Quote:
When a coordinated strategic media campaign is implemented for XOOPS as the folks at Mambo have done.
The articles and the awards are a result well targeted and executed PR campaign.

PR is not a logo, a road map, a promotional build, guerrilla marketing, tag lines, etc., etc.
While these all may be a part of a marketing and branding mix, they are not PR.

Quote:
I offered to help with PR for XOOPS back in Sept. 2004.
Mithrandir suggested I contact you. (2004/9/16)
You replied and I sent you a PM with some specific questions to get the process started.
Did not hear back.

Strategic Public Relations
A strategic public relations plan is used to reach target audiences with a specific message.
A media campaign is targeted at journalists who write for publications read by the end target audience.
It is a 2-4 month process to get started, and then ongoing.
A month or so to plan, and then you are constrained by the media lead times.

It starts with specific goals.
"We should have some articles" like Mambo is not a specific goal targeting a specific audience.
"We should have some awards" - ditto.
"We want more people to know about Xoops" - ditto.
A specific goal below.

The process:
1. Define the goals.
2. Identify the audience.
3. Define the message.
4. Create the tactics.
5. Execute the tactics.

Example: Part of a Media Plan

Goal: Increase use of XOOPS in medium and large company corporate intranets. This will encourage high-level code contributions, increased financial support for development, increase mainstream project awareness.

Audience: Corporate IT Managers

Message: XOOPS will help you reduce development time, reduce development costs, reduce ongoing maintenance cost, make your life easier.

Tactics: Create an article on how one company did this, their experiences, cost savings. Promote the article to journalists online and offline who cover this subject for a publication read by IT managers.

Execute: Email an article outline to a targeted list of journalists who work for the proper publications.


It is obvious to me that this is what Mambo has done. (having done this enough)
Journalists did not just find Mambo - they were targeted.
The articles are in the right publications.

Pursuing awards is a common PR tactic.
The Mambo awards did not just happen - they were targeted.

Their PR people are doing a great job.

I found xDocman in the CVS on SourceForge.
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xoops/modules/xdocman/

I found it in the CVS on SourceForge.
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xoops/modules/xdocman/

I found it in the CVS on SourceForge.
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xoops/modules/xdocman/

I found it in the CVS on SourceForge.
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xoops/modules/xdocman/

I found it in the CVS on SourceForge.

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/xoops/modules/xdocman/

Anyone have a copy of xDocman to share?

Currently trying to setup a documentation project for another open source program.
Integrating DocBook XML has been difficult.
xDocbook is exactly what I need.

No files are available on the dev site.

Does anyone have a copy they could share?

Thank you.

Ken McDonald

The banners show up fine.

Are you running any ad blocker software on your laptop?
Norton Internet Security?
Firewall with ad blocker?
Toolbar with ad blocker?

How do you connect to the internet?
Any proxy which could be blocking?

Thanks all for the advice.

So far I am only engaged for the phpAdsNew (PAN) work.
I have only been talking to the wife of this husband and wife team as she handles the ads and PAN. Looks like they have 2 employees and the "web guy" is local help.
They live in the boonies.

I made it clear today that changes must be made to the site in order to do the ads the way they want. We have discussed it before so they are aware changes will be required.

The good thing is they have already published and sold the new ad programs to their top advertisers. In fact, the new programs were requested by the top advertisers. They now must deliver.

I think in the short-run putting in some SSI headers and footers will allow them serve the run-of-site ads. This will also allow pages to be updated one-by-one without breaking anything. Then eventually all the pages would have common header and footer code allowing much easier conversion to a database driven site using a conversion script.

Just getting the image duplication issue under control should be a huge bandwidth savings.
But again, this will have to be done page-by-page. UGH!

The home page is 933K! 933 freakin' K !!
They do have great content and the site users are avid enthusiasts of the subject so that is why the users appear to put up with the huge pages and horrible site structure.
I also looked at some of the page HTML - spagetti.

Modules?
They have articles, news, classified ads, vendor directory, picture galleries, etc. Have not really thought about it in depth. I think they are ideal for a forum, but they are wary of the "bad guys" in forums criticizing the vendors.

No doubt they would benefit from a CMS.
I cannot even imagine how they maintain this site.

I just looked at the ad reports I downloaded last night.
Adviews are running around 15 million per month.
All of the advertisers are on a flat monthly fee (a freakin' bargain!).
They like the flat fee concept - so I think that is what I am going to propose.
Per their hosting services fee quote to me, it is probably costing them $600-$1,000
per month for the bandwidth.
What I can save them in bandwidth alone could pay for a monthly fee.

The dedicated server is up to the job.
3.06 GHz, 2 GB , 36 GB SCSI, FreeBSD.
I did ask if they were using a cache accelerator, she did not know.

I am supposed to get full access to the server tomorrow so I can investigate more.

Thanks for the input everyone!

Looking for:
- ideas
- articles
- war stories from the trenches
- methods you have used
- wisdom derived from dealing with this before
- anything!
. . . to help convert this site to XOOPS.

The situation:

I have a client with a large site which was created as a bunch of individual pages.
400 to 500 pages, or more.
The site is very successful - well over a million page views per month.
Bandwidth allocation purchased is 600 GB/month.

The site has apparently just grown organically since 1999.
The owners know little about the web.
The web person knows how to make small web sites (a few pages).

The site is like hundreds of tiny web sites.
Each newsletter, article, advertiser, trade show photo collection, etc.
is in it's own directory, with it's own images, and it's own HTML.
This includes the navigation images.
So the same navigation images are on the site hundreds of times. (bandwidth - oink, oink)
All of the navigation images have generic and inconsistent names (image001, image009, etc.).

The page layout, nav images, even the site logo image varies all over the place on the various pages.
There are no templates used anywhere.
There is no consistancy anywhere.

They initially contacted me to help them reconfigure their phpAdsNew setup to do run-of-site ads and section ads.
Since there are no templates, no headers, no footers this is a challenge.

I just looked at the phpAdsNew setup last night.
No zones at all.
~180 advertisers x ~4 ads each = ~720 ads.
All of these ads are placed in the site with phpAdsNew direct selection code.
Kept finding my mouth hanging open.
And kept thinking omigod, omigod.

So, they need to convert to a template based system and use ad zones.

I am trying to visualize how to convert this content to XOOPS.
No consistent header or footer HTML to strip to get to just the content.
Looks like a ton of cut and paste.

Anyone out there who has dealt with a similar situation please share your experiences.
How did you approach the project?
What recommendatios can you make based on your experiences?
Anyone know of any online articles about this issue?

Thanks to all for your ideas and help.