Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Jon
PS. I decided not to create a "theme" for Inkscape as this would mess up interoperability with the non-WordPress part of the website, and also make it hard for people not familiar with WP to know what to do when editing pages.
On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Whoa...looks pretty good. I'm pretty amazed.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Yeah, I"m very impressed. I didn't think that WP could be made to look exactly like our site. Amazing. The posting seems easy. I think it might be good if we could have trackback and comments. I read something saying that the new Wordpress has pretty good protection against spamming, etc. However, we can turn off commenting for each post, as is shown in the admin interface.
What does everyone else say? Oh, also where will the links to the various feeds that Wordpress generates go? Maybe you could put those in somewhere prominently.
PS. I decided not to create a "theme" for Inkscape as this would mess up interoperability with the non-WordPress part of the website, and also make it hard for people not familiar with WP to know what to do when editing pages.
Yeah, that sounds good. Are you just including the basic page that wordpress generates in the php? Man, I'm gonna have to do this for my site ;)
Jon
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Whoa...looks pretty good. I'm pretty amazed.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Yeah, I"m very impressed. I didn't think that WP could be made to look exactly like our site. Amazing. The posting seems easy.
I guess that's positive feedback ;). Well I tried to make it as transparent as I could. Obviously that means I haven't taken advantage of all of WordPress' features, but that can come later very easily.
I think it might be good if we could have trackback and comments. I read something saying that the new Wordpress has pretty good protection against spamming, etc. However, we can turn off commenting for each post, as is shown in the admin interface.
Hmmmm... I'm unsure about this. I run WordPress on my own blog, so have first hand experience of dealing with comment spam using it. Yes, it's very good, yes it's better in 1.5 (the new version), but it is still a problem all the same. I use a filtering/pattern matching plugin called Spam Karma -- it does similar for WP as SpamAssassin does for email. It catches most stuff, but some still gets through. If we allowed comments/trackbacks, *someone* would have to receive the emails for it and manually check for spam, they'd also have to delete the spam.
Also, allowing comments would probably mean the inevitable clueless users who think it's some sort of technical support forum. Stuff like that takes up developer's time to deal with, and I think it's more important that they can concentrate on making Inkscape.
What does everyone else say? Oh, also where will the links to the various feeds that Wordpress generates go? Maybe you could put those in somewhere prominently.
Have a long hard look at that button which says "Subscribe" in the navigational sidebar ;)
PS. I decided not to create a "theme" for Inkscape as this would mess up interoperability with the non-WordPress part of the website, and also make it hard for people not familiar with WP to know what to do when editing pages.
Yeah, that sounds good. Are you just including the basic page that wordpress generates in the php? Man, I'm gonna have to do this for my site ;)
The output WordPress produces is generated through "template tags" (which are really just functions). You include on file at the top of the page, which sets everything up, defines all the functions etc. Then you just write you "template tags" where you need them (or at least, it's *almost* as simple as that).
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 00:16 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Whoa...looks pretty good. I'm pretty amazed.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Yeah, I"m very impressed. I didn't think that WP could be made to look exactly like our site. Amazing. The posting seems easy.
I guess that's positive feedback ;). Well I tried to make it as transparent as I could. Obviously that means I haven't taken advantage of all of WordPress' features, but that can come later very easily.
I think it might be good if we could have trackback and comments. I read something saying that the new Wordpress has pretty good protection against spamming, etc. However, we can turn off commenting for each post, as is shown in the admin interface.
Hmmmm... I'm unsure about this. I run WordPress on my own blog, so have first hand experience of dealing with comment spam using it. Yes, it's very good, yes it's better in 1.5 (the new version), but it is still a problem all the same. I use a filtering/pattern matching plugin called Spam Karma -- it does similar for WP as SpamAssassin does for email. It catches most stuff, but some still gets through. If we allowed comments/trackbacks, *someone* would have to receive the emails for it and manually check for spam, they'd also have to delete the spam.
Also, allowing comments would probably mean the inevitable clueless users who think it's some sort of technical support forum. Stuff like that takes up developer's time to deal with, and I think it's more important that they can concentrate on making Inkscape.
What does everyone else say? Oh, also where will the links to the various feeds that Wordpress generates go? Maybe you could put those in somewhere prominently.
Have a long hard look at that button which says "Subscribe" in the navigational sidebar ;)
Okay, I think that we should keep just Current News, and put the news archive near the posts and then put the links to the feeds at the bottom of the posts. Maybe news archive, and then links to the diff. feed formats should go at the bottom. Our left menu is horribly overloaded...we ned to reorganize that sometime here...
PS. I decided not to create a "theme" for Inkscape as this would mess up interoperability with the non-WordPress part of the website, and also make it hard for people not familiar with WP to know what to do when editing pages.
Yeah, that sounds good. Are you just including the basic page that wordpress generates in the php? Man, I'm gonna have to do this for my site ;)
The output WordPress produces is generated through "template tags" (which are really just functions). You include on file at the top of the page, which sets everything up, defines all the functions etc. Then you just write you "template tags" where you need them (or at least, it's *almost* as simple as that).
Very cool!
Jon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jon Phillips wrote: | Okay, I think that we should keep just Current News, and put the news | archive near the posts and then put the links to the feeds at the bottom | of the posts. Maybe news archive, and then links to the diff. feed | formats should go at the bottom. Our left menu is horribly | overloaded...we ned to reorganize that sometime here...
