[webdev] Re: evolution

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dale W Hodge wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: webdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:webdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
> > Of Tom Hull
> > Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 11:21 PM
> > To: webdev@xxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: [webdev] evolution
> >
> > Again, sorry for not being more pro-active on this. I am finally
> > feeling a bit better, so maybe I'll start to get some work done.
> >
> > It seems like there are two basic approaches we can follow:
> >
> >  1) Try to tinker with the existing aclug.org website.
> >
> >  2) Build something new, such as the openacs-based community
> >     website I started to sketch out in mail and on the wiki.
> 
> I'd really like to find something that would be easy to maintain not only by 
> us,
> but by whoever takes it over in the future. I don't see us having many
> volunteers if the system requires learning a bunch of new stuff to operate.

This could be a debilitating requirement. I'd rather shoot for something
that we really want, and plan on spending some time documenting how to do
that.

Despite my recent lack of productivity, I figure I can put a good deal of
development time into this over the next 6-12 months. (Unfortunately, I'll
be out of town the first two weeks of April, so the slow start is likely
to drag out.) I think that means that we can build some interesting things.
We can also plan for everyday maintenance to be straightforward -- especially
things like posting news, editing static text, adding comments, etc.

I'm leaning pretty strongly against zope for this -- it looks like a tough
learning curve, at least for developing new modules/applications. Openacs
has a lot of functionality, and the tcl scripting and sql are pretty easy
to get a grip on. (Tcl is a lot easier than perl, python, etc., and works
pretty good for just manipulating text, which is pretty much all the dynamic
content does.) Hacking in new things is pretty straightforward.

The other approach I'm pretty open to would be to hack something from scratch
mostly using php (probably apache and postgresql). The nice thing about this
is that you start out knowing everything that's there -- no clutter. Then we
could take concepts from other pieces, translate them, hack them in. Downside
is we get less out of the box, have more development churn, more bugs, etc.

> Before we actually build the new site, I think we should set up a test-bed and
> see how it actually works in practice.

I'd like to set up an openacs system along these lines. I just took a look
at openacs 4.5, which looks like a lot to chew, so I'm inclined to go back
to openacs 3.2.5, which I'm familiar with. (4.5 has a package management
system, which is neater but more work to configure and manage. It's also
beta.) I think the main thing that needs to be done is to put the openacs
distro into a cvs repository, then hack some build tools. The install and
configuration of aolserver and postgresql can be separate. One should be
able to setup a local testbed, download the cvs code (and possibly the
database) and run locally to hack on new things.

I have the dual-686 machine I mentioned; also an older 586 if you think
the former is overkill. Someone got a connection? We could do some initial
setup here at the house, then move the machine to a connection.

> > The latter is a pretty substantial effort (I'll go into why in a
> > future missive), so what I want to do first is to ask each of you
> > to comment on:
> >
> >  1) What you do/don't like about the current website.
> >
> >  2) What new features would you like to see in the aclug website.
> 
> Content is where we're severely lacking. I'm not sure how we're fix this, but
> some things that would go towards improving the overall content in no 
> particular
> order:
> 
>  * News feeds from various Linux sites & Tech sites

What do we need to do this? I've seen some apps that do this, but haven't
looked at the nuts & bolts.

>  * Automated FAQ system. FAQ-O-Matic or something similar

I listed several FAQ systems on the wiki. Could someone take a look at them?
What's good/bad/ugly, etc. There's a FAQ-O-Matic in use at the San Antonio
LUG; I wasn't very impressed with it, but didn't look too closely.

>  * A photo gallery for events pictures.
> 
>  * Mirroring some of the LDP?
> 
>  * A good search system. The option to feed the query to
>    Google, etc?

We can set up htdig to run locally; could also set it up to digest remote
websites if we want. Google is a big business, but we can front-end to them,
just don't have (i.e., can't afford) the update management.

>  * A maintainable links page.  We should link to all the
>    Major dists & their errata. Security updates should be
>    easy to find.

One thing openacs has is link management that checks for broken links,
flags them in database, etc. Recovers from temporary breaks.

>  * Presentation notes archive.
> 
>  * General Business notes archive.
> 
> I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of yet. :-)
> 
> --dwh
> 
> ---
> Dale W Hodge - dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Vice Chairman & Secretary - info@xxxxxxxxx
> Air Capital Linux User's Group  (ACLUG)
> ---

-- 
/*
 *  Tom Hull * thull at kscable.com * http://www.tomhull.com/
 */