International (local?) support

How to deal with support sites?

I'm asking all these questions because Impress gives us the opportunity to start anew, and to organise things differently without any legacy.

I was thinking. Wouldn't it be a good thing to concentrate all support activities in one place? If there would be one server where all localised support sites would be located, accessible thru a national domain and a subdomain of the main url (for instance: impresscms.nl and nl.impresscms.org)?
Why, you ask?
Well, not to control who gets to be Official and who doesn't.
Concentrating the support, and bringing it as close as possible to the main project, provides several advantages:
- the central organization can provide quality services (such as an up to date and secure codebase for all sites, free hosting),
- communication lines are short: it is easier to relay news to the support sites (and to organize the communications)
- availability and consistancy of the releases: everyone has the same releases, changes to codes are made centrally
- easier to collaborate and to share ideas, not just limited to a single support group but for the whole project
- continuity of local support: no competition between support sites

What do you think?

Herko

It's an interesting idea - it still doesn't stop local communities having a support site - but it does possibly remove the issues of their having to pay hosting etc.

I still say we should also have no objections if someone who operates a xoops site wants to support ICMS also... or if someone wants to run their site on their own server - but it would be nice to offer the option

Hello, first post here, it seems I'm a tester of iCMS :)

I fully agree with herko, having centralised local support sites is very convenient. I think duting the growing of iCMS more countries will want to join and support it. As a xoops.pl we would like to support both: XOOPS and iCMS. I'm aware there is a long way for iCMS to became a popular script.

My vote goes with everything in one place. As soon as we have advert revenu, we will be able to pay for servers and then we could host them.

In all cases, I would very like to see all international support sites as subdomains of impresscms.org

Wethere it is hosted by us or not, we could change our DNS so nl.impresscms.org point on a different IP.

It really makes no odds whether support is given on the ImpressCMS Server or not, people will still have to click a link or enter the url, what is important is that support is offered and to a high standard.

If possible we should offer the domain and hosting, but it shouldn't be mandatory to become 'Official', and there should be no reason why we limit support of one language to one site.

Another (personal) point, although there is little difference, I'd like to see the word 'Official' dropped and replaced by 'Certified'.

Competition between support sites is not always a bad thing, in fact this could often result in the best support being given, as all strive to be the best.

But saying all that I would like to see international support more localised, so yes I'd see it as a good thing ultimately. Even if a sub domain like pl.imp, fr.imp, ru.imp or so on is not used as dedicated support site in favour of support being offered elsewhere, we should still use these domains to relay the latest news in the specified language, Kind of like impresscms.org will be used to relay the latest.

Hello,
There would be a good idea to make unique theme for support site's. I don't think that placing all support site's is a good idea becouse what will be when server is hacked or offline ?

That is a good point if the server goes down, there would be be pretty much no support.

Quote:

This is exactly what I argued for when I was (and I technically still am) part of the Local Support Team on XO

Quote:

A very good idea - for an official Support Site theme ....

I agree with Herko´s proposal; it is really good. But we must not "close doors": impresscms offers those services as option, not as a duty. If a local support site prefers use its own servers, themes etc, it is fine.

About several local support sites for the same country, I believe that it would be a rare (and allowed) possibility. In fact, I would prefer, as example, all support spanish sites only in a site for all countries. I mean: local support sites for languages, not for countries. For example: "spanish support", not "Spain support" (spanish is spoken in over 20 countries). There is not "Great Britain support" and "USA support".

But, as Tom says, we must solve the "server goes down"; it would be an horrour that all impresscms sites were down at the same time.

Agreed. Central service provider, that inclused a fallback. And not mandatory nor official (I hate that term too).

Herko

I would like to have support site on my own server in Poland some reasons:
1) site load is faster
2) full control

I can see a small differences between polish users :D

I possible other sugestion on the proposal about support local ?

I am study with team proposal xoops and have ideas for unifications supports and cooperation with devs (modules and themes)

GibaPhp - we're always ready to listen to good suggestions!

Giba, please give us your input. We need the input of everyone.

pici05;
Quote:

No problem, the only thing I would really like is that all international site use a subdomain of impresscms.org, like

- fr.impresscms.org
- pl.impressmcms.org
- etc...

That way we have a centralized architeture and it's easy for everyone to quickly find the international support sites. But we only point pl.impresscms.org on your server.

Thoughts ?

It can be so ... and what about similar theme for icms support ?

I think it would be interesting look at a certification process for a site to use the domain country.impresscms.org and have the seal "ImpressCMS Certified Support".

Thus we could ensure the quality of support provided by these sites and consequently the satisfaction of our users.

This seal of quality could still have a period of validity (1 year perhaps?) and at the end of this period the site should rise again for an evaluation to retain the title.

I know that may seem an dictatorial act, but this is not the idea. The idea is to try always keep a minimum of quality in the support provided by these sites certifieds or officials. I think this is extremely important to ensure the quality of the project as a whole.

This is just my personal opinion on the matter, which of you?

marcan: I support your idea.

TheRplima: A quality seal. The idea is great, but the implementation should be discussed in more detail and we must find a person who cares about. I would gladly do so.

Absolutely Sato.
I only put the beginning of the idea, now we need to discuss it.

Some points that I think we should think so:

1) What is the function of a Certified Support?
2) What is the relationship between the Certified Support and the ImpressCMS Project (international community) or how this relationship should be?
3) What are the minimum requirements that a support site must have to win the certification seal?
4) What should be the validity period of this seal? Or it will be eternal?
5) How is the evaluation process to determine whether the support site deserves the seal or not?

I think that answering these questions we will have some basis to begin to put this into practice.

Someone more has opinions about this?