Now what?

[Lord_Pall]

This is a thread to talk about positive things we can do pushing
forward.

I'd like to see us ratchet back the venom and competitiveness. I think
it's counterproductive and frankly, unnecessary.

What do we do going forward?

[Lord_Pall]

What I have -

CMS running a number of community management enhancements with the
full HOTU site dataset imported. Distributed downloads, uploads for
community enhancement, user listings, reviews, comments and forums.

Performance is quite good, especially considering it's running on a
dinky shared host. If the performance ever falters, it'll get migrated
to a full host in a few hours, but so far so good.

Users are adding listings, reviews, and uploading missing files and
expansion listings as well.

Downsides are the navigation and visuals.


What do I want to do -
I want to see the community expand it. I say community and mean 2
levels. The first are the normal people who add reviews, post on the
forums, and generally lump around the site. The people who don't read
this forum.

The other level are the members here. These are the community members
who I would like to see help out the most.

I want to see a vibrant community grow. I want to see enhancements and
additions. I want to see this data archived properly and stored.

What I don't want to do -
Scrap the site.

[Lord_Pall]

Btw, I'm quite willing to open the floodgates and welcome aboard the
peer leaders from this forum as admins and superadmins.

Drop me a line if you're interested.

[Olivier Hamel]

Lord_Pall wrote:
> What I have -
>

> Hack Joomla
>
Sorry, corrected your statement. Honestly, that won't hold up in the
long term and it's NOT secure from what I've heard. (I *might* be wrong,
but I don't think I am.)

And about your comment about 10 viable communities adding diversity and
such:
You can cut a worm into to two and it'll live. Most of the time. Try
cutting up a worm into ten pieces and tell me what that gets you.
A dead worm. In case you don't figure that analogy out.

And I'm not saying *thrash everything*, I'm say: STOP SPAMMING CLONES!
IT'S NOT GETTING ANYWHERE!

Take the DB which is most complete/expandable, graft the information it
doesn't have from the others if they do. Get a real/proper/adequate CMS,
not a non-scaling/limited one like Joomla. Set both up on a server.
Once we got that done we can cut up the jobs that need to be done. For
example:
* Recovery of manuals / Additional setup instructions
* Recovery of game files
* Recovery of associated files (mods, etc..)
* Higher res screenies
* More capable search system?
* Forums with subforms for each game (+ link to that forum on game page
maybe?)
* Virus checking system? (Please, gods rot it, pick a good one!)
* System for submitting new games

If people want to try out different UIs, give them a subdomain and they
can use std. access to the DB and work with the same dataset as everyone
else while still getting their own UI design. We'll vote on one later on
for the main page or something.

Sorry for bluntness, but the Joomla specs don't meet what this'll need
in the long term AFAIK. I seriously doubt any community will live with
their entrails cut up into ten bits.

[Olivier Hamel]

Lord_Pall wrote:
> Btw, I'm quite willing to open the floodgates and welcome aboard the
> peer leaders from this forum as admins and superadmins.
>
> Drop me a line if you're interested.
>
>

Are you listening to us? We're (I'm?) saying that most likely your
system will most likely die because Joomla isn't adequate. Bribing
people into staying with your site by offering Admin/Superadmin isn't
helping, so stop it will you? I'm starting to consider dropping the
whole damn thing because you guys just want to keep your sites up
because YOU made it. That in itself is understandable, but it's also
stupid/hardheaded. Although you did get the first mostly-working HOTU
clone up, it won't stand the test of time most likely.

Personally I have a (bad?) habit of doing three re-writes on any project
minium if it's some sort of API, simply because hacks or inefficiencies
in APIs are unacceptable. And that's the same as the framework for the
new HOTU. Your cornerstone won't hold much weight.

[Brian Racer]

As long as non-coders can help right now by creating and adding content, that's all that matters imho. If Joomla currently allows this, than why wait for any of the spinoffs  to catch up(my site included)? I agree Joomla probably isn't the best for the long term(see my previous rants), but scaling is the last thing we have to worry about right now, and probably won't have to worry about it for quite some time.

