...and a new editor as well.
Blogger.com is a blogging tool that many of you know and use and has been a core part of the setup to the CISV shirt archive. Unfortunately Blogger decided to discontinue their FTP-support, which is a script that used to beam the new posts over from Blogger to the CISV-server. However, this support has ended on May 1st, so since then it's impossible to post new shirts to the archive.
Now, I've been thinking about passing this project on for a long time, but couldn't be bothered much, because the setup never really required much attention. But now that it does, I think this is a great chance to leave it up to a new editor to set things up the way he or she likes it.
Interested? Here an FAQ:
What's so great about the CISV shirts archive?
There are almost 500 CISV shirts on the website
There's still about 400 visitors to the site every month
The Facebook page has more than 800 fans!
What are the areas of improvement?
Only a few pictures have been added within the last year.
The page design deserves a facelift.
What needs to be done right now?
There exists several ways of making the CISV shirts archive work past again that may or may not require much work. This mostly depends on what the new editor wants the website to be. If it's just a blog, its easy. If you want to continue the voting ("I love this shirt") and the "hot-or-not" functionality, that will need some more effort. At any rate, I'm more than happy to do this work, if somebody takes the editor job from there.
As an editor, how much work will I have during the year?
As I said above, it's mostly keeping an eye on the pictures and comments being and encouraging people to contribute pictures. Everything else will work by itself. If technical problems occur, I'm there.
What about expanding the functionality?
I've had ideas in the past, about making the archive more like a gallery: Adding info to every shirt like the year it was printed, the chapter, the designer. Then I'd like visitors to be able to search by specific data, like all Chattanooga shirts from the 80s. Also, you could as curators to select a set of shirts on a specific theme, like: "Ugly as hell" or "CISV and flowers". All this would require a lot of work and technical knowledge, but it could be done and would be fantastic. However, this is nothing I am ready to provide. If somebody would like to expand the CISV shirts archive in that or any other way, I can help, but won't be able to take the lion's share of the work.
More easier to implement would be something like a Twitter integration, that would announce new shirts through Tweets and increasing the audience that way.
Feedburner is a service I recently added to FTB, which allows e-mail subscription - another interesting way of including even bigger audiences.
Other options include moving the blog to another service (like Wordpress). You could also migrate the shirts into JBpedia. Or get rid of the blog and have a facebook group only (all with its advantages and disadvantages).
Why do you want to give it away at all?
It's been a great time, it's been a great project. But it's too far down on my priority list, and it just needs some fresh motivation and spirit - none of which I can provide right now. I've tried to get support for the CISV shirts project in the past, with little success, so I'm a bit pessimistic about this as well, but anyway...I truly hope somebody will continue this great collection.
Please contact me via e-mail (ftb@absolutpicknick.de) and I'l also bearound during AIM (in case you're there) for any further questions you may have.
Blogger.com is a blogging tool that many of you know and use and has been a core part of the setup to the CISV shirt archive. Unfortunately Blogger decided to discontinue their FTP-support, which is a script that used to beam the new posts over from Blogger to the CISV-server. However, this support has ended on May 1st, so since then it's impossible to post new shirts to the archive.
Now, I've been thinking about passing this project on for a long time, but couldn't be bothered much, because the setup never really required much attention. But now that it does, I think this is a great chance to leave it up to a new editor to set things up the way he or she likes it.
Interested? Here an FAQ:
What's so great about the CISV shirts archive?
There are almost 500 CISV shirts on the website
There's still about 400 visitors to the site every month
The Facebook page has more than 800 fans!
What are the areas of improvement?
Only a few pictures have been added within the last year.
The page design deserves a facelift.
What needs to be done right now?
There exists several ways of making the CISV shirts archive work past again that may or may not require much work. This mostly depends on what the new editor wants the website to be. If it's just a blog, its easy. If you want to continue the voting ("I love this shirt") and the "hot-or-not" functionality, that will need some more effort. At any rate, I'm more than happy to do this work, if somebody takes the editor job from there.
As an editor, how much work will I have during the year?
As I said above, it's mostly keeping an eye on the pictures and comments being and encouraging people to contribute pictures. Everything else will work by itself. If technical problems occur, I'm there.
What about expanding the functionality?
I've had ideas in the past, about making the archive more like a gallery: Adding info to every shirt like the year it was printed, the chapter, the designer. Then I'd like visitors to be able to search by specific data, like all Chattanooga shirts from the 80s. Also, you could as curators to select a set of shirts on a specific theme, like: "Ugly as hell" or "CISV and flowers". All this would require a lot of work and technical knowledge, but it could be done and would be fantastic. However, this is nothing I am ready to provide. If somebody would like to expand the CISV shirts archive in that or any other way, I can help, but won't be able to take the lion's share of the work.
More easier to implement would be something like a Twitter integration, that would announce new shirts through Tweets and increasing the audience that way.
Feedburner is a service I recently added to FTB, which allows e-mail subscription - another interesting way of including even bigger audiences.
Other options include moving the blog to another service (like Wordpress). You could also migrate the shirts into JBpedia. Or get rid of the blog and have a facebook group only (all with its advantages and disadvantages).
Why do you want to give it away at all?
It's been a great time, it's been a great project. But it's too far down on my priority list, and it just needs some fresh motivation and spirit - none of which I can provide right now. I've tried to get support for the CISV shirts project in the past, with little success, so I'm a bit pessimistic about this as well, but anyway...I truly hope somebody will continue this great collection.
Please contact me via e-mail (ftb@absolutpicknick.de) and I'l also bearound during AIM (in case you're there) for any further questions you may have.
The CISV International IT Committee can provide infrastructure (server space etc.) if the volunteer would like to. Let me know...
hm, i dont think im up for the task of editor, but i had an idea a while ago about cisv shirts... wouldnt it be cool to have a section on the page where people can upload shirt designs in vector-graphics so that anyone in the world can take the file and print it on a shirt for his or her chapter (im especially thinking of ijb tshirts... i guess it would be silly to print cisv michigan city shirts for the berlinchapter...)
sort of like a free marketplace of shirts, this could also be designs that people came up with but never actually bothered to print...
or corporation between chapters designing shirts for each other... just throwing it out there
I have a suggestion. IJBC is under way right now as we speak. Why not we e-mail the IJRs and ask them if they can have a small intro to everyone about CISV shirts before one of the sessions and see if anyone is interested to help or edit this or take over. Many people will be interested (I know I would have if I was a little more active in CISV than I am now). So it's worth throwing it to the Juniors to see what they can come up with.