What about an 'Announcements'-forum ?

[Duke]

Most communities I know have a 'News' or 'Announcements'-forum where only a few members (mods, devs and VIPs) have write access.

So they can put messages there like
"Destructavator has created a new package for Windows based an rev 23456" or
"WARNING: Duke has committed some code to the SVN, so it's considered pre-pre-alpha" or even
"BTAxis is on a 2-week vacation. Don't expect any answers until xx.xx.xx"

Does the forum SW support such restricted write access ?
Shouldn't we have such a forum ??

[BTAxis]

It's possible to have a forum like that, certainly, but we've never had any use for one. It doesn't go too well with the idea of a free OS project, and we already have a homepage for public news.

[Duke]

In my previous project, we had both. The page for the 'big news' and the forum for 'small news'.

But on a second thought, you're probably right. Due to the different situation in this project we don't seem to have enough 'small news' to justify such a forum.

[Duke]

I dug up this old post because things have changed a bit since then imho.

In addition to the list above, we also have
- full recompile of maps required
- savegame compatibility broken
- new codeblocks.zip required
- scheduled downtime for ninex/SF/whatnot
- and maybe trac milestone achieved.

All these news have their places; but they are scattered all over the forums and more. Imho it would be a good idea to concentrate those news in a single place, so users would know where to look to catch ALL the news.

It doesn't go too well with the idea of a free OS project, ...

Of course I'm not talking about announcements in the meaning of 'promises'. Just news like I descibed.
If you dislike 'announcements', I can also offer 'important news' or 'breaking news'. The title should however make it clear that this forum is a 'must read'.

..., and we already have a homepage for public news.

I don't know the exact mechanism to get some news to the page, but I'd guess it's not as flexible and fast as a forum.

My admin rights allow me to create such a forum (and oc I volunteer to do it), I just didn't want to do it without your ok. And maybe hear some more opinions/suggestions.

[Mattn]

afaik smf has support for sub boards. something like that could e.g. be created in the general part of board. or we could just use a sticky thread. not sure whether a full new board wouldn't be a little bit overkill here (as i don't see enough posts in it).

the homepage news is a little bit hacky - it's no system behind it, just a plain html/php file that we fill with news, commit it to svn and publish on the hp (not even a hook is installed which brings the file onto the web server). but you can of course always post news if you have something mroe or less important to announce. see http://ufoai.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ufoai/ufoai/homepage/

[misiek]

Hello,

Maybe you should consider using some cms/blog? We've used wordpress on ufotts.

[Kildor]

please, not wordpress!

[Duke]

Sorry, bad wording on my side.
In SMF terms, "General" is a forum and "Discussion" is a board.
I was thinking of a board in forum "General", right before "Discussion".

[misiek]

please, not wordpress!

Why not? I'm not specialist in this area, so i'm asking.