Content building is all that matters right now.

If and when a better framework comes along that is made specifically for the collective wants, it isn't going to be that difficult to massage Lord Pall's data into a different system(as long as he allows his data to be accessible by others).

Brian

[Olivier Hamel]

Fine with me. As long as we take something proper in the end AND STICK
TO ONE SITE! There's no point in a thousand and one HOTU clones, you'll
just spread and lose data.

[Jim9137]

While the core HOTU community has always been relatively small
(seriously, I don't know you people, and I have been part of it since
2001), relatively hard to access and wraught with its own drama, I
think a lot of the "old dogs" are simply getting tired. I've heard
several people say that HOTU will disappear anyway, and that this
whole group effort has begun to be a parody of itself. I can't, and I
don't think most of those people can't, comment on the technology
behind the curtains - and as far as I know, this sort of conflict is
pretty much norm with you developer guys - but I'm fairly ascertain
that splintering the community will only lead to strife, division and
not the united collective abandonware ring the old abandonware ring
might have been back in the day. I base this conclusion on the fact
that there are more people in this now, and not all are perhaps in it
for the good of their hearts. There are several far more functional
sites out there (Abandonia, C:DOS, et all), with way much larger
communities than any of the HOTU clones currently have, or indeed,
HOTU has had for the past few years, regardless, and this is one thing
that you people should remember.

Having 10 different HOTU clones might sound a good idea on paper, but
you really need to ask the question - how is it necessary, and what
difference can they really provide to the end user beyond the cosmetic
changes? The point of the HOTU revival is to have collective work on
collection as far as I understand, but if the collective is working on
ten different collections, I don't think it will be much more
functional than the way things are now. Developers might frot about
CMSes or Joomlas or SQL databases, but the end users really just want
an reliable and sleek interface to contribute with. Lord_pall, I think
your site is decent, but I don't think it has anything of the above
for now.

As the end user, I personally just want to see what Sarinee has
envisioned. A guthenberg of abandonware, that aims to serve completely
different kind of experience from what old-school abandonware has
strived to serve. One of the old guard went to describe that he would
satisfy his gaming experience for most of these old games by just
having screenshots, music and all the extra manuals, walkthroughs and
what not; so that he knows what the game is like, how it plays, what's
the goal of it and how you aspire towards it, and then you don't need
to play it yourself because you already have the knowledge how the
game functions - an experience that most of the time is not as
exciting or full as reviews might suggest. Preservation of games can
be done in many ways.

In the end, no one can stop anyone from doing yet another abandonware
website (which I think is already over YAABW.org or something), but as
with most sites on the nets, it can always questioned if there is
really need for it. The community will not aspire into great heights
if you divide it to ten, though. It will probably just end up as a
dead worm.

[Lord_Pall]

On Apr 18, 2:22 pm, Brian Racer <bra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As long as non-coders can help right now by creating and adding content,
> that's all that matters imho. If Joomla currently allows this, than why
> wait for any of the spinoffs  to catch up(my site included)? I agree
> Joomla probably isn't the best for the long term(see my previous rants),
> but scaling is the last thing we have to worry about right now, and
> probably won't have to worry about it for quite some time.
>

This is supported right now.

I'm not a PHP coder, nor are any of the editors on the current site.

Normal folks can add listings, reviews, screenshots, comments, ratings
and more

They can add missing files as well, and I've done a bit of additional
batch processing bits and bobs to automatically validate and hook up
files automatically.

Like I've said before, it's running peachy on a dinky shared host.
5000+ listings, 12,000 screenshots, 4,000 files.

And it's fine.

Some stuf is done by hand (virus scanning for example). Once files get
added at a pace that makes that a pain, I'll investigate some
automation. For now, it works quite well and I firmly believe that it
will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

[Lord_Pall]

I'm not bribing anyone. I'm trying to get everyone involved who wants
to be involved.