Are you saying that we should drop the "archive.php" page and instead put its contents below the current news? I think that would create extra mess; not everybody is going to be interested in the archives, and there is news going back as far as October 2003.
I took out the subscribe.php page and link -- put the links to feeds down below the current news. I also put a link to the archive back in there and removed the link from the sidebar. Let me know if you have any comments :).
It's worth noting also that publishing the news through WordPress has cleared up all the validation errors (at least on the index page). WordPress is quite good at closing tags when you forget, and encoding entities for you.
Jon
- -- Jonathan Leighton aka. Turnip http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 13:25 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jon Phillips wrote: | Okay, I think that we should keep just Current News, and put the news | archive near the posts and then put the links to the feeds at the bottom | of the posts. Maybe news archive, and then links to the diff. feed | formats should go at the bottom. Our left menu is horribly | overloaded...we ned to reorganize that sometime here...
Are you saying that we should drop the "archive.php" page and instead put its contents below the current news? I think that would create extra mess; not everybody is going to be interested in the archives, and there is news going back as far as October 2003.
No...
I took out the subscribe.php page and link -- put the links to feeds down below the current news. I also put a link to the archive back in there and removed the link from the sidebar. Let me know if you have any comments :).
It's worth noting also that publishing the news through WordPress has cleared up all the validation errors (at least on the index page). WordPress is quite good at closing tags when you forget, and encoding entities for you.
Yes, this is exactly what I wanted. Great! Yes, the positives of the WordPress seem great at this point. Thanks for your work. Anyone else have comments on it?
Jon
Jonathan Leighton aka. Turnip http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Also, how do you navigate through next and previous entries? Right now there are set number of entries.
Jon
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Also, how do you navigate through next and previous entries? Right now there are set number of entries.
There are 5 entries on the home page (that can be altered, have a look in the WordPress options). The rest is accessed through archives, have a look on the archives page.
Or is that not what you mean?
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 00:17 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2005-03-11 at 23:07 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Ok, I've finished making an example of doing the Inkscape news with WordPress. Please navigate to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/ and have a look. If you want to try out the admin, then go to http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/wp-admin/. The us.erna.me and pa.ssw.ord is "Test" and "inkscape" respectively. This username has full access privileges -- I might have a change that if abuse becomes a problem, but I don't think the people on this list would be the ones to do that so we'll see how it goes.
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Also, how do you navigate through next and previous entries? Right now there are set number of entries.
There are 5 entries on the home page (that can be altered, have a look in the WordPress options). The rest is accessed through archives, have a look on the archives page.
Or is that not what you mean?
No, I mean paging controls for moving forward and backwards through the stack of current and past posts. I think that should be at the bottom of the posts. It is too hidden in the burdened menu. COol!
Jon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jon Phillips wrote: |>>Also, how do you navigate through next and previous entries? Right now |>>there are set number of entries. |>> |> |>There are 5 entries on the home page (that can be altered, have a look |>in the WordPress options). The rest is accessed through archives, have a |>look on the archives page. |> |>Or is that not what you mean? | | | No, I mean paging controls for moving forward and backwards through the | stack of current and past posts. I think that should be at the bottom of | the posts. It is too hidden in the burdened menu. COol! | | Jon |
I think I'm still confused about this (sorry!)
Please have a look at the updated version and let me know if I've done what you mean.
- -- Jonathan Leighton aka. Turnip http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 13:28 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Jon Phillips wrote: |>>Also, how do you navigate through next and previous entries? Right now |>>there are set number of entries. |>> |> |>There are 5 entries on the home page (that can be altered, have a look |>in the WordPress options). The rest is accessed through archives, have a |>look on the archives page. |> |>Or is that not what you mean? | | | No, I mean paging controls for moving forward and backwards through the | stack of current and past posts. I think that should be at the bottom of | the posts. It is too hidden in the burdened menu. COol! | | Jon |
I think I'm still confused about this (sorry!)
Please have a look at the updated version and let me know if I've done what you mean.
Yes, the updated version looks good. I mean next and previous arrows to navigate forward and backwards between like 10 or so entries. So if you have 100 entries, and you are looking at 10 at a time, then you can hit previous to see the next ten. Then once on that page you will have a next arrow to take you back to the newer entries as well as a previous arrow to take you the next set of 10. Does that make sense. Google has at the bottom of a search query. It is standard practice in sorting through large amounts of data.
Jon
Jonathan Leighton aka. Turnip http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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Jon Phillips wrote:
Yes, the updated version looks good. I mean next and previous arrows to navigate forward and backwards between like 10 or so entries. So if you have 100 entries, and you are looking at 10 at a time, then you can hit previous to see the next ten. Then once on that page you will have a next arrow to take you back to the newer entries as well as a previous arrow to take you the next set of 10. Does that make sense. Google has at the bottom of a search query. It is standard practice in sorting through large amounts of data.
Jon
Ah yes, sorry -- I thought that was what you meant but was confused because you said about the left menu. I can put this in, although I don't really see the need as the articles are split over each month anyway. But I'll put it in.
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 23:57 +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Jon Phillips wrote:
Yes, the updated version looks good. I mean next and previous arrows to navigate forward and backwards between like 10 or so entries. So if you have 100 entries, and you are looking at 10 at a time, then you can hit previous to see the next ten. Then once on that page you will have a next arrow to take you back to the newer entries as well as a previous arrow to take you the next set of 10. Does that make sense. Google has at the bottom of a search query. It is standard practice in sorting through large amounts of data.
