic plan, make revisions and have comments on the document. Creating the wiki did not seem problematic. When I wanted to use it though this is where I'm confused.

1. When I use the "reply to this wiki" feature-I can indeed reply. It shows as a new post to the wiki, but when I click on the message I posted it takes me to the wiki, but my comments are not viewable.

2. I tried to strikethrough and comment in the document itself. While I was in "edit" it shows. When I save it, the strikethrough is gone, but my comments do show. It would be very helpful if comments would show in a different color. Is that possible?

While I missed being able to work in a shared document, I have to tell you these wikis baffle me and are so confusing to use that I wonder if it's even worth it sometimes to put one up. I know there used to be a write up on how to use the wiki's with the facilitator training guide-is it possible to create new written instructions?

It would be fabulous if we could develop a system similar to google docs where we could share information and edit documents that way.

Seems like there's got to be an easier way.

Jen

When I signed into My Nabuur, a post was listed in this group, link http://www.nabuur.com/en/group/nabuurcom-website-development/project/tas...
however when I clicked on this I got a screen that said "Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page."

I can see this listed as a task on the Overview tab at http://www.nabuur.com/en/group/nabuurcom-website-development but cannot access from there either. I don't see it listed on the Project Room tab.

Not sure what is happening?

Mary

Hi Mary,

In this case it's right that you cannot access the task: it was set to hidden as this is one of the tasks that was closed in August (remember there used to be two separate discussions for bugs and for feedback)
Unfortunately the task still had status 'in progress' which made it appear on the overview tab. The overview page will be changed to not show 'hidden' tasks anymore.

I'm not sure how 'Rocky', the neighbour that posted in that task managed to do so, he also should have gotten 'Access denied'.

Pelle