SCN: Democracy Tour

[Rod Clark]

Patrick, 

   What I meant was making it usable, practical and easy. At
present, in addition to all the stuff I mentioned before, the
system automatically prevents people fromn uploading updated
files, which is something that people generally want to do
fairly regularly for their Web sites. The system blocks any
upload with the same filename as an existing file in the work
directory. This is a completely insane user-hostile feature for
personal Web site use. I don't think the system even gives
people any clue as to why their uploads fail when the system
blocks them this way.

   When people copy their files to public_html, then they have
to first realize why their uploads are failing, which isn't the
most obvious thing in the world, and then they have to use the
clunky menus to individually find and delete the files they
uploaded last time, and then upload the new files, and then use
the menu system to copy or move them to public_html, but - oops!
- not the copy command because it causes headaches like this. If
they forget that and leave one or more same-named files there,
or if they don't have time to mess with all this at the time,
then they'd have to remember to check beforehand next time that
all previous uploaded filenames have been deleted in the work
direcory before trying to upload any updated files. If they
somehow forget that step and can't figure out why their uploads
dont work, mahy of them will just give up and go to Geocities.
We are simply driving people into the arms of Geocities and
other sites, instead of SCN. This is the kind of reason why we
don't have very many personal site users. It's not because they
don't want to have sites here, all things being equal. People
do. But word of mouth about the comparative lack of usability of
our system for personal Web sites keeps them away.

Rod Clark

> >    SCN could probably attract many thousands of active personal
> > sites if it could offer a Web hosting service with particularly
> > good ways to access, upload and update people's personal sites.
> > FTP is a good way to do that. There might be others. Any ideas,
> > other than FTP?
> > 
> Rod,
> 
> Could you clarify this question just above? Do you mean other  ideas
> for attracting users to SCN?  ...

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