Shiny things

A number of societies wish to use Content Management Systems, or have Forums on their pages. Since everyone will want something slightly different we do not provide a single solution. What we do here, is give you some pointers at what to use, and what to avoid, and why. If you recommend a piece of software you use on Waldo, feel free to contact root@umu.man.ac.uk with what it is, and we will look at linking to it from here so others get the benefits of your experiences. If you are looking at something else, and would like the System Administor's opinion on it, feel free to email root@umu.man.ac.uk for advice.

If you install any third party software on the server for use by your members, you are expected to ensure that it is patched when security issues come up. Please subscribe to the announcements list for the software you are running to ensure you keep up-to-date with any security announcements. This is not to say that you must always run the latest version, but in the interests of all Societies, please run a secure version.

Forums

A forum simply sits within the rest of your site, and allows your members, and optionally others, to post comments on arbitrary topics, and reply to what others have posted. A very popular system with societies is phpBB. It works, it's customisable. And is very simple to configure. However, if you run phpBB, you MUST subscribe to their security announcements list and also keep your board up to date with the latest versions. If you just want something that's easy to install, use wordpress:

Site Management Systems

The easiest way to set up something to easily manage your website is to use some "blogging" software, such as wordpress which allows you to easily post content, and has a multitude of modules which you can add to do additional things (email announcements of changes, etc). WordPress is extremely easy to install, and gives you a working site very quickly. If you don't know what you want, you probably want this.

Forms

If you want some custom forms with entry management, but don't have the time to create a full mysql database, you might want to look at Zoho creator which makes it extremely simple.


The services described here are for University of Manchester Students' Union registered societies only. All requests must be made from yoursociety@umsu.man.ac.uk to root@umsu.man.ac.uk.