Jon
Ah yes, sorry -- I thought that was what you meant but was confused because you said about the left menu. I can put this in, although I don't really see the need as the articles are split over each month anyway. But I'll put it in.
Once that is done, I support implementing this on inkscape.org. Other people speak up on the list please...
Jon
Jon Phillips wrote:
Ah yes, sorry -- I thought that was what you meant but was confused because you said about the left menu. I can put this in, although I don't really see the need as the articles are split over each month anyway. But I'll put it in.
Once that is done, I support implementing this on inkscape.org. Other people speak up on the list please...
Have another look now. Feel free to create lots of extra posts if you want to test it out more.
Jon
Okay, I wrote a wee program in Ruby to get the data from the text files and write them to the database (I'm attempting to learn Ruby so was glad of the chance to write something that actually was of any use ; ). I did that locally and then exported the database to the current live location: http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/.
So right now everything is ready and could be put onto inkscape.org. I'll either need CVS access or someone willing to set it up that I can send the stuff to. On that note, how are databases dealt with on SourceForge?
If anyone objects to going ahead with this, now would be a good time to speak up.
Jon
PS. There was *one* entry ("More Rect Improvements") that didn't have a date with it, so I took a date midway between the surrounding two. Stuff like that would be prevented having a proper publishing system.
MenTaLguY wrote:
On Sat, 2005-03-12 at 19:02, Jon Phillips wrote:
Once that is done, I support implementing this on inkscape.org. Other people speak up on the list please...
I love this. Feel free to implement.
-mental
On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 09:51:55PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Okay, I wrote a wee program in Ruby to get the data from the text files and write them to the database (I'm attempting to learn Ruby so was glad of the chance to write something that actually was of any use ; ). I did that locally and then exported the database to the current live location: http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/.
So right now everything is ready and could be put onto inkscape.org. I'll either need CVS access or someone willing to set it up that I can send the stuff to. On that note, how are databases dealt with on SourceForge?
If anyone objects to going ahead with this, now would be a good time to speak up.
Personally I prefer the current system, but if this results in others being able to take over posting news, then I guess that's one less thing for me to have to do.
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 09:51:55PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Okay, I wrote a wee program in Ruby to get the data from the text files and write them to the database (I'm attempting to learn Ruby so was glad of the chance to write something that actually was of any use ; ). I did that locally and then exported the database to the current live location: http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/.
So right now everything is ready and could be put onto inkscape.org. I'll either need CVS access or someone willing to set it up that I can send the stuff to. On that note, how are databases dealt with on SourceForge?
If anyone objects to going ahead with this, now would be a good time to speak up.
Personally I prefer the current system, but if this results in others being able to take over posting news, then I guess that's one less thing for me to have to do.
Bryce
We need to come to a decision on this.
I think it would be a good idea to use WordPress *if* people want and intend to post news with it that wouldn't otherwise post news with the current system. If not then there's not much point using it as Bryce doesn't like it and he's the one who currently does the news.
So I'm really looking for opinions on this -- if you have one please share it.
Regards, Jon
PS. Bryce, out of interest (+ I might be able to do something about it too), what is it you don't like about WordPress, or prefer about the current system?
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 09:51:55PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Okay, I wrote a wee program in Ruby to get the data from the text
files
and write them to the database (I'm attempting to learn Ruby so was
glad
of the chance to write something that actually was of any use ; ).
I
did that locally and then exported the database to the current live location: http://inkscape.turnipspatch.com/.
So right now everything is ready and could be put onto inkscape.org. I'll either need CVS access or someone willing to set it up that I
can
send the stuff to. On that note, how are databases dealt with on SourceForge?
If anyone objects to going ahead with this, now would be a good time
to
speak up.
Personally I prefer the current system, but if this results in others being able to take over posting news, then I guess that's one less
thing
for me to have to do.
Bryce
We need to come to a decision on this.
I think it would be a good idea to use WordPress *if* people want and intend to post news with it that wouldn't otherwise post news with the current system. If not then there's not much point using it as Bryce doesn't like it and he's the one who currently does the news.
So I'm really looking for opinions on this -- if you have one please share it.
Chances are, I would update the news a little more frequently if it was a little less time consuming, which Wordpress offers.
One Q about it though... would we still have to run the "publish" script when changes are made? If not, that in itself makes it worth it.
-Josh
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
One Q about it though... would we still have to run the "publish" script when changes are made? If not, that in itself makes it worth it.
No, I don't think so, as the news is stored in a database rather than a file.
Jonathan Leighton wrote:
I think it would be a good idea to use WordPress *if* people want and intend to post news with it that wouldn't otherwise post news with the current system. If not then there's not much point using it as Bryce doesn't like it and he's the one who currently does the news.
So I'm really looking for opinions on this -- if you have one please share it.
Bryce should have the final say in this, of course. But I like it myself. And the main benefit would be if this encourages input, and thus Bryce then -isn't- the only one doing the news. Also, we could give other sites our RSS feed, if they want it.
Bob
On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 04:54:14PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
PS. Bryce, out of interest (+ I might be able to do something about it too), what is it you don't like about WordPress, or prefer about the current system?
I think mainly my reluctance stems from past problems with other content management systems. WordPress looks like a great tool, and it looks like it's got some people excited about using it, and that's good. It's nice that it has RSS.