If you don't want to help out, that's a-okay as well, just figured I'd
make sure everyone knows they're welcome...

[Lord_Pall]

Personally, I think the HOTUD.org community and site has managed to
create a seed of what you describe.
Full import of the original data, full screenshots, most of the
downloads with users adding files every day.

User added listings, commentary and community supported growth and
modification of the source data.

And it's getting better every day.

If it explodes, well, then we'll have a nice database full of
information that we can post onto a google group for a revival in a
few years...

If it doesn't, well, then we've got a community, a site, an archive
that anyone can use, anyone can access to find an old game, look up
something new, or just pop in and reminisce about how it used to be..

I'll say it again.

I welcome anyone who wants to help out. The more the merrier.

[Maedi Prichard]

It has to be made clear from this point on that *none* of the existing sites are to be treated as the future HOTUD. Lord Pall, we first need to decide what software and infrastructre that we will be using. By you offering access to anyone who wants to help, it is assumed that you will be the project leader. We first need to decide who the leader of this project is, I'm afraid we're not going to go anywhere untill we do.

[kazagistar]

This is stupid, guys... however I look at it, Lord_Pall sat down and
built a functional product, even if it is flawed and incomplete.
Everyone argues about fracturing... but at the moment, there is hardly
any community to speak of anyways; I suspect that people like me are
waiting to see what turns up. If you have ideas about how to 'beat'
Lord_Pall, then by golly, get together with several like-minded
people, and make a site that wipes his off the map. Once it is clear
which site is the best, I am sure the community will re-assemble
around and help, but until then, it is up for grabs. May the best site
win?

[Jim9137]

No one's stopping Lord_Pall from doing his thing. This group is not
the de facto leaderboard for the whole of abandonware community, after
all.

I think people are just asking the question, "If you are doing your
own website, what does it has to do with this project?" It's a project
with stated goals, after all, and those websites that are not part of
it were asked by Sarinee to link to this group and have a 'unofficial'
somewhere in the title. If Lord_Pall believes his site has something
to contribute - which he does - it's stil worth discussing how such
should be used.

Jim9137
Current ex-botherer of Knyght

[Tom Carrick]

Screw you, Jim, I'm not tired. I'm just waiting for all the drama
queens to stfu and then I will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix
and RATATATATATA and everything will be perfect.

[Jim9137]

You never were part of the community anyway.

Gaylord.

Jim9137
Hunting high and low

[Nacho]

Ha! Those ones were good indeed! :D

I think that everybody is starting to cool down a little: that's good. I agree with Maedi that we need somebody to lead the way. We need somebody with some of this qualities:

- To be able to spend some time almost every day.
- To hear always all the people involved, to take them into consideration and to moderate the efforts.
- To make clear the statement of this project, its milestones and goals.
- To channel the resources and what has to be done through a democratic process where the active members shall exercise their right to vote.
- To stay as neutral as it can be in any choice that has to be done, but as a keeper always of the real soul of the project.

There's some people I think that they could lead in this manner: for me Maedi, Sarinee and Andrew are some of them (Dan has no time for that :( ). By my side, I don't think I could be a nice option: I don't have so many time but I can help on organization (I don't think I could be a good leader...)

Why don't we concentrate on that? Let's make a list of people wanting to lead the project (everybody is invited to it, of course), let them expose their view and vote together for choosing one or two persons for this.

Regards,
Nacho

2009/4/23 Jim9137 <jim...@gmail.com>

[mithri...@gmail.com]

Hi again to everybody,

Looks like people is tired with all of this threads coming around,
some others could felt insulted by some others behavior. Not to speak
about the deceived people that made a step forward towards what was
not intended to be done since the beginning and the antagonist
positions around. It's time to bury all of this and start from the
beginning, in a more respectful way with the rest of the people (that
involves everybody, taking care to be more polite on the mailing list:
that goes specially to Jim's answer to Tom).

