Markus,

I agree with simpifying... unless we are going to hire some staff.
I would strongly suggest a product such as NetObjects Fusion to maintain
the site. I think that one person in very little time could easily
maintain the code.

ed

markus.soell@... wrote:

>
> 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
>
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