There's a number of issues I've seen when converting to a CMS in the past. Some of these were specific to the particlar CMS's we used at the time, others are probably more inherent issues with CMS in general.
Traditionally, the CMS's are always touted as "making it easier for non-techies to add content to the site, so more people will work on it". This is out of a feeling that web applications are easier to use than commandline tools, and that "everyone" is comfortable using web tools but not everyone is comfortable using commandline tools. Unfortunately, oftentimes CMS's end up just as complex; the more features the CMS has, the more complex. As well, it often turns out that there are people who prefer doing things through commandline over web tools, who end up ceasing contributing to the site. Thus, in the end, the _number_ of contributors doesn't change, just their identity.
One cost of most CMS's is that they're more computationally intensive. Oftentimes they're implemented as "dynamic pages", meaning that things get generated on the fly. There are some advantages to this, but also some disadvantages. For example, the two times I've gone through conversion to Zope, performance was dismissed as an issue to consider, yet once the system was implemented, it would break whenever we got Slashdotted. One ends up implementing Squid proxies, etc. in order to overcome this. With static pages sitting in a file system with nothing but Apache (and maybe PHP) needed, the number of things that can go wrong is much smaller, and performance is essentially a non-issue.
CMS can also be somewhat inflexible in certain ways, compared with plain file system based approaches. For instance, if you need to make a global modification to a site, if everything's in a plain file system it's pretty straightforward to write a sed or perl script to make the change. With a CMS, you're limited to the tools that come bundled with it; often you could create an add on or hack into the CMS code itself, but it can turn out less time consuming to just make all the changes manually.
Maintenance can also be an issue. In the current system our news is implemented in nothing more than two php files (the front page plus a second page for archived news items). With a CMS, in order to "simplify" things, it often requires adding a database, some libraries, templates, extra code, config files, etc. and from an administration point of view you've actually complicated things a good deal. Is the extra administrative complexity worth the user simplicity? In a big company, perhaps, but in a modestly sized OSS project like ours, the person using the system may end up being one and the same as the guy mainaining it.
Education is another area of concern. In a company with marketing people who don't know CVS, education may come out favoring the CMS since they're more WYSIWYG. However, in an open source project, the random contributor is more likely to have had familiarity with CVS and/or PHP than with a given CMS. A random contribution is more likely to come in as a raw HTML or PHP page.
Finally, change always seems simpler before you've started doing it. In each case where a CMS was employed, it seemed like a straightforward thing to implement. As with anything, the devil's in the details. By the time you're done, the impact could net more problems than benefits.
Now, I wouldn't say all of the above would happen with WordPress. I've never used it for anything non-trivial, and besides, the present proposal is to use it only for managing the news.
I also wouldn't say the present system is without flaws, or that it couldn't be improved on. I'd love to not have to log into the website in order to deploy a change. It'd be sweet if the news items could also get generated into an RSS feed. But it works, I understand it, and it doesn't require much administration.
Would adopting WordPress make it easier for some users to post news? Well, almost certainly. Would those people actually post news? Given that they're not posting news now with the current system, this doesn't seem to be quite so clear.
I think people tend to mis-estimate the "work" involved in adding news items to a website. Looking at most websites you notice that the news items are short blurbs, maybe with a few links. Seems simple. One would assume most of the effort is taken up by operating the levers to get the item into the site. The first time you post news, that's probably true - you have to learn what script to run, what file to edit, etc. But after you've done it a few times, the mechanics are trivial. You can rely on finger muscle memory to do it.
The real work is in actually _writing_ the news item. First, you have to notice that something is newsworthy. For most people, they simply aren't thinking about that; they probably just jot a note to the mailing list and leave it at that. Second you have to understand it. Often our news items are highly technical (i.e., involve new features with new jargon). Next comes the writing. If you're really lucky, you can cut and paste the item, but most of the time you have to rewrite it; it could be too long, or written in first person, or assume knowledge from the reader that may not be there. Then some other formatting work (adding links, imgs, etc.) Writing two or three news items can easily take up half an hour. Committing the change and pulling it up on the website is the easy part, and only takes a minute or so.
Thus, if I had to guess, I'd bet that changing the technology for managing the news will not necessarily result in more news getting posted (at least, not over the long term). I definitely could be wrong, though, which is why I had been keeping my opinions to myself. Sometimes technology actually does have a big impact - wiki is a good example. So despite my skepticism I'm keeping an open mind. I definitely don't want to be the stubborn old man sitting in the way of progress! (8^[=~
Anyway, that's the long dissertaion explanation of where my mind is. Basically, if WordPress will ensure we get more people frequently contributing news, then that's good thing, but otherwise, I'm comfortable with the current system and happy to continue playing journalist. If we go forward with WordPress, and it enables people to take over doing news directly, then great, I can devote that time to coding instead. ;-)
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 04:54:14PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
PS. Bryce, out of interest (+ I might be able to do something about it too), what is it you don't like about WordPress, or prefer about the current system?
I think mainly my reluctance stems from past problems with other content management systems. WordPress looks like a great tool, and it looks like it's got some people excited about using it, and that's good. It's nice that it has RSS.
There's a number of issues I've seen when converting to a CMS in the past. Some of these were specific to the particlar CMS's we used at the time, others are probably more inherent issues with CMS in general.
