[haiku-web] Re: Website

On 2006-03-18 at 22:19:35 [+0100], Waldemar Kornewald <wkornew@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Charlie Clark wrote:
> >> I don't know if I care, particularly about single sign on. I mean -
> >> there are around 5 people who can and actually do log into our current
> >> web site.
> > 
> > That's the usual setup. However, I don't foresee any problems patching the
> > access module to work with a different DB.
> 
> Maybe I'm just too optimistic. I saw people writing articles in our wiki
> and thought that if it's easy for them then they would also contribute
> to our website. Also, I saw people writing newsletter articles (yes,
> that was a *long* time ago). Then, if I look at other project websites I
> often see contributed documentation material (Trac: InstallOnWindows,
> Linux: Getting Apache To Run, ...). That makes me think that there
> actually are people who want to do this. Our community will grow and I
> want to make it easy to contribute (one-click-away(TM) ;).

Don't hold your breath on this. It's been easy enough for years for people to 
get involved. It will be difficult enough to generate that content.

Furthermore, it's much easier to contribute than to keep up to date. 
Documentation is a bit like software in that respect. Even worse when it gets 
translated. You can't leave publically published content to the wikipedia 
bunch. Someone has to take responsibility for it.

> I'm sorry that I made this impression. I'm not at all a Linux guy. I
> prefer Windows 1000 times more than Linux, so I don't have Linux installed.

Linux is evil crud but it's okay for hosting things like Apache.
 
> We don't yet have a CMS. I'm helping RailFrog with usability. They want
> to focus on usability, but they have overly complex ideas, ATM. We might
> see a first release this month (it will already have WYSIWYG editing).
> Rails supports pretty much every DB on this planet, AFAIK.

... for which there is a ruby driver. Bang goes DB level data integrity then. 
Still, this is not usually much of an issue with content.
 
> >> > Then, we also have the problem of how to group query results by
> >> > component (also in the milestone details view). Maybe this requires a
> >> > "depth" argument.
> > 
> > I think we're running ahead of ourselves here
> 
> Heh, I like doing that. Plan at least two years into the future, so
> there are no unknown variables. :)
> 
> > I would simply do without the
> > cc: option which is simply a pain
> 
> What exactly is painful about a "Subscribe"/"Unsubscribe" link placed at
> the top of every ticket's details page?

The purpose would simply be to subscribe the active user to infos about a 
particular bug?

> > RSS is there for those that use it
> 
> I would not want to add *every* ticket that interests me...that's too
> much work, too separated, and requires organizing feeds. I simply want
> to be notified of changes and then delete the mail. I also want
> one-click subscription (which RSS is not).

With Opera it is. RSS itself is XML based so it's junk but it's there now.

Trac does not have a very good e-mail infrastructure so this function could 
cause problems over time.

My view is that this feature is not actually that useful. If you are 
interested in a particular part of the OS you subscribe to the team lists. 
This encourages team spirit.

Please sort out the organisation of teams and how bugs are to be dealt before 
asking for customisation. At yellowTAB we simply disabled the ability for 
non-developers to say or even see who was dealing with their bug.
 
> I've probably tested 60 CMSes. I even saw Flash-based CMSes...
> I can't believe it, but THEY WERE ALL FAR TOO COMPLICATED! With two
> exceptions. My conclusion at that time was:
> * Plone
> * maybe Sitellite
> * wait for RailFrog (Michael, I could need your help with convincing
> them what is easier to use ;)

I've been working with various CMS since 1999 so I consider myself without 
modesty as something of an expert. They all have their charms and problems.

> Sitellite is a pain to install.
> Plone is a huge monster and requires much work to install, optimize, and
> maintain.

You can't really optimise Plone - and no one does. Plone Solutions uses it 
purely for content management, runs wget over the site and puts the results 
behind Apache with some bells and whistles for large traffic sites. But 
installing, running and maintaining it isn't difficult. I just love Zope, 
warts and all. That it is still around despite the age of the underlying 
architecture is a tribute to some of the very smart bunnies who have 
contributed to it over time. ZSQL (despite the hideously inefficient backend) 
and PageTemplates are two things I would single out as really supporting good 
development with Zope.

Plone is just a nicely badged version of Zope - Alex Limi and his team have 
managed to achieve something that Zope Corp never did - make Zope look easy 
to user. The default CMF design was meant to be so ugly so that developers 
would improve it but they never noticed and carried on developing!

An ex-customer of mine uses Plone for his school's website and he is really 
happy that I recommended it to him. 

"> Glückwunsch! Das ist wirklich eine tolle Homepage für eine Schule! Wie
> finden es die Kinder und andere Lehrer?

Sehr gut, viele Leute sehen regelmäßig nach, was es neues gibt. Nett sind 
auch die neidischen Reaktionen der lieben Kollegen von anderen Schulen."

http://www.hrs-berge.de - if you're interested.

But you're right it comes with a whole load of stuff you will probably never 
need.

> So, we are now waiting for RailFrog. If that won't work we might choose
> something that Michael is coding on or we might just use Plone.

As I've said, I don't really care what system you go for. If it's Plone then 
I can help with the single sign-on using XUF or pretty much anything else.
 
> * moderated community CMS (replacing wiki)

Wiki / Blog is probably all that's necessary. Use a plugin WYSIWYG editor if 
possible. As far as I know Kupu is CMS agnostic.

> * issue tracker

+ migration from the existing system

> * mailing lists with forum gateway (or better: integrate both into one)

Mailboxer springs to mind - embeds Mailman in Zope/Plone.

> * single-sign-on
> 
> That's all we need.
> 
> mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > If you want to be serious about Trac, we need to at least consider Axeld
> > and Marcus. It wouldn't be fair to change bug trackers without talking
> > to them.
> 
> I'm mailing to the admin list, too. So, is Trac okay for you all? We'll
> adjust it a little bit, though (remove a few fields, simplify here and
> there, add component tree support, ...).

Fcum knows when I'll have time to do hierarchical component support. I'd want 
to raise this first with the Trac guys to see if we can come up with a common 
model so this only gets done once.
 
> > There is no way we will reach 140 FULL checkouts a day. That is like
> > 10,000 incremental checkouts a day.
> 
> I'd feel better with BerliOS (in case we have 141 checkouts per day ;).
> Also, those guys have enough time to maintain the server...

This is the key point. The bug tracker can go bang without causing too many 
problems. Wouldn't want that to happen with source code repository. I know of 
at least one software company that's happened to recently.
 
> > I wonder if we couldn't pull off some trickery. NFS or apache virtual
> > host with redirects or something.
> 
> Using SVK to mirror our repos would work, too.

I'm keeping out of the svn discussions.

Charlie

Other related posts: