member management (needs password)
add or invite new members (needs password)

We discussed and decided that for at least the short term, we would take me (Steve Isenberg) up on my offer to host the email list as part of my Dreamhost ISP account.
CharlyS is checking on what it would take for the group to get a 501c3; once we have this, then Dreamhost will give us a free account, and it's likely that groups.io would as well.
QUESTION: Does Lexington Community Center have a 501c3? If so could we use its 501c3 to get a free account at one of these?

When this is all done,

• All current Yahoo group members will be on the new list

See the group wiki at http://lctg.toku.us as I have put usage info there.

• Bob Melanson
• Bob Primak
• CharlyS
• Evie Isenberg
• Harry Forsdick
• Jonathan Goode
• John Rudy
• Lynnell Stern
• Peter Albin
• Steve Isenberg

Other needs

Options from https://lifehacker.com/how-to-save-and-migrate-your-yahoo-groups-data-before-i-1839172243

Another email list/group is transferring to groups.io and here is information they've shared with me. (Thanks CH)

• Their group is restricted, like YahooGroups, moderators must approve members
• The group has a private message archive, only new members require message approval
• Info: https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Quick-Start-for-Group-Formation and https://groups.io/static/help#suboptions
• That group does not need calendars, chat, or database
• They will consider Hashtags and Subgroups later
• There are features for Wiki and Polls which they can enable later
• It's likely that everyone will get an invite from groups.io
• Some concern/curiosity that cost may be more than $110
• More answers available at https://www.google.com/search?q=support@groups.io&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us
• Groups.io cannot get your Yahoo password so each member will need a password for Groups.io
• Regarding transfer to groups.io, groups.io says in brief: transfer requests must be given the go-ahead by 12/1/2019 as they cannot guarantee transfers submitted after that date. Also it appears that most Photos sections are currently [as of 10/19/2019] having an outage and it isn't known if they'll be restored prior to that deadline.

Dreamhost is a ISP (Internet Service Provider) that offers free services to 501c3 organizations. I (Steve Isenberg) own an account there (I pay for it) and it is no added cost to me to create another email list and to store files there.

• Dreamhost uses the Mailman email interface that provides good email list management, and management of the list can be handled by several people, not just me.
• As with groups.io, each member of the list would have a password and would be able to manage their subscription. The password would not come from Yahoo.
• Files would be stored as part of the wiki I also have for LCTG; although there may be other options we could explore.

From Late 2018 - Early 2019

Currently considering Steve Isenberg's Dreamhost discussion list, lexingtoncomputergroup@toku.us

1. Messaging (email distribution list)
2. Membership (who receives email)
3. Logging presentations (videos of presentations)
4. Simple website (a la Weebly) which could include:
   1. Record of past presentations (Logging of presentations) including Video of presentation, URLs of web pages used in presentation.
   2. Schedule for upcoming presentations. This would be a fixed place where you
   3. Blog for occasional articles written by members of importance to all members and of a long lasting nature.
   4. A “facebook” page (in the true original meaning of the concept) of members names and pictures.

[John Rudy]

1. What do we do with the current system (so we don’t forget anything). This is not the same as “what could be done with the current system?”
2. What is done outside the current system (usually by me). I maintain a word document which is reset after each Steering Committee Meeting and then up-reved between meetings. This is periodically distributed and Jonathan Goode uses it for meeting notices.
3. What does Jon do for meeting notices? I think he merely shortens what I have in the Word document and then of course he has to distribute it. I suppose that is #2 on Harry’s list [4b above]
4. I was thinking that a small group could initially work this and come up with a tentative proposal that appears to meet the needs and is buildable by OUR folks in a reasonable amount of time. Then share this with everyone. The initial group, I suppose, should be anyone who wants to be in it though more than, say, 6 is probably unwieldy

[Harry]
There is no problem with using two systems – Steve's ​Mailman is an excellent system used successfully by many, and I have had excellent results with Weebly, having used it since its inception on 2006 for all of my website development. It has all of the multimedia features you could want, and also a good ability for collaboration by multiple editors. It's what I used (with very little investment of time) for the lexcandt.weebly.com website. I used the plan white wrapper theme to avoid wasting my time of dreaming up clever graphics… Seems quite consistent with the Mailman look and feel. Just to show how quick and easy it is, I updated it to reflect the four items mentioned in my list above.

[George]
We should introduce this idea at one of our upcoming meetings and get feedback from the group. Also get feedback from those who don’t/can’t come to the meetings.

[Jonathan] This seems to be clean and nice, but I'm wondering what problem we're trying to solve. Are there things that bother you about our current Yahoo pages? The things that bother me are that Yahoo no longer automatically generates meeting notices from the calendar (and sometimes blocks access to it). Right now, I keep our Yahoo home page (at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/LexingtonComputerGroup/management/settings) pretty much up to date. I stopped keeping our calendar (at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/LexingtonComputerGroup/events) up to date a few months after it stopped generating meeting notices. I also manually generate meeting notices using the general format of the previously automatically generated notices. Do we need more or different? Is there a calendar facility that will allow automatic notice generation?

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