Traditionally, the CMS's are always touted as "making it easier for non-techies to add content to the site, so more people will work on it". This is out of a feeling that web applications are easier to use than commandline tools, and that "everyone" is comfortable using web tools but not everyone is comfortable using commandline tools. Unfortunately, oftentimes CMS's end up just as complex; the more features the CMS has, the more complex. As well, it often turns out that there are people who prefer doing things through commandline over web tools, who end up ceasing contributing to the site. Thus, in the end, the _number_ of contributors doesn't change, just their identity.
This is very important. You probably know even better than I do that a crappy UI can make an otherwise great piece of software (be that a web application or a desktop one) into something that is extremely difficult to use. From what I've seen (and I've spent quite a few hours researching this in the past), Open Source CMSes are seriously lacking on the UI side of things (although not just that -- I have plenty of other gripes with most of them). However WordPress (and Textpattern, come to think of it) really stands out at me as an app where a lot of thought has been put into the interface -- obviously everyone has their own opinion (*especially* when it comes to interfaces), but I don't think anyone would deny that the interface has been designed as opposed to being the outworking of adding new features.
One thing that I haven't mentioned before is that the "Write" page for the prototype I made is currently set to "Advanced". Feel free to change it to "Simple" in Options>Writing and observe the difference -- I don't think there's anything there that anyone would have difficulty with.
At the end of the day there's no definite answer about whether WordPress or the current way is easier; it all comes down to opinion. I'm not out to make anyone's life more difficult, and I do happen to hold the opinion that it's easier with WP -- both because there are less steps involved, and it takes less effort just type something out in an admin panel.
I'd be interested to hear whether *you* think it's more difficult in WordPress or the current way, as you are the person who currently posts news. If you don't find it any harder in WordPress then the command line argument doesn't really apply to our situation here. Again, I'm not trying to make anyone's life harder, so I'm open to opinions.
One cost of most CMS's is that they're more computationally intensive. Oftentimes they're implemented as "dynamic pages", meaning that things get generated on the fly. There are some advantages to this, but also some disadvantages. For example, the two times I've gone through conversion to Zope, performance was dismissed as an issue to consider, yet once the system was implemented, it would break whenever we got Slashdotted. One ends up implementing Squid proxies, etc. in order to overcome this. With static pages sitting in a file system with nothing but Apache (and maybe PHP) needed, the number of things that can go wrong is much smaller, and performance is essentially a non-issue.
I'm afraid I can't really say anything about this one. My site doesn't get anywhere near the hits that would be needed to gauge whether WordPress can withstand a Slashdotting, and I've never done any benchmarking (although maybe that would be a fun thing to try when I have some time). I have seen articles/comments in the past that WordPress scales well although I couldn't find them when doing a Google search. There are also a number of popular sites that run it like molly.com, and -- of course -- photomatt.net.
At the end of the day there is a risk in everything. I don't think that inkscape.org gets enough traffic for performance to be a significant issue -- but then I can't promise it won't be either. All I'll say is that this[1], IMO, answers the performance argument extremely well.
[1] http://www.amber.org/~petrilli/archive/2005/03/08/the_redherring_of_performa...
CMS can also be somewhat inflexible in certain ways, compared with plain file system based approaches. For instance, if you need to make a global modification to a site, if everything's in a plain file system it's pretty straightforward to write a sed or perl script to make the change. With a CMS, you're limited to the tools that come bundled with it; often you could create an add on or hack into the CMS code itself, but it can turn out less time consuming to just make all the changes manually.
Maintenance can also be an issue. In the current system our news is implemented in nothing more than two php files (the front page plus a second page for archived news items). With a CMS, in order to "simplify" things, it often requires adding a database, some libraries, templates, extra code, config files, etc. and from an administration point of view you've actually complicated things a good deal. Is the extra administrative complexity worth the user simplicity? In a big company, perhaps, but in a modestly sized OSS project like ours, the person using the system may end up being one and the same as the guy mainaining it.
I think the two points above go hand-in-hand.
My opinion is that databases actually *add* flexibility to the data because they add meaning to it. It's far easier to change between one CMS to another than to change between text files and a CMS. The current news is an example of this -- while writing my database-importing script, I found one post without a date entirely, and that at one point the date format had changed from "January, February, ..." to "Jan, Feb, ...". With databased data these changes would be performed on a timestamp before rendering the page, rather than being "hardcoded" to a text file.
I understand your concerns about modifying a database, however, I think perhaps the flexibility of editing relies more on the person *doing* the editing than the medium which is used to store the information. Personally I'd feel perfectly comfortable writing a script to make some global change in a database, but you, or somebody else, or Mr. Joe Average inkscape-develee may not be able to do that so easily because that might not be where their expertise and experience lies.
Upgrading is the same -- I'm pretty familiar with WordPress and its codebase, so if something went wrong (which has never happened in my experience), I'd be in a comfortable position to sort it out. But not everyone is.
These are valid concerns so to give something to fall back on, I'm perfectly happy to be the maintainer of the WordPress part of the website for the foreseeable future. If we did go ahead with it, and it was decided that perhaps WordPress *isn't* as good a system as the current one, I'd also be happy to write a script to transfer from the database back to the text file.
Education is another area of concern. In a company with marketing people who don't know CVS, education may come out favoring the CMS since they're more WYSIWYG. However, in an open source project, the random contributor is more likely to have had familiarity with CVS and/or PHP than with a given CMS. A random contribution is more likely to come in as a raw HTML or PHP page.