From now on let's try to keep a moderate tone in any reply or message
to be posted.

This project needs a second chance to start as it was intended to be
done: step by step, together, tidy and organized. If nobody wants to
step forward as a project leader...I will step forward myself.
Let me know if somebody else is interested in this position and we
will call for votes.

Regards,
Nacho

On 23 abr, 15:40, Nacho <mithrilfo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ha! Those ones were good indeed! :D
>
> I think that everybody is starting to cool down a little: that's good. I
> agree with Maedi that we need somebody to lead the way. We need somebody
> with some of this qualities:
>
> - To be able to spend some time almost every day.
> - To hear always all the people involved, to take them into consideration
> and to moderate the efforts.
> - To make clear the statement of this project, its milestones and goals.
> - To channel the resources and what has to be done through a democratic
> process where the active members shall exercise their right to vote.
> - To stay as neutral as it can be in any choice that has to be done, but as
> a keeper always of the real soul of the project.
>
> There's some people I think that they could lead in this manner: for me
> Maedi, Sarinee and Andrew are some of them (Dan has no time for that :( ).
> By my side, I don't think I could be a nice option: I don't have so many
> time but I can help on organization (I don't think I could be a good
> leader...)
>
> Why don't we concentrate on that? Let's make a list of people wanting to
> lead the project (everybody is invited to it, of course), let them expose
> their view and vote together for choosing one or two persons for this.
>
> Regards,
> Nacho
>

> 2009/4/23 Jim9137 <jim9...@gmail.com>

[Maedi Prichard]

Sorry for not replying sooner Nacho.

I vote +1 for you. I think a few people feel disenfranchised with the
slightly self destructive nature of this group, which hasn't been
intended, but that's what happens when internal competition is not for
the one goal, but is for separate projects.

If you were to lead, the biggest challenge would be include existing
members that as I said may feel uninvolved and unmotivated, you might
have to make the smart decision of choosing an existing project,
rather than choosing the ideal path of starting from scratch (I
recommend Drupal!). Too much time has been wasted, that being said,
the right software is crucial. I don't think that any of the 4
websites have nailed ease-of-use on the head, but some are close.

I'd be interested in some sort of advisory position. I feel looking
after the Mac Garden is enough responsibility for me, but
realistically I do have some time to donate to the HOTUD project, but
not enough to be the main go-to-guy. I would love to help the Mac
Garden and HOTUD 'team up' so to speak, some sort of collaboration
would be nice.

As both projects are in the same boat, we're not-for-profit, and
sustainability of both projects is uncertain - It would be great to
openly talk about costs, how we plan to finance the whole thing. The
old HOTUD was inundated with ads, downloads were slow, obviously we
can't follow the same path again... which it looks like we are -
currently we're just building a site, getting it out the door without
thinking about the security and bandwidth issues in a years time.
Abandonia is a perfect example of a sustainable abandonware archive,
it is run like a business - the owners seem to have done the maths.

I myself would feel comfortable starting from scratch... just planning
out hosting costs - bandwidth costs - security and suitability of
Joomla (that's what everyone's using right?).

I'd recommend Drupal, which is what Abandonia uses as well as Mac
Garden - but I don't have the MySQL skills to convert the old database
into Drupal, so it's only an good idea if someone wants to do this.

[Jim9137]

But Tom is a gaylord. And he is hot and sexy, and lives in shack. :(

PS: Stopping now. Trallala.

Jim9137
Seriousee

On Apr 27, 8:46 pm, "mithrilfo...@gmail.com" <mithrilfo...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Tom Carrick]

It's true :(

Also I mostly agree with Nacho for like the first time ever. Except
about Jim. He can insult me all he likes <3

[Andrew Armstrong]

I'll see if I can form a better way of going forward. We'll do it
committee style, roles and so forth. I can't stop anyone doing their
sites if they don't get chosen to go forwards (or if a new site is
created entirely) but I do see a lot of pulling for certain issues and
pushing away from others, all different for the different sites (on what
is important and not).

