Website Circle tactical meetings [2023]

SoFA Members Discussion
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02-28 meeting

Check in and admin

Attendance: Laine (facilitator), CJ (secretary), Susan, John (late)

Triage issues

Notable Unassigned Tasks[Laine]:

Other Triage

  • Mailing list signup wording
    domain of the newsletter wording?
    • John - probably not our domain - perhaps outreach? maybe training?
    • Laine - some content sub-circle - perhaps email to content circle to see where it lives?
    • CJ - happy for content to be elsewhere, but think Website would be responsible for updating the text, and want to be careful around GDPR compliance
    • who should send the email?
      • Laine will pass this on to Content Circle
  • Forum Update Frequency & Process
    • John and Leila are doing some regular updates - once a month check-in time - 1st sunday
    • Q& Recation:
      • currently using staging server to test updates first
      • for code updates? yes
      • how long does it take?
        • took a few hours to get up to speed on a few things, but it will probably take .5-1hr each month now that the system is good to
      • Have we had issues with updates in the past?
        • yes - last fall there was a big one that Deborah reported, and we rolled back and then updated
      • what kind of testing is happening on the staging?
        • no script yet, but
      • how easy is the roll back?
        • think it’s easy but hasn’t done it self
  • Update Frequency and Workflow
    • sociocracy.info given to SoFA by previous publisher; SoFA is responsible for this site, but no-one is looking at content there; CJ deferring to auto-updates
      • Hope occasionally adds backlinks to sociocracy.info-- but that will prob stop as hope is leaving sofa March 31st
    • Other non-SoFA projects run by the parent nonprofit, such as ISCB; unclear who holds responsibility for this site
    • CJ suggests minimal intervention, whatever’s easiest; ask again about ISCB, although maybe do some work to migrate ISCB away from Dreamhost
    • Laine mainly happy doing updates by themselves, happy to cross-train someone
  • Plugin Audit - Deferred

Things to think about for next meeting:

[ 3/7 Discussion ] Securi Pro WAF vs Cloudflare WAF [Laine]

  • Kinsta and uptime guarantee
  • security plugins banned by Kinsta
  • Why are we using our own Cloudflare when we should be getting it from Kinsta for free?
  • Laine encourages looking at the notes above
  • Had been using Cloudflare before Kinsta
  • Benefits to getting security off of the WordPress stack, though hoping Ninja Firewall is low-impact and still beneficial
  • Traffic successfully proxied through Cloudflare, but it’s using the free plan and we should be getting the benefits of the advanced plan with Kinsta integration; might need to hit up Kinsta support about this
  • Probably redundant to use both Cloudflare and Securi’s WAF (Web Application Firewall); want to make space for everyone to weigh in without too much bias

Check out

02-21 meeting

Check in and admin

Checklist review, metrics review, and project updates are all possible categories for future discussion if we’re wanting them. See the Holocracy discussion on tactical meetings for details.

Triage issues

  • Website Performance issues today (Laine)
    – bumped to top - urgent - started over the weekend?
    — could be from conference traffic, but doesn’t seem like enough - over the weekend it sorted it self out quickly - currently their
    — kinsta suggests reducing ajax usage - seems like a very likely culprit
    — kinsta - database poorly optimized - unclear how urgent that is
    – needs to move forward: ideas and discussion - ways to reduce ajax usage in the short term? anyone have an opportunity to research?
    — is it worth reverting? run a diff?
    ---- last updates were… over a week ago, could be from updates but… seems like a big delay
    — is there something we can check with backend or front end usage changes that could be causing the sudden change?
    ---- for instance, using Divi more? doing more groundhogg
    — does seem to correlate with backend usage - more work has been getting done more quickly, more people doing more work
    — it does seem Divi work is likely to be happening more and

  • Replace Divi Teams (John)
    — update from Laine: David got back with a plugin review and decided it’s best to use a custom made CPT
    ---- laine will

  • Divi Theme Builder broken (John): question in task thread
    — flyingpress conflict - needs to be addressed - complex technical issue
    ---- unassigning to John and putting in future
    — current work-around: edit in safe mode

  • Groundhogg feature request: staging site mode (John): question in task thread
    – what would be helpful:
    ---- disable emails
    ---- disable any recurring payments
    ---- disable webhooks
    ---- have the ability to re-enable any of these for testing
    ---- make it easy to clear all waiting events (in the case that there are many thousands after making a duplicate for testing)

  • International URLs question (John): report
    – conversation on board - John suggests Kinsta redirect supports advanced enough regex to make this work, CJ & John make it happen?
    — consented to moving forward with it!

  • Clean up garbage left by Yoast SEO (CJ)

    • most of Yoast is cleaned up, still some odds and ends (translation, Relavanssi (sp?))
    • is this good enough?
      • seems like relavanssi stuff could be deleted - can re-indexed if needed but its slow
    • CJ: delete relavanssi records and mark done

  • Schedule operation meetings for Website Circle (John): do now?

    • Proposal: same time, keep an 1hr on calendar, but aim for 30min
    • Consented

  • Plugin Audit (CJ)

    • wanting to understand how to best move forward, especially by including Laine in the process
    • Reactions:
      • likes the idea of chopping it up into bite sized pieces
      • interested in ways to reduce plugin load
      • Sue interested in understanding plugins via sync documentation
    • Proposal:
      • next meeting CJ will present the Plugin Audit Spreadsheed and next steps will be assigned/selected for Susan and other team members async, review the follow meeting - use extra time for this ops work

  • Renew WP Activity Log License? (CJ)

  • Forum Update Frequency & Process (CJ)

    • save for next week

  • Update Frequency and Workflow (CJ)

    • save for next week

  • Mailing list signup wording (CJ)

    • save for next week

  • Double Check subscription renewal notifications/reminders are functioning properly (CJ)

    • Would like to add Subscription Reminder functionality - what are the next steps?
      • doesn’t like that we need multiple other plugins to make subscriptions work - but subscription reminders are pretty basic, and feels like it’s good enough for now and safe enough to try
      • long term would like to evaluate as plugin audit

Checkout Feedback:

  • how did notes work for us this meeting?
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