In this situation (writing posts) I think it comes down to interface again. With a good interface the user shouldn't *need* education; it should be clear what to do. Obviously that doesn't apply to all apps, but I think in CMS/blog ones it should.
Finally, change always seems simpler before you've started doing it. In each case where a CMS was employed, it seemed like a straightforward thing to implement. As with anything, the devil's in the details. By the time you're done, the impact could net more problems than benefits.
Yes, I agree with this one. I can't say for definite whether it will work or not -- I think it will, but will only know by trying it out. I'd echo my above offer though.
Now, I wouldn't say all of the above would happen with WordPress. I've never used it for anything non-trivial, and besides, the present proposal is to use it only for managing the news.
I also wouldn't say the present system is without flaws, or that it couldn't be improved on. I'd love to not have to log into the website in order to deploy a change. It'd be sweet if the news items could also get generated into an RSS feed. But it works, I understand it, and it doesn't require much administration.
Would adopting WordPress make it easier for some users to post news? Well, almost certainly. Would those people actually post news? Given that they're not posting news now with the current system, this doesn't seem to be quite so clear.
I think people tend to mis-estimate the "work" involved in adding news items to a website. Looking at most websites you notice that the news items are short blurbs, maybe with a few links. Seems simple. One would assume most of the effort is taken up by operating the levers to get the item into the site. The first time you post news, that's probably true - you have to learn what script to run, what file to edit, etc. But after you've done it a few times, the mechanics are trivial. You can rely on finger muscle memory to do it.
The real work is in actually _writing_ the news item. First, you have to notice that something is newsworthy. For most people, they simply aren't thinking about that; they probably just jot a note to the mailing list and leave it at that. Second you have to understand it. Often our news items are highly technical (i.e., involve new features with new jargon). Next comes the writing. If you're really lucky, you can cut and paste the item, but most of the time you have to rewrite it; it could be too long, or written in first person, or assume knowledge from the reader that may not be there. Then some other formatting work (adding links, imgs, etc.) Writing two or three news items can easily take up half an hour. Committing the change and pulling it up on the website is the easy part, and only takes a minute or so.
Thus, if I had to guess, I'd bet that changing the technology for managing the news will not necessarily result in more news getting posted (at least, not over the long term). I definitely could be wrong, though, which is why I had been keeping my opinions to myself. Sometimes technology actually does have a big impact - wiki is a good example. So despite my skepticism I'm keeping an open mind. I definitely don't want to be the stubborn old man sitting in the way of progress! (8^[=~
(OT, but wow is that a cool smiley ;)
Anyway, that's the long dissertaion explanation of where my mind is. Basically, if WordPress will ensure we get more people frequently contributing news, then that's good thing, but otherwise, I'm comfortable with the current system and happy to continue playing journalist. If we go forward with WordPress, and it enables people to take over doing news directly, then great, I can devote that time to coding instead. ;-)
You've explained some very real and valid issues. I agree with some, and disagree with others, but when it comes down to it, I think we'd all agree that the only way we're actually going to know whether WordPress works for Inkscape is to try it out.
Therefore, on the basis of my offer above, I propose that we implement it and evaluate the usefulness of the system after a few months. If it's considered useful then we can stick with it, if not then I'll put us back to the current system. Ultimately it's up to you, Bryce, but I think that would give us a "win-win" situation where no-one should be any worse off if we *do* implement it.
Let me know what you think.
Regards, Jon
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 05:28:47PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
At the end of the day there's no definite answer about whether WordPress or the current way is easier; it all comes down to opinion.
This is exactly my take on it too. I know quite well that my own thoughts are just that, and that I may be completely in a minority, which is one of the reasons I hadn't said much until you actually requested my opinion. ;-)
I'd be interested to hear whether *you* think it's more difficult in WordPress or the current way, as you are the person who currently posts news.
I'm not sure my opinion on this one would be valid. Right now today, I can post using the current system *quite* quickly; my fingers are trained to go through the steps in a minimum number of keystrokes. To give you an idea, someone recently moved the news into a separate news.inc file, and I keep finding my fingers opening the index.html file before I know it. :-)
On the other hand, I have *not* used WordPress much, so when I tried it out, I spent a lot of extra time stumbling around, reading stuff, etc. that took time that an experienced user wouldn't. Thus, the fact that I can do it quicker with the current process right now is not really an accurate comparison, and I wouldn't make the decision based on that.
But that's sort of a lesser point in my mind anyway. As I mentioned before, the mechanics of posting the item take a minimal amount of time compared with the actual drafting of the news item, at least once you're up to speed with the tool.
A bigger consideration point for me is the administrative burden. There's not much to the current system; it's basically just plain old HTML. Of course, this means it has its faults - it doesn't automatically correct validation errors, doesn't do CSS, requires you to balance your tags, etc. - however simplicity also has its advantages. The current system has fairly few moving parts, so someone with basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP pretty much knows all they need to know to toubleshoot problems. Not everyone has these skills, but pretty much anyone who's done web development does, and in a project of our size, that's plenty of people. ;-)
I understand your concerns about modifying a database, however, I think perhaps the flexibility of editing relies more on the person *doing* the editing than the medium which is used to store the information. Personally I'd feel perfectly comfortable writing a script to make some global change in a database, but you, or somebody else, or Mr. Joe Average inkscape-develee may not be able to do that so easily because that might not be where their expertise and experience lies.
Don't get me wrong, I've done tons and tons of web/db development; I've written dozens of such apps. I myself would not have trouble fiddling db fields to make such changes. But I still find it more flexible to work on flat files in general. Linux has extremely good tools for working on flat text files, compared with for databases.
Therefore, on the basis of my offer above, I propose that we implement it and evaluate the usefulness of the system after a few months. If it's considered useful then we can stick with it, if not then I'll put us back to the current system. Ultimately it's up to you, Bryce, but I think that would give us a "win-win" situation where no-one should be any worse off if we *do* implement it.
Fair enough. I still think the current system is preferrable, but I definitely believe answers are best found through action not debate, and we've already had more than enough debate. ;-)
It will probably be hard to change my mind on this, but the types of things that I'll be looking at are: Do we see a large increase in the number and variety of people posting news items? Do we see any auxillary tools spring up? Does our news get greatly increased visibility on other sites? Does the quality of the news items increase noticeably? If these happen, I'll consider it proof that this tool is better.
By the way, one other note. SourceForge only provides a single database instance. We are not actually using it currently, but by using it for WordPress, that'll be the only db-based tool we'll be able to have on the site. I don't consider that a stopper issue, since we have no other plans for db tools, but wanted to make sure it was known.
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 05:28:47PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
At the end of the day there's no definite answer about whether WordPress or the current way is easier; it all comes down to opinion.
This is exactly my take on it too. I know quite well that my own thoughts are just that, and that I may be completely in a minority, which is one of the reasons I hadn't said much until you actually requested my opinion. ;-)
I'd be interested to hear whether *you* think it's more difficult in WordPress or the current way, as you are the person who currently posts news.
I'm not sure my opinion on this one would be valid. Right now today, I can post using the current system *quite* quickly; my fingers are trained to go through the steps in a minimum number of keystrokes. To give you an idea, someone recently moved the news into a separate news.inc file, and I keep finding my fingers opening the index.html file before I know it. :-)
On the other hand, I have *not* used WordPress much, so when I tried it out, I spent a lot of extra time stumbling around, reading stuff, etc. that took time that an experienced user wouldn't. Thus, the fact that I can do it quicker with the current process right now is not really an accurate comparison, and I wouldn't make the decision based on that.
But that's sort of a lesser point in my mind anyway. As I mentioned before, the mechanics of posting the item take a minimal amount of time compared with the actual drafting of the news item, at least once you're up to speed with the tool.
A bigger consideration point for me is the administrative burden. There's not much to the current system; it's basically just plain old HTML. Of course, this means it has its faults - it doesn't automatically correct validation errors, doesn't do CSS, requires you to balance your tags, etc. - however simplicity also has its advantages. The current system has fairly few moving parts, so someone with basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP pretty much knows all they need to know to toubleshoot problems. Not everyone has these skills, but pretty much anyone who's done web development does, and in a project of our size, that's plenty of people. ;-)
*Nods* I don't really have much to comment about that, but I understand what you mean :)
I understand your concerns about modifying a database, however, I think perhaps the flexibility of editing relies more on the person *doing* the editing than the medium which is used to store the information. Personally I'd feel perfectly comfortable writing a script to make some global change in a database, but you, or somebody else, or Mr. Joe Average inkscape-develee may not be able to do that so easily because that might not be where their expertise and experience lies.
Don't get me wrong, I've done tons and tons of web/db development; I've written dozens of such apps. I myself would not have trouble fiddling db fields to make such changes. But I still find it more flexible to work on flat files in general. Linux has extremely good tools for working on flat text files, compared with for databases.
Ok. Sorry, I wasn't meaning to undermine your or anyone else's skills; I've no idea what you've done or not done.
I guess you're right about the tools -- the only one I can think of that is any good is PHPMyAdmin, which is a web app rather than a desktop one. Interesting point. (On a side note, PMA is, in itself a good example where the "interface" solution can be just as complicated as command line. When I first saw it I spent about half an hour going "WTF?")
Therefore, on the basis of my offer above, I propose that we implement it and evaluate the usefulness of the system after a few months. If it's considered useful then we can stick with it, if not then I'll put us back to the current system. Ultimately it's up to you, Bryce, but I think that would give us a "win-win" situation where no-one should be any worse off if we *do* implement it.
Fair enough. I still think the current system is preferrable, but I definitely believe answers are best found through action not debate, and we've already had more than enough debate. ;-)
It will probably be hard to change my mind on this, but the types of things that I'll be looking at are: Do we see a large increase in the number and variety of people posting news items? Do we see any auxillary tools spring up? Does our news get greatly increased visibility on other sites? Does the quality of the news items increase noticeably? If these happen, I'll consider it proof that this tool is better.
Ok. I'm as interested as you are about whether it actually will make a difference actually, so let's consider this a little experiment :D
Is there a specific time period you'd like to set for another review, or do you want to just see how things go?
By the way, one other note. SourceForge only provides a single database instance. We are not actually using it currently, but by using it for WordPress, that'll be the only db-based tool we'll be able to have on the site. I don't consider that a stopper issue, since we have no other plans for db tools, but wanted to make sure it was known.
Ok, sure. WordPress is built to be able to exist with other tables in the same database, and thus all of its tables have a "wp-" prefix (which can be changed). I've never had reason to try it, but if we had another need for the database then at least we know that co-existing will work on the WP front.
And here follow some practical notes:
* Would I be able to have access to the CVS and the database please, so I can set it up. My id number of SF is 1241425, let me know if that's the wrong thing to give you (first time using SF).
* I'm assuming no-one objects to me adding a credit for WordPress -- I forgot to do this when I made the prototype, but credit where credit is due, as they say.
* I'll set up the "root" WordPress account for your Bryce, as you're the project leader. I'll email you a password for it (which you can change). If you'd like a username other than "Bryce" then let me know, but as the author of a news article isn't published on the site at the moment I don't think that would be an issue.
On that note, perhaps we ought to consider displaying the article's author, as that might encourage people to post news (especially if it's linked to their website)?
* Perhaps some info about writing draft news articles can be added to the FAQ so that people know about it? People can register a WP account and automatically write articles for draft that then will be published by someone with more privileges. (I'd be happy to do that)
Regards, Jon
On Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 08:58:11PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
- Would I be able to have access to the CVS and the database please, so
I can set it up. My id number of SF is 1241425, let me know if that's the wrong thing to give you (first time using SF).
You need to give an admin your username, not id number.
- I'm assuming no-one objects to me adding a credit for WordPress -- I
forgot to do this when I made the prototype, but credit where credit is due, as they say.
No. The only reason we include SourceForge is because it's required in order to get stats. Since we haven't been getting stats anyway I'd be in favor of dropping it. I don't know why we have the W3C links. We don't advertise apache, linux, php, etc. etc. so no need to list any other particular piece of software involved in the site management.
On that note, perhaps we ought to consider displaying the article's author, as that might encourage people to post news (especially if it's linked to their website)?
No, the news items are meant to be anonymous. Most of the time the author is not the same person as the poster, anyway.
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 08:58:11PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
- I'm assuming no-one objects to me adding a credit for WordPress -- I
forgot to do this when I made the prototype, but credit where credit is due, as they say.
No. The only reason we include SourceForge is because it's required in order to get stats. Since we haven't been getting stats anyway I'd be
No. The reason to include SourceForge credits is because this is a requirement for hosting the site: http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=753&group_id=1#proje...
in favor of dropping it. I don't know why we have the W3C links. We don't advertise apache, linux, php, etc. etc. so no need to list any other particular piece of software involved in the site management.
I guess (but this is only my guess as an external observer) the W3C links have a political purpose: to make a better Web. Also to avoid all possible visitor complaints "your site look bad in browser X".
Nicu Buculei wrote:
in favor of dropping it. I don't know why we have the W3C links. We don't advertise apache, linux, php, etc. etc. so no need to list any other particular piece of software involved in the site management.
I guess (but this is only my guess as an external observer) the W3C links have a political purpose: to make a better Web. Also to avoid all possible visitor complaints "your site look bad in browser X".
I tend to put a small text link in the footer of sites I do, but I agree that the W3C provided buttons are big, chunky and ugly.
Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2005 at 08:58:11PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
- Would I be able to have access to the CVS and the database please, so
I can set it up. My id number of SF is 1241425, let me know if that's the wrong thing to give you (first time using SF).
You need to give an admin your username, not id number.
Sorry, my username is "jonleighton".
- I'm assuming no-one objects to me adding a credit for WordPress -- I
forgot to do this when I made the prototype, but credit where credit is due, as they say.
No. The only reason we include SourceForge is because it's required in order to get stats. Since we haven't been getting stats anyway I'd be in favor of dropping it. I don't know why we have the W3C links. We don't advertise apache, linux, php, etc. etc. so no need to list any other particular piece of software involved in the site management.
I didn't really think about it that way -- most people with WordPress blogs tend to include a link, but you make a good point about not including Apache, PHP etc. Fair enough.
On that note, perhaps we ought to consider displaying the article's author, as that might encourage people to post news (especially if it's linked to their website)?
No, the news items are meant to be anonymous. Most of the time the author is not the same person as the poster, anyway.
Ok. Other people's usernames will probably be visible from the admin interface though. Is that a problem?
Jon
On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 04:09:47PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
- Would I be able to have access to the CVS and the database please, so
I can set it up. My id number of SF is 1241425, let me know if that's the wrong thing to give you (first time using SF).
Sorry, my username is "jonleighton".
I've added web and cvs access for you, and a database named 'inkscape', ditto pw. The db can only be accessed via an ssh session on shell.sf.net. See the SF docs for more directions.
No, the news items are meant to be anonymous. Most of the time the author is not the same person as the poster, anyway.
Ok. Other people's usernames will probably be visible from the admin interface though. Is that a problem?
That's fine.
Bryce
Bryce Harrington wrote:
I've added web and cvs access for you, and a database named 'inkscape', ditto pw. The db can only be accessed via an ssh session on shell.sf.net. See the SF docs for more directions.
Thanks a lot. I'll people know when I've set it all up.
Jon
On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 11:07:36PM +0000, Jonathan Leighton wrote:
Let me know of any opinions you have, whether you think it's a good/better solution etc.
Wow! Looks really great. I use WordPress for my site's blog, and I must suck at it, since I don't even know what you did to make it look like this. :)
participants (8)
-
Bob Jamison -
Bryce Harrington -
Jon Phillips -
Jonathan Leighton -
Joshua A. Andler -
Kees Cook -
MenTaLguY -
Nicu Buculei