hkjug.org

The HKJUG is supposed to have a website. We have one at hkjug.dev.java.net. And I think we should build an online community for Java users in Hong Kong.

IMHO, we need to have a site better than the one at hkjug.dev.java.net.

• the site should be under the domain hkjug.org, which gives us a stronger identity.
  
  
• connection speed from HK is important. Not sure if it is caused by using https, the java.net site is quite slow to me. It's better to host our site in HK.
  
  
• Easy to edit is a key to success. The current java.net requires editing html and commit with CVS. As suggested in point 14 of How to make a successful Java User Group, an easy and flexible Content Management System should be used. And in this Web 2.0 era, I think we should go for a wiki which is essentially a lightweight CMS that offers easy online editing function.
  

Given that there are good enough Java wiki platforms, I would rule out the php options. I also prefer open source than commercial products. (re. commercial products, I refer to commercial products that offer a free community edition to JUG) I checked the list from java-source, wikipedia and wikimatrix. (manageability.org does not have a wiki section) JAMWiki and XWiki looks particular good. JAMWiki has no WYSIWYG editor. XWiki offers more than just page creation and editing. At the commercial side, Confluence is a definite winner.

To get our hkjug.org website, we just need a simple wiki for the HKJUG exco to publish content. It's certainly ok to use a powerful wiki that is easy to setup. At this point, I can't find reason not to use Confluence. (unless I make open source as a criteria in selection) It's so easy to setup, and it got so many bonus features. The customization of layout require some efforts, but it's the same case for any wiki.

Other than a website, the online community is important. We have a newsgroup but it does not have too much traffic. A web forum will probably do a better job. Jive Forums offers free community license. In the past, I have evaluated JForum but it's far from Jive Forums. JiveForum offers all web, newsgroup (nntp) and mail list channels and it's very promising, and it will be adopted.

In the Web 2.0 era, the meaning of online community grows beyond just a discussion forum. Most community platform offers user to create their own spaces of blog and photo sharing. XWiki is exactly for providing such functions. That's why I would want to go for it.

The first challenge I am facing is about user repository. As I've picked community edition of commercial software, there is not much difficulty to setup the products. But it's not that easy to make all these products to share the same user database/directory. Another issue is about consistency in design, I think I've gave up this requirement already.