This maybe will upset some people who don't get to use their sites,
depending on what happens, but it appears some people are upset already
that could happen, although I see no reason to go forwards if the
mentality is more than one site, and that people can't cooperate on one
effort (the process of rebuilding one site can easily be reinvested in
building another).

Andrew

[residentgrey]

Table conversion isn't bad, just a lil drudgery mucking about the
table forms.

I talked with Brian and Dan/LP about this. We have a couple things
rolling, such as sharing the down/upload burden between us. I set up a
subdomain, hotu.taralax.com that will eventually have a script ready
to accept files and mirror them on the site (I am handling a lil case
of fraud/unauthorized debits right now). I have a ridiculous amount of
space/BW to mess with!

I do not like Drupal and there are hundreds of great systems out
there, Midgard is a really interesting one (maybe i just like the name
lol). I am messing with the processes working SMF, as I came to the
same conclusions the dev's did, and roll my own CMS for my sites. I
will share with the rest of the class what I come up with of course.
So a site is definitely possible, hell DONE really. It just needs
polish and the right gears greased.

Dan received a ton of info and files from people beyond this project
and the DB files, ready for import, I think. Some of you may have
other data/files beyond the old archives that would be great assets to
the project. GIB MOAR RARZ!

Also could someone show me what the blue hell is out there right now?
I want to see what has been done around here, and maybe I can find a
way to get some focus around here. I'm throwing my hat in boys!

Something to ask, and I really want to hear the answers to this: What
brought you here? What does DONE look like for this project to you?
Imagine WILD success and hit me with your best shot. My address is
plastered on here like the rest of ya. BRING IT BIOTCHEZ!

TOM

[MithrilForge]

Maedi Prichard wrote:
> Sorry for not replying sooner Nacho.
>

Don't worry, thanks for your reply!

> If you were to lead, the biggest challenge would be include existing
> members that as I said may feel uninvolved and unmotivated, you might
> have to make the smart decision of choosing an existing project,
> rather than choosing the ideal path of starting from scratch (I
> recommend Drupal!). Too much time has been wasted, that being said,
> the right software is crucial. I don't think that any of the 4
> websites have nailed ease-of-use on the head, but some are close.
>
>

Yes, we need a fresh start I think.
I share the view of the founders of this group that if we want we can do
something bigger.

> I'd be interested in some sort of advisory position. I feel looking
> after the Mac Garden is enough responsibility for me, but
> realistically I do have some time to donate to the HOTUD project, but
> not enough to be the main go-to-guy. I would love to help the Mac
> Garden and HOTUD 'team up' so to speak, some sort of collaboration
> would be nice.
>

That will be very welcomed!

> As both projects are in the same boat, we're not-for-profit, and
> sustainability of both projects is uncertain - It would be great to
> openly talk about costs, how we plan to finance the whole thing. The
> old HOTUD was inundated with ads, downloads were slow, obviously we
> can't follow the same path again... which it looks like we are -
> currently we're just building a site, getting it out the door without
> thinking about the security and bandwidth issues in a years time.
> Abandonia is a perfect example of a sustainable abandonware archive,
> it is run like a business - the owners seem to have done the maths.
>
>

The financial sustainability is something that hasn't been deeply talked
about before. That's a point that we should review with Dan and Andrew:
what we have and what we need, and how we'll get it.

> I myself would feel comfortable starting from scratch... just planning
> out hosting costs - bandwidth costs - security and suitability of
> Joomla (that's what everyone's using right?).
>
> I'd recommend Drupal, which is what Abandonia uses as well as Mac
> Garden - but I don't have the MySQL skills to convert the old database
> into Drupal, so it's only an good idea if someone wants to do this.
>
>

Yes, the framework has been a controversial theme in the group, and we
shall take into consideration all the approaches including Lord Pall's
proposal. Knowing that this is a sensitive issue, let's take note of it
too for a little time later, after we decide how people will be organized.

