After a brief Skype discussion with Hedley about domains for DrupalCamp London, I tried formulating a more concrete possible action plan to ensure we are using the domain to it's full potential.
Currently afaik, Drupalcamp.org.uk has:
- Oxford.drupalcamp.org.uk (TLD points here at the moment)
- London.drupalcamp.org.uk
- Original DrupalCamp Manchester, 2009.
In contrast here are the Drupalcamps that have happened (no order), are happening in UK:
- Drupal7camp Leeds, May 2011
- Drupal Science Camp, Cambridge, Jan 2012
- BadCamp Brighton, Apr 2012
- DrupalCamp Scotland, May 2012
- Oxford DrupalCamp, June 2012
- Brighton Drupal Weekender, Sep 2012
- DrupalCamp North West, Nov 2012
- DrupalCamp London, Mar 2013
Only Oxford DrupalCamp made use of Drupalcamp.org.uk.
Reasons for not using Drupalcamp.org.uk:
- forgot
- branding
- email: e.g. press@drupalcampname
- ...?
The plan is centred around the use of subdomains, moving towards what happened with DrupalCons and Drupal.org, whereas before 2009" Drupalcons had their own domain name, now, they are but cityyear.drupal.org, the reasons being easy to work find, and to preserve each drupalcon website via the d.o team, funded by Drupal Association.
I believe the following ideas could well tie in to the Drupal UK Association discussion, and potentially the Drupal.org.uk domain also.
- each camp to have it's own subdomain, drupalcon style.
- cities that have/had camps (one or several) have a subdomain.
- use this to list current and past camps?
- show next/current camp, with link to past ones in footer/block?
- use this for camp email: press@city.drupallcamp.org.uk.
- subdomains not restricted like drupalcon, so allow multiple subdomains for single camp? i.e. sciencecamp.drupalcamp.org.uk as well as Cambridge.drupalcamp.org.uk.
- subdomains to point to camp custom domain name if required.
- Drupalcamp.org.uk to have a listing of past/upcoming camps.
- Go to for resources on organising camp in UK (to compliment g.d.o UK)
/!\ No single hosting/management of camps websites, this is only redirects and/or aggregation using the existing domain Drupalcamp.org.uk. It would be up to local groups to manage/run their own subdomain as they see fit
The idea is to create a single point of entry that is known to all, rather then trying to guess urls and email addresses, as to have Drupalcamp in URL, as well as name makes for very long urls, imagine if Oxford had gone for full name in domain name: oxforddrupalcampeducation.co.uk.
Comments/Idea please!
Comments
Thanks for posting this up
Thanks for posting this up Tom. I agree that a single domain name formula would be a big benefit the the UK Drupal community and hopefully bring people together.
Another of the challenge may be management of the domain. Who owns it? Is there someone / some place people can request a DNS change and have it happen quickly?
I think a UK Drupal Association member would be an ideal candidate to administer the domain.
The idea of having drupalcamp.org.uk acting as a 'hub' for all UK Drupal Camp's is a really great idea - and something else a UK Drupal Association could focus their efforts on.
CTO @ Settled
http://www.hedleysmith.com
Importance?
I know what you're saying and they're all good points, but a lot seem to be centred around the memorability of domains, which I am not sure will end up being that important.
I'd say the vast majority of people would come to the site from a search engine, or a direct link from an email or other place like social media. If I got to the DrupalCamp London site, and I found it to be on abcdefghijk.com, it wouldn't bother me.
The one thing to avoid would be really long URLs in case it's used in printed media and people are typing it, but even then, you can use a QR code or shortened URL to avoid this problem.
So really I think any arguments put forward that involve the ease with which people could remember or type URLs should be sidelined, in favour of what's convenient in terms of setting up and running a camp!
I like the idea from a point
I like the idea from a point of view of it being a unifier of all UK camps. As someone who's involved in the Brighton camp I'd love to get more involved in others, see what's planned etc., and this strikes me a a good way of managing that.
As long as it is 'easy'
When we did Drupal Sciencecamp in January (goodness, it seems like a lifetime ago!!), I very much wanted to keep to the absolute basics and just choose the easiest options for everything. For me, the 'essence' of a camp was just getting a bunch of like-minded people together to talk Drupal.
So, although at the time I didn't even know about *.drupalcamp.org.uk, I think I would have been wary of using it IF it added complexity to what I was trying to do.
I think there are lots of benefits to using the domain but it does need to simply be a case of dropping a mail to the owner to get it set up. No need to place much more complexity on it than that.
Would be great to see on the default site some soft of drupalcamp activity map / timeline / calendar / campkit...
Rachel
Obviously right!
I think this is completely logical, clear and simple. To me it's so obviously the right thing to do that I'm surprised it hasn't been done much sooner. I guess it just reflects that DrupalCamps are very autonomous with no central control (or guidance).
This is a great idea from all of these perspectives:
A central site where we can have links to all past and future Drupalcamps. Also just a first place to look for links to find people who have done it before and could offer a bit of help/advice/mentoring, without setting up any formal organisation or structure.
Low admin: adding a new sub-domain and pointing at an independent server, both for website and email, is a 1-liner change in the DNS record of the main* domain - as quick and easy as registering a new domain (without any additional cost). I don't think anyone needs a 2-hour response guarantee to setup a new sub-domain - it takes a bit more time than that to organise a Drupal Camp from other perspectives :-)
(*) main domain Drupalcamp.org.uk is not a TLD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain)
Archived sites
Just to point out that there is an effort to get all past Drupalcamp sites archived onto drupalcamp.org, so we don't need a UK domain for that really.