Coronavirus mathmeth revamp?

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Jeremy Weissmann

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Mar 19, 2020, 11:56:32 AM3/19/20
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Hey all, hope you’re doing well and staying safe.

Yesterday I updated a few things on mathmeth.com: fixed some dead links, cleaned up text and profiles, added some of Wim Feijen’s WFs, and made a (placeholder) page for Netty van Gasteren and her thesis, On the shape of mathematical arguments. Great coronavirus reading!

Are there any web designer-y folks with quarantine time on their hands who’d like to put some effort into revamping and modernizing mathmeth.com? Now is the time!

Stay safe,

+j

Juan Michelini

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Mar 19, 2020, 1:15:40 PM3/19/20
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Hey Jeremy,

I might have a few hours. What do you have in mind? 

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Jeremy Weissmann

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Mar 19, 2020, 2:47:31 PM3/19/20
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To be honest it’s hard to say exactly what should be done. I can say that it would be nice for people to be able to upload and discuss their work and maintain their own pages without needing to send me files and then I upload them through FTP and update all the HTML by hand...

I know so little about web design that it’s hard to answer your question! But if you or anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

On Mar 19, 2020, at 13:15, Juan Michelini <ju...@juan.com.uy> wrote:



Juan Michelini

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Mar 19, 2020, 3:34:29 PM3/19/20
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Well, design wise I would like to make it responsive.

User page maintenance could be done by giving each contributor an FTP user with permission only to their own folder. There they could upload pdfs and edit their HTML.
I would recommend them to use CSS sparingly, so that the site has a consistent look throughout all pages.

Discussion could be done a la Dijskstra, with open letters and notes in each user pages.

There is also the possibility of migrating the site to WordPress or creating an overengineered SAP in React.js and Node. But just because we can, doesn't mean we should.





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Mohit Thatte

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Mar 19, 2020, 3:44:48 PM3/19/20
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Jumping in here just to highlight that FTP is not a secure protocol - please use SFTP at a minimum.






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-Mohit Thatte

Jeremy Weissmann

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Mar 20, 2020, 12:47:28 PM3/20/20
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Anything along these lines sounds great.  I would say, any member of mathmeth should be able to put:
  • their name
  • a picture
  • a blurb
  • (a handful of directories of) files
  • perhaps a gallery of pictures
As far as interactivity goes, it would be lovely I suppose if this message board was built-in to the site, and if it supported the ability to type in TeX/LaTeX.  Alternatively there could just be a comments thread for files uploaded.

That does sort of sound like a "blog"-like interface that Wordpress might provide — indeed, that has been suggested in the past.

But, anything that can help reduce the amount of work that needs to be done by hand would be incredible.

Best,

+j

Musa

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Mar 21, 2020, 4:58:16 PM3/21/20
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Maybe take a look at the alternate themes of the site ;-)

Jamie Oglethorpe

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Mar 22, 2020, 3:23:22 AM3/22/20
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Hi,

Both links point at the ...new.html link.

Jamie
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Jamie Oglethorpe

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Mar 22, 2020, 3:26:19 AM3/22/20
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For what it's worth, I prefer the new2 version.

Jamie

On 2020/03/21 22:58, Musa wrote:
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Jeremy Weissmann

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Mar 22, 2020, 9:07:35 AM3/22/20
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Those certainly load in mobile. But neither looks great and both introduce complexity that wasn’t in the original. 

The old interface may be stale, but it’s certainly clean and simple. 

On Mar 22, 2020, at 03:26, Jamie Oglethorpe <jamieog...@gmail.com> wrote:



Juan Michelini

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Mar 22, 2020, 12:44:10 PM3/22/20
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Ok, the SFTP solution is simpler, but the WordPress solution would be much friendlier for new users.

SFTP solution: I improve the current look in mobile, so it looks the same but responsive. We set up individual SFTP directories. 
We ask each member to manage and their own html. We can offer fill-in-the-blanks templates for that. We can also look for a javascript latex interpreter, if you want to write latex right on the html.
Knowledge required to maintain it: basic html, basic SFTP usage and (optionally) knowledge of the javascript latex library.

WordPress solution: I set up a WordPress with Elementor Pro. The current pages would have to be redesigned inside WordPress, this is easy with Elementor Pro, but it still takes time.
We set up a WordPress user for each member. they can manage it with WYSIWYG editor with all sorts of widgets and effects.
Knowledge required to maintain it: wordpress, elementor pro, and any other plugin included.

I'm happy to help in my free hours with either. Just to keep the torch burning.
By the way, WordPress is my day job. So if anyone wants a stunning personal page, an ecommerce or a virtual classroom, write me in private ;)

Jeremy Weissmann

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Mar 22, 2020, 12:59:05 PM3/22/20
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Wordpress sounds by far the better option. 

As far as redesigning, if we’re going to do this, it’s worth going through the roster and rethinking how we want to maintain anything. I have uploaded technical notes for Wim Feijen and Netty van Gasteren (whose pages I manage), but other than that I believe I am the only one who has uploaded and distributed documents through mathmeth in years.

Probably many of the people on there could be linked to if they wish, whereas we need only a few notable (active!) people who are considered Members (a term we may also wish to change).

That makes me think it is worth making a placeholder page for Dijkstra which links to the UT Austin site. 

Juan, if you are interested in going through with this, should we talk about how to proceed with mock-up testing?

+j

On Mar 22, 2020, at 12:44, Juan Michelini <ju...@juan.com.uy> wrote:



Juan Michelini

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Mar 22, 2020, 1:22:40 PM3/22/20
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Yes, of course. Sounds good.



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Juan Michelini

Shivam

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Jun 30, 2020, 9:12:45 PM6/30/20
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Hi Jeremy,

Has there been any developments on this? If not, I would like to add my two cents. There is another alternative to Wordpress which is much simpler in design: Grav. It's relatively new, but being built by seasoned developers, is quite stable now. It was built primarily to meet the needs of smaller and simpler websites for which Wordpress (and other CMSes like Drupal) may be an over-engineering. It comes with LaTeX and Bibtex support too.

If any help is needed, I have some experience with it, but being a simple solution, the learning curve for Grav is not much.

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Juan Michelini

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Juan Michelini

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Jul 1, 2020, 2:24:53 PM7/1/20
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Hi, This is as far as I got, https://novenastudio.com/mathmeth/

Sadly, I have other more pressing priorities, among other things I've to show advances in my phd.
I'm willing to give access to anyone that feels like my crude prototype is worth saving.

I apologize for the inconveniences.


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