Regards,
Nacho

[MithrilForge]

Andrew Armstrong wrote:
> I'll see if I can form a better way of going forward. We'll do it
> committee style, roles and so forth. I can't stop anyone doing their
> sites if they don't get chosen to go forwards (or if a new site is
> created entirely) but I do see a lot of pulling for certain issues and
> pushing away from others, all different for the different sites (on what
> is important and not).
>
>

Yes, that could work. Let's see if we can call for votes on the
leadership of the group: My vote is for you.

> This maybe will upset some people who don't get to use their sites,
> depending on what happens, but it appears some people are upset already
> that could happen, although I see no reason to go forwards if the
> mentality is more than one site, and that people can't cooperate on one
> effort (the process of rebuilding one site can easily be reinvested in
> building another).
>

I think that we can reduce those feelings if we offer a common ground to
work. Several frameworks can coexist over the same database service
platform and there's many ways to offer replication, redundancy and
failproof service clustering.

Regards,
Nacho

[MithrilForge]

residentgrey wrote:
> I do not like Drupal and there are hundreds of great systems out
> there, Midgard is a really interesting one (maybe i just like the name
> lol). I am messing with the processes working SMF, as I came to the
> same conclusions the dev's did, and roll my own CMS for my sites. I
> will share with the rest of the class what I come up with of course.
> So a site is definitely possible, hell DONE really. It just needs
> polish and the right gears greased.
>

Why not? Midgard shall stay an option as Joomla or any other else.
We have to start to cooperate all together and take decisions as a group.

> Dan received a ton of info and files from people beyond this project
> and the DB files, ready for import, I think. Some of you may have
> other data/files beyond the old archives that would be great assets to
> the project. GIB MOAR RARZ!
>
> Also could someone show me what the blue hell is out there right now?
> I want to see what has been done around here, and maybe I can find a
> way to get some focus around here. I'm throwing my hat in boys!
>

Now we are calling for an election: People willing to lead the project
is invited to expose their view, and the rest shall express their unique
vote to one of them: easy.
Once a project leader is elected we will step to decide how to organize
each area to cover, and so on.

I think active posters shall be the ones able to vote, otherwise we
could have some problems with the identity of some voters...
Two weeks from now on could be a nice deadline for making the ultimate
choice.

Regards,
Nacho

[kra...@rustybin.com]

Hello again all,
I'd like to begin by saying "sorry"... I know I've not been that active on here for quite a while now. To cut a long story short: moving home, getting my client projects wrapped up, and my second daughter was born the day before yesterday here at home (talk about crazy!).

I've read most (though admittedly not ALL) messages passing through this group, and I would like to chip in my 2-pence worth. With projects such as this, it's very tempting to want to press ahead... hell I've noticed a few people out there have basically begun putting up their own variants of HOTU in the hope (or sadly even belief) that theirs IS (or should be) "THE DEFINITIVE HOTU SITE". That's not how a group project works (or should EVER work!). As "Nacho" has said, there needs to be a clear chain of command.... people need to do one of the following: lead, follow, or get out of the way!
I personally believe Nacho has been rather understating, though! I don't see how ANY WORK AT ALL can BEGIN until this chain of command is established, and a roadmap drawn up.
With regard to my vote on the issue of CMS.... I never use prebuilt CMS systems such as Joomla, Drupal etc. Yes, for small sites they are handy.... and expedient way of getting a website live. However, there are issues with such systems that cannot and should certainly not be ignored. As commonly-used "open-source" systems, they are inherently open to exploits and disruption from those would have WAAAAY too much time to find them. Whilst they do offer a "quick" way of getting a site live, the site then is required to remain within the relative confines of the CMS on which it is built.... that's fine for someone's personal blog, or a site offering simple reviews, news and articles etc, but for a site with such a large expected user-base should always have a custom built CMS. The CMS must be built to the scale of the site, and must grow as the site grows. As a bespoke system, it'd be free from those meddling kids (to borrow a phrase from Scooby Doo). It needs to be built to cope with the flow of data expected from it... and certainly needs to be run on a server capable of providing such resources (including, but not limited to: bandwidth, disk space, raw performance for - predominantly - the database back-end such as MySQL).

I've been building web applications and websites since the early days of dialup, that gives me enough experience to have confidence in my vote on this matter. I've worked on countless (seriously.... I literally cannot count how many) projects from small (and dare I say: fun?) to obseenly large multinational corporate internet systems... adding further weight to my convictions on this matter.

That's my vote and my 2-pence worth. As for me, I'm happy to follow, but if I don't see a clear chain of command I'm simply going to get out of the way and watch the project go up in flames.... which would/will be very sad indeed!

Regards,
Simon J Stuart
------Original Mail------
From: "MithrilForge" <mithri...@gmail.com>
To: <hotu-r...@googlegroups.com>,
"Lord_Pall" <lord...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:00:37 +0200
Subject: [hotu-revival] Re: Now what?

____________________________________________________________________________
E-Mail scanned by Kaspersky Antivirus (Up To Date)

[David Ryskalczyk]

> With regard to my vote on the issue of CMS.... I never use prebuilt CMS systems such as Joomla, Drupal etc. Yes, for small sites
> they are handy.... and expedient way of getting a website live. However, there are issues with such systems that cannot and
> should certainly not be ignored. As commonly-used "open-source" systems, they are inherently open to exploits and disruption
> from those would have WAAAAY too much time to find them. Whilst they do offer a "quick" way of getting a site live, the site then
> is required to remain within the relative confines of the CMS on which it is built.... that's fine for someone's personal blog, or a site
> offering simple reviews, news and articles etc, but for a site with such a large expected user-base should always have a custom
> built CMS. The CMS must be built to the scale of the site, and must grow as the site grows. As a bespoke system, it'd be free
> from those meddling kids (to borrow a phrase from Scooby Doo). It needs to be built to cope with the flow of data expected from
> it... and certainly needs to be run on a server capable of providing such resources (including, but not limited to: bandwidth, disk
> space, raw performance for - predominantly - the database back-end such as MySQL).

Many web sites are moving to open source CMS. For example, InfoWorld
just moved to Wordpress. (See http://drupal.org/cases and
http://wordpress.org/showcase/ for more details.) A huge benefit of an
open source CMS is that they are much less open to exploits, as the
code is continually tested and audited by many parties.
Simply, if we're going to build a CMS from scratch, we're wasting time
reinventing the wheel. We should rather start with an established
open-source CMS and modify is as seems fit. Drupal is well designed
when it comes to that, and I'm sure many others are too, but I can't
speak for them, as I haven't used them.

I think we'd be best off finding a CMS that is scalable and does what
we need, and build on it.

Just my thoughts,

--Dave

[kra...@rustybin.com]

Your arguement makes SOME sense until you get to the idea of modifying an existing CMS.... by modifying it, you're opening it to the very exploits you want to avoid. Not to mention, I have seen time and again websites skrewed with by kids who have too much spare time on their hands just because they find an exploit that hasn't been noticed yet.... or an old exploit which has been fixed in the LATEST version of the CMS, but that other sites have not yet updated theirs to the latest system.

It's swings and round-abouts! A well-designed custom CMS will ALWAYS be more secure, stable, and optimized than a generic open-source system.... nothing anyone says will ever change my position on that. If a custom CMS has security holes in it, then fire the fool who made it... simple as! No CMS I've ever built has been hacked, cracked, or otherwise phraked.... so again, my position is based on real life data.
Where you got the idea that open-source systems are bullet-proof is beyond me, because I myself have found exploits in more than a few... Wordpress included!

Any OPEN and PUBLIC system which requires each user to manually update it to ensure security is doomed to fail.... just ask Microsoft!


------Original Mail------
From: "David Ryskalczyk" <d23...@gmail.com>
To: <hotu-r...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:47:25 -0400

Subject: [hotu-revival] Re: Now what?

[Olivier Hamel]

kra...@rustybin.com wrote:
> Your arguement makes SOME sense until you get to the idea of modifying an existing CMS.... by modifying it, you're opening it to the very exploits you want to avoid. Not to mention, I have seen time and again websites skrewed with by kids who have too much spare time on their hands just because they find an exploit that hasn't been noticed yet.... or an old exploit which has been fixed in the LATEST version of the CMS, but that other sites have not yet updated theirs to the latest system.
>
> It's swings and round-abouts! A well-designed custom CMS will ALWAYS be more secure, stable, and optimized than a generic open-source system.... nothing anyone says will ever change my position on that. If a custom CMS has security holes in it, then fire the fool who made it... simple as! No CMS I've ever built has been hacked, cracked, or otherwise phraked.... so again, my position is based on real life data.
> Where you got the idea that open-source systems are bullet-proof is beyond me, because I myself have found exploits in more than a few... Wordpress included!
>
> Any OPEN and PUBLIC system which requires each user to manually update it to ensure security is doomed to fail.... just ask Microsoft!
>

Weeellllll..... I wouldn't ask M$ for advice on security since their
idea of security is chaining everyone to the wall and hiring some goons
to keep a gun pointed at their heads and to shoot if they do anything
slightly fishy. Or if the day of the month is a multiple of three. (See
'Tilt Bits'.)

[kra...@rustybin.com]

Olivier,
By "Just ask Microsoft!" I was reffering to the statistics they keep of people's Windows Activation requests for each serial key, and their error report system logs. They found that a great percentage of people have been reinstalling Windows many times over and that a vast majority of those people hadn't done many critical security updates for Windows. The point being that it is not a viable prospect to expect the end user to even so much as check for an update to a product, let alone actually update it.
Hell, when it comes to "open-source" systems, and them being "Modified to suit a purpose", it becomes more of a point of "can it be updated?" than "is there an update for it?". Once the user modifies the system, it's no longer guaranteed to be compliant with any update(s) for the official release(s).

If it's the general consensus of this group that an existing CMS is the better choice because it's "quicker" or "easier", then I'll take my leave right now. You don't need to be a Zen Buddist to realize that the easiest or quickest methods aren't bound to be the best.

------Original Mail------
From: "Olivier Hamel" <evilpi...@cox.net>
To: <hotu-r...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, 02 May 2009 12:13:41 -0400

Subject: [hotu-revival] Re: Now what?

[David Ryskalczyk]

> Hell, when it comes to "open-source" systems, and them being "Modified to suit a purpose", it becomes more of a point of "can it be updated?" than "is there an update for it?". Once the user modifies the system, it's no longer guaranteed to be compliant with any update(s) for the official release(s).

Most of the time, such modifications mean writing a custom module. So
instead of writing a whole CMS from scratch, only the module needs to
be written from scratch. This makes it easier to update the whole CMS,
as bugs will get picked out by the community. But our code, which runs
on top of the 'CMS,' does just what we need and gets updated by us.
Drupal works like this; read a bit about it and you may like the idea.
As long as the module follows the API specification, updates to the
core won't break it. Upgrades may be a different story though, but
that's why previous versions continue to get security updates.

> If it's the general consensus of this group that an existing CMS is the better choice because it's "quicker" or "easier", then I'll take my leave right now. You don't need to be a Zen Buddist to realize that the easiest or quickest methods aren't bound to be the best.

As I said, take a look at Drupal because it provides a lot of
flexibility in this area (and is used by many web sites). I'm sure
there are other content management systems (or frameworks, as Drupal
calls itself) that work in a similar way.

Writing a full CMS from scratch is a waste of resources, in my
opinion, and will lead to a maintenance and security nightmare.

--Dave

[Brian Racer]

I really don't see the point arguing about CMS feature sets when (as far as I know) we don't even have a features list of what we would like HOTU to become. Let's talk about that first :)

Brian