Hi Pavel, hello all,
this is a suggestion for a possible way to proceed to start working
on a new Firebird website. With his recent changes to the current
website, Pavel demonstrated that he is able to create good looking
pages also with PHPNuke. However, for the new role this site is going
to play for the community, PHPNuke isn't really helpful. I suggest to
do the following:

1. Dispense with PHPNuke
2. Distribute the website editor tasks among currently active members
3. Pavel is coordinating webmaster

Let me shortly explain these one by one:

1. Dispense with PHPNuke.

Why? PHPNuke is a content management system, more precisely one for
portal-type websites. This has some advantages and also some
drawbacks: Two advantages are easy management of lots of content and
the possibility to have interactive elements. The disadvantages are:
A loss in flexibility for page design (in any case it's more work to
do many different pages), a loss in flexibility for the distribution
of webmaster tasks to many persons, the loss of flexibility in the
choice of hosting and pages which load potentially slower because
served from a database back end.

Now, for the site Pavel had in mind, I understand it made some sense.
But with the transition to a Firebird official website, especially
the interactive aspect of the site, including the "general news"
aspect with topics not directly related to Firebird, should
disappear. You probably read my earlier message explaining why:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IBDI/message/2554

By the way, I don't know a single OSS project site with interactive
content. On the other hand, the content which should be there, isn't
that much and especially it's not going to change very frequently.

So the two main advantages of a content management system, we don't
need them for the Firebird site in its new orientation.

2. Distribute the website editor tasks:

This is the second important aspect. A plain HTML website allows to
distribute webmaster tasks very very easily and gives greatest
flexibility to the different webmasters, who can write their pages,
add new ones and link them together as they please.

At first sight, my "minimum requirements" for the Firebird site are
not very demanding. But usually one tends to under-estimate the
amount of work it represents. For the sake of a coherent presentation
of the community, I wish to have a "complete" website, one with
content. I have the strong feeling that maintenance of such a site by
a single webmaster isn't a good idea, it would be quite a frustrating
job. Also things go easier, if we give editorial competence directly
to the persons at the source of the respective information.

I made some minor changes to my "demo site" but please continue
reading this first and take a look at the site after...

I am quite pleased with how jBoss.org presents itself and have
especially taken their "Projects" idea because distinguishing
different projects is usefull, also for Firebird.

I would like to win Helen as an editor (I call editor the webmasters
responsable for content) for the "About" and "FAQ" parts of the site,
since I read somewhere she has some writing skills ;) I hope you have
a little time for this, Helen.

Another thing where I have her in mind is what could be called
the "Firebird documentation project". Well, just ideas... That would
mean to move the more community related activities of IBDI over to
Firebird. (or to have them on both, Firebird and IBDI for a while and
see how things go...)

The second project would be the "server" project, I used the code
name FirebirdSql for that, just a suggestion. The project pages
(empty at present) would present these projects, look at the
jBoss.org site for what it might look like.

When you'll look at the demo site you'll see I've put Mark as the
editor for that server project page for the moment. It's all just
examples. For many site sections I haven't yet put a name, but
basically there are Reed, Claudio, Frank, ...

You see, I agree with Reed the webmaster position should be in hands
of active members. Only I suggest to distribute this work, because
finally being webmaster isn't really an attractive job and things
would go easier if this work could be split up among several members.

3. Pavel is coordinating webmaster

Well, where several work on one thing, it needs a little bit of
coordination and since Pavel is already the webmaster, I think he
might be available for this position.

Pavel, I hope you like this idea. You would basically let the others
care about the site content, and yourself care about things like
creating new site sections where needed (try to avoid it ;), make
backups, run some utility to scan for broken links, Take care about
general site design etc... That's already enough work I guess, since
you also work on other things.

About design, you know my taste. If you all agree with the concept, I
could send you a .zip file with the current setup and you could
modify it as you please. I recommend to give low priority to such
modifications though. The site is very simple and that's ok. If you
try to do cosmetic work on it, you'll spend very much time and I
guess there's more urgent things to do than website cosmetics.
Anyway, it will be up to you...

Concerning hosting, I'd recommend to simply give plain access for all
editors. Of course there are rules about who may do what...

Guess that's the moment to ask you to take a look at the demo site.

Go to the "About Firebird" page and under "Contact Information" click
the "webmaster" link. Then look around (the Page editing HowTo and
related pages) and you'll see the concept. I hope you like it.

Regards
Markus