Support/MobileSiteMigration
This page outlined our options for how and when to merge the Mobile support site for Firefox. The decision has been made to go with a slightly modified version of #2 below; see MobileSiteMerge for the plan.
The Mobile team plans to release final builds of Fennec for android around mid Q3 which will result in a huge spike in the number of users. What they would like is to have a support site running with the new Support forums if possible. By the same token, we plan to eventually merge the mobile support site with the desktop support site which gets much harder the more usage the mobile support site gets. So we should make a decision from the following options:
1) Merge ALL of mobile.sumo in before Mobile beta KB + Forums. The current Mobile support will merge into a Kitsune discussion forum (which is sort of what it like now) and we'll add a Mobile tag for the support forum.
Pluses:
- This is the earliest we can do the merge so this is the fewest possible number of user-login collisions and the easiest merge.
- Any new community members we get from this increase in users will be integrated right away into our existing community.
Minuses:
- We'll have to merge the KB which may result in collisions since titles can't be the same and we'll have to preface articles with "Mobile:". The Kitsune KB will handle this better but it's not possible right now.
- We'll have to spend developer time and resources on this merge (to do templates, categories, search, SHOWFOR) pushing back timelines.
2) Merge the current mobile forums before Mobile beta but keep the KB on mobile.sumo and merge that after we're done with the Kitsune KB. We'll link from the mobile site to the forums on the desktop site. This is the middle of the road approach.
Pluses:
- This keeps the KB collision problem isolated until we can handle it better.
- The bulk of new users will probably be coming in for (forum) support so they'll sign up on the desktop site so we're mitigating much of the username collision problem.
Minuses:
- You'll need to sign in to two sites if you want to be a mobile KB contributor.
- It's confusing -- [[wiki links]] won't work for mobile pages on the forums, searching on the mobile site won't find forum threads.
- We still need to spend some developer time on the merge (but perhaps not as much since the KB will be separate).
3) Merge in 2011 when Kitsune is done completely. Upgrade the Mobile site to Kitsune incrementally like we're doing with the desktop site.
Pluses:
- Least amount of work now. That's not ZERO work and we'll still have to push stuff and deal with database updates on mobile.sumo but it's stuff that we'll have done on desktop, too.
Minuses:
- The eventual merge will be very tough and disruptive.
- We expect lots of mobile users to have joined so there will be more username collisions.
- Links to forum threads on mobile.sumo will break (there aren't that many now, but if there are lots, that's a greater risk).
- We keep the communities apart (and have to manage both communities) during a critical growth phase -- making later integration harder.
4) Never merge the sites. Keep mobile on mobile.sumo and desktop on sumo, upgrading them independently.
Pluses:
- Never having to deal with the merge issue.
Minuses:
- We'll need to justify to the websec group since it costs 10K a year to do security per domain.
- The two sites will need constant maintenance and double testing.
- It also means that we never get the benefits of a unified support community.
