Portal

April 3, 2008: The Port Ludlow Digital Village (PLDV) Committee consisting of Adele Govert, Dan Meade, Dean Mosier, and Dave Pike presented the Digital Village web site concept, which is in use for many larger communities. Dean Mosier and Dave Pike had made several presentations to meetings at the Beach and Bay clubs, receiving a large percentage of positive responses. The only significant concern appeared to be from the PLVC, where perceived negatives were the unknown financial arrangements and potential increased competition between Port Ludlow organizations for advertising income. The PLVC did not provide a resolution of support for the PLDV concept.

November 5, 2008: PortLudlowToday.com (PLT) was incorporated by Co-Chairs Dave Pike and Dean Mosier and Directors Jim Tallman and Matt Wallace as a nonprofit Washington State corporation to qualify eventually as a tax exempt corporation under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its article of incorporation includes the statement that “No part of the net earnings of the corporation shall inure to the benefit of, or be distributable to its members, trustees, officers, or other private persons, except that the corporation shall be authorized and empowered to pay reasonable compensation for services rendered….”

January 1, 2009: PortLudlowToday website went live. The website uses a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) supplied by Resident Interactive (RI), Atlanta, GA. RI specializes in high-end Community Portals for larger communities, mixed use development and small towns and cities. RI‘s parent company is InterEZ, Alpharetta, GA. RI provides the software under license, uses its computers to store data, and hosts the user’s internet presence. RI’s technical model is an intranet. Its financial model is that business advertising provides income to cover RI’s fees. RI gave PLT a one-year no-fee use of their system for calendar year 2009.

From January 1, 2009 until the present, PLT has provided service and training for the community to use the system. PLT reports that, in seven months it has grown from zero to about 380 registered users accessing about 30,000 page-views per month. Community support has been strong and some organizations now have their own web pages housed inside the PLT system. Some organizations have started to rely on PLT for operational functions. The PLT founders have expended huge efforts to make this project a success and enjoy positive regard from their users.

April 29, 2009: A technical meeting was held by the PLVC to “Start an evaluation of the question: does an open-source CMS offer sufficient benefit to consider a change of platform from the proprietary CMS provided by Resident Interactive as the master Port Ludlow website presence?” This question arose because, since PLT selected RI’s CMS, two others have emerged that have roughly the same capabilities. They are Joomla and Drupal, which are open source and therefore the software is free. The conclusion of the meeting was that if there were sufficient justification, PLT would consider making a switch to an open source system. Jack McKay would evaluate Joomla on the PLVC website and Tony Simpson would evaluate Drupal on a new test website.

July 21, 2009: The PLVC Workshop devoted almost the entire meeting to comparing of the three CMS platforms, to evaluating if there is sufficient common ground to choose one, and to investigating if the PLVC can endorse PLT’s choice. It quickly became apparent that the three CMS approaches have roughly the same capabilities and that any of them could function as Port Ludlow’s principal portal. It was also apparent that the three alternatives would require about the same amount of local labor to maintain their operation—with volunteers only this is a negligible amount, but if part-time employees were used, it would eventually cost about $25,000 per year to keep a comprehensive portal’s information up-to-date. RI has the advantage of about an 18-month head start over Joomla and Drupal and has a trained team of users. Joomla and Drupal have the advantage that they can adjust their expenses to match their income, while PLT must generate adequate income to pay its fees to RI. In addition, payments to RI depend on advertising income, a substantial portion of which must come out of the limited advertising upon which a few other local organizations depend. PLT will soon negotiate and execute their agreement with RI and the financial implications will become clearer.

The conclusion of the meeting was that PLT intends to follow its plan without change. PLVC will continue to develop its site to assure that the community will always have a website and data storage. Those involved will review the situation periodically as it evolves.

 

By Tony Simpson, reviewed by Jack McKay, Dean Mosier, and Dave Pike, August 3, 2009