Migrating foresightlinux.org to a CMS
Paul Scott-Wilson
we're all in agreement that using _something_ would be better than our
current solution. The main sticking point seems to be what we use -
Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress being the usual suspects.
Having played with all three this weekend my initial impressions are:
* Drupal is all about structured content. It'll take longer to setup
content types and vocabularies (structured tags) but we'll get more
out of it. The admin interface is well laid out and made a lot of
sense to me.
* Joomla makes it easy to create "fancy" content out of the box with its
rich text editor and media manager. The admin interface drove me crazy
because you navigate with a drop-down menu and it locks it when you
edit. In my opinion it's fancy at the expense of usability. On the
plus side the installer setup a demo site so I had content to play
with.
* I didn't spend a lot of time with Wordpress, I was really just playing
with 2.7's admin interface which is nice. I'm still not convinced
about using it as a CMS though.
I'm going to play more with Drupal, see what I can do. I'm interested in
other peoples experiences. Hopefully we can pick one and start migrating
content.
--
Paul Scott-Wilson (pscott)
Paul Cutler
having managed a couple of websites using Drupal over the year, one
with about a 100 active users adding content including news, blogs,
and photos.
Unfortunately I don't have any experience with theming.
Last time we looked, localization remained the biggest issue for all
three, and disqualified Wordpress.
Do we have any volunteers to help implement the look and feel?
Paul
tfor...@foresightlinux.se
foresightlinux.se
my experience says that joomla is easier to use and write articles and
stuff like that. The administration part is a bit harder than drupal,
but after you learned how it works, it all makes sence.
If we are planning to write howtos, guides and stuff too in either
drupal or joomla, then joomla is nr 1.
But are we talking to use joomla or drupal with maybe 10-20 pages,
then maybe drupal is better.
if we also use joomla and goes multi language, then i got no problem
to move my foresight site over there. it will go fast too. I never had
any issues with using joomla so far and is very happy about using it.
Kevin Harriss
First is SCOPE, what exactly are we looking for the software to accomplish.
* Are we just looking for it to be an easy way to update and translation the main site and children pages?
* Are we wanting this to be the one tool for everything (main site, how-to, blog, etc)?
I am under the impression that we should use the best tool for the task. This would mean using a CMS/Software for the main site, wiki for the how-to and wordpress for the blog.
Second deals with Editors and Translators.
* How many content creators do we plan to have? If we keep it limited to the main site we don't need that many but if we open it up to everything then we will need a process to hand user permissions and signup.
* How are translations handled? Do they just select their preferred language from the main page and it uses that for the site or what?
* How are the pages translated? Does this require a person to be a content creator before they can create a page.
These are just some questions to keep in mind when evaluating a solution.
Kevin
specialKevin
Kevin Harriss
http://www.foresightlinux.org
Paul Scott-Wilson
>Last time we looked, localization remained the biggest issue for all
>three, and disqualified Wordpress.
Drupal 6 has support built in. Translations of nodes are linked to a
source node; when it is updated the translations are marked out of date.
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 04:11:44PM -0600, Kevin Harriss wrote:
>I have a few comments about this discussion.
>
>First is SCOPE, what exactly are we looking for the software to accomplish.
Things I'd like from a CMS we don't currently have:
* Quick and easy updates
* Publishing control
* Better association of content - more than just "It's on the GNOME
edition's page so it's about the GNOME edition"
* More content, more often. If nothing changes people will stop checking
* Feeds so people don't have to keep checking manually
* Search so people can find stuff without coming via Google
* A proper gallery with up to date images
* Easy to use navigation
* Lazy translations of content
>I am under the impression that we should use the best tool for the task.
>This would mean using a CMS/Software for the main site, wiki for the how-to
>and wordpress for the blog.
Assuming you mean "developer blogs", I agree. I still wonder how many
people who'd want a blog don't have one already though. Project News
should absolutely be part of the main site. Maybe even have articles
destined for the newsletter appear on the site to show there is more
going on than just churning out releases. I'm also thinking that a small
FAQ section for questions related to the site would be good rather than
sending people to the Wiki for questions like "What do I do with this
ISO?", "What is a SHA1 checksum?" or "Why is my browser saying the
Certificate for the Wiki is invalid".
>Second deals with Editors and Translators.
>[...]
This needs more investigation into exactly what is possible. I can say
that Drupal 6 will use short codes in the URL, so going to /sv/page
would give you the Swedish page if there is one. Getting that to work
for the frontpage seems to be a little more involved.
Regarding permissions, there is a separate permission to translate
leading me to believe it doesn't imply you can create pages.
A related question is how tightly we restrict registrations (i.e. people
able to comment but not create content)? Should it be considered a perk
of being a member or is it enough to moderate comments? On the flip side
someone contributing translations would be a good step at becoming a
member.
--
Paul Scott-Wilson (pscott)
tfor...@foresightlinux.se
projects:
GNOME Edition, KDE Edition, XFCE Edition
That will give some more articles to write about also. If we want
multilanguage on site, it needs to be easy to write articles. Thats a
must, or it will go very slow to get other languages than english.
--
Tomas Forsman (TForsman)
Paul Scott-Wilson
>But are we talking to use joomla or drupal with maybe 10-20 pages,
>then maybe drupal is better.
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 01:22:39AM -0800, tfor...@foresightlinux.se wrote:
>That will give some more articles to write about also. If we want
>multilanguage on site, it needs to be easy to write articles. Thats a
>must, or it will go very slow to get other languages than english.
What would you say gives Joomla the edge in making it easy? There are
modules like FCKeditor[1] so editing is more or less the same. Joomla's
"Article Manager" does give you more info than Drupal's "Manage Content"
but a quick search found CMF[2] which narrows the gap.
Since we have you're install of Joomla at .se I'm inclined to suggest we
set up a Drupal install for comparison.
[1] http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor
[2] http://drupal.org/project/cmf
--
Paul Scott-Wilson (pscott)
http://sentenc.es
tfor...@foresightlinux.se
but hard to understand them. Attaching images is weird too, it gets
added after you wroted whole article.
But drupal seem to have better track system to see what changed on
articles in both to get the feeling that drupal isnt as nice as
joomla.
And easier to know where the article should be located in joomla, you
see sections + categories while you doing an article.
Im not even sure drupal has that at all.
Feels i only got bad words for drupal. But it is good too.
Ken VanDine
joomla? Or just not as rich as drupal?
--Ken
Ken VanDine
Foresight Linux
http://foresightlinux.org
tfor...@foresightlinux.se
extension to plugin like:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,6260/Itemid,35/
a user said this:
We know that drupal has versions management feature for articles, but
Joomla does not. Now with this extension, Joomla will have the same
power to give content items a version manager.
Thanks to the author!
so that should consider to be an issue
--
Tomas Forsman (TForsman)
Paul Cutler
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Paul Scott-Wilson
<psc...@foresightlinux.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 09:31:37PM -0600, Paul Cutler wrote:
>>
>> Last time we looked, localization remained the biggest issue for all
>> three, and disqualified Wordpress.
>
> Drupal 6 has support built in. Translations of nodes are linked to a source
> node; when it is updated the translations are marked out of date.
>
This is *huge*. It seems the blocker we always have when we get close
is localization.
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 04:11:44PM -0600, Kevin Harriss wrote:
>>
>> I have a few comments about this discussion.
>>
>> First is SCOPE, what exactly are we looking for the software to
>> accomplish.
>
> Things I'd like from a CMS we don't currently have:
> * Quick and easy updates
> * Publishing control
> * Better association of content - more than just "It's on the GNOME
> edition's page so it's about the GNOME edition"
> * More content, more often. If nothing changes people will stop checking
> * Feeds so people don't have to keep checking manually
> * Search so people can find stuff without coming via Google
> * A proper gallery with up to date images
> * Easy to use navigation
> * Lazy translations of content
I will start a high level scoping document this weekend, including a
sitemap. I don't think it will be much different than what we have
now, with the exception of of fleshing out our other flavors pages
(XFCE, KDE, etc)
> Assuming you mean "developer blogs", I agree. I still wonder how many people
> who'd want a blog don't have one already though. Project News should
> absolutely be part of the main site. Maybe even have articles destined for
> the newsletter appear on the site to show there is more going on than just
> churning out releases. I'm also thinking that a small FAQ section for
> questions related to the site would be good rather than sending people to
> the Wiki for questions like "What do I do with this ISO?", "What is a SHA1
> checksum?" or "Why is my browser saying the Certificate for the Wiki is
> invalid".
>
Drupal can handle blogging right within it. When I was managing a a
Drupal site with about 100 users, a good percentage of them used
Drupal's blogging engine. One thing I liked about it, is that if we
had some kind of community news page, it is very simple to promote a
blog post to that page as news, similar to how Slashdot promotes
stories to their main page or DailyKos does.
I'd also like to second something pscott said in a later email,
regarding news. Content needs to be added and refreshed to keep
people coming back. Some kind of news or community news page -
whether it's links to recent articles about us, an "official" blog
with what is going on in Foresight, a newsletter, etc. I had started
a Wordpress appliance a few months back, but Lance and I got hung up
trying to build it with a specific error we were never able to
overcome. I have a lot of passion in making sure we have timely news
from the developer community to our users with first looks at what's
coming, etc.
Paul
Ken VanDine
considered a CMS... IMHO :)
The core use of a CMS is managing content, which can't be done without
revisions... Having an "extension" that provides that functionality
might be good enough, but it really says allot about joomla that it
isn't a core piece of the tool. My biggest fear about using an
extension for revision control would be maintenance. What happens if
the developers of the extension abandon it, get busy and doesn't
update it, etc... we get left in a bind. And considering it is the #1
reason to even have a CMS system... it seems silly to depend on a
third party extension. Not that I have any opinions here :)
--Ken
tfor...@foresightlinux.se
and get frustrated how complicated it is first :)
im looking at tikiwiki, someone mentioned it and got potential. Not
sure if that is what we really need either.
Paul Scott-Wilson
>
>You said the revision control is better in drupal, is it bad in
>joomla? Or just not as rich as drupal?
>
It's pretty lacking in Drupal too. There are optional node revisions but
nothing that compares to what we're used to with the Wiki and Mercurial.
Now we're through the holidays lets get this back on track. I think once
we have a public instance available it'll be easier to discuss things
like theming and content. There are several Drupal rBO projects already
but none look active. With guidance I can setup something for us to use,
presumably in foresight-infra.rpath.org?
--
Paul Scott-Wilson (pscott)