mqtt.org site, and many many links

[Andy Piper]

Hi all

Currently, mqtt.org runs on a combination of Wordpress for the (rarely updated) blog and static pages, and Dokuwiki for the wiki. In an effort to encourage greater participation - and because Nick and I don't always have the bandwidth to update things on a timely schedule - we've moved content like the Software page to the wiki relatively recently, which means that new clients and other software can now be listed more easily. I've had a goal to do that with more of the site content over time.

Our Dokuwiki has occasionally been spammed, unfortunately, and there are various disadvantages to the way we currently operate the site (maintaining the two sets of wordpress and dokuwiki updates, user ID creation is pretty basic, etc etc).

Partly inspired by nodered.org, I'm exploring the idea of moving the site across to Github Pages. This will not happen overnight, as there's a fair amount of content, particularly on the wiki side of the house - and we won't switch DNS etc until we're happy we have a workable alternative to today's site.

The look-and-feel would change, and the wiki would live on Github. In addition, I have a document in my Google Drive which currently contains about 12 pages of links to "stuff" - software, news items, discussions, anywhere MQTT has been mentioned, really! I've shared access to that with a few folks in the community with the aim of getting more of the content into the current wiki, and generally to get it organised. I propose to drop that into the new wiki too, and encourage more community support in organising the content.

(for now, I've made the document public -> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1weZofyIFRmGC-5jDCFxzvO9KZpkryvjE7ts1rz5k8Co/edit?usp=sharing - with limited permissions to edit)

Does anyone have any strong feelings about this approach?

Andy

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Andy Piper | Kingston upon Thames, London (UK)
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[Jan-Piet Mens]

> Does anyone have any strong feelings about this approach?

Yes: +1 for the Github approach! :-)

-JP

[Paul Fremantle]

+1 from me too. Presumably this would mean you could have others help more easily as well. I'm happy to help out if you want any help.

Paul

[Dominik Obermaier]

Definitely a +1 from me.

Do you plan to do this in the Github Wiki? I would advocate for using a static site generator like Jekyll or Awestruct to generate the actual web pages and folks could provide pull requests for changes.

Dominik

Paul Fremantle wrote:

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[Andy Piper]

I was thinking of having the "brand" stuff on static Jekyll pages, but use the Github wiki for technical content such as we have on the existing dokuwiki. The only thing is, the two options - static site and GH wiki - look quite different, even more compared to what we have today. If you think the barrier of entry of a pull request is low enough, I would consider that - but I know some people prefer something easier-to-edit on a page.

[Dominik Obermaier]

The main issue here is, that we are massively depending on Github. I think this is a serious vendor lock-in. The other issue I see is, that we would have no possibility for theming anything.

If we would just use Github as the "source" for the pages, it would be ok, since it's just a plain git repository.

Of course it's a possible higher barrier to do pull-requests than edit a wiki. Since Github supports online file editing, people wouldn't have to clone the repository, make local changes and push again, so in essence they could do the same as editing the wiki (afaik the Github wiki is also a "special" git repository under the hood).

What could also lower the barrier for "known commiter" is to give people, who are known to edit things frequently, direct commit rights for the repo.

What do you think?


Andy Piper wrote:

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Andy Piper | Kingston upon Thames, London (UK)
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[Nicholas O'Leary]

I'm personally less concerned about lock-in with the wiki than the fact we would not be able to theme it - branding is important.

Github pages have no lock-in at all; we use the convenience of GitHub to host the Jekyll site with all the additional web-based tooling. Nothing would prevent us from lifting-and-shifting the repository/site to somewhere else if we felt the need to.

Pull-requests to add content is a very open and transparent way for people to contribute content; it ensures an editorial quality and full accountability. Although it does raise the bar to contribution, which is not ideal.

I like the idea of having a broader set of trusted community members who have more direct commit access so that Andy and I are never a bottle neck.

N

[Jan-Piet Mens]

Dominik,

> The other issue I see is, that
> we would have no possibility for theming anything.

Why not? Github pages doesn't mean "no CSS" ... ?!

-JP

[Andy Piper]

I'm absolutely happy to make the new MQTT organisation I created on Github this week open to others beyond just myself and Nick - let me just get the site itself started :-)

[Dominik Obermaier]

Jan-Piet,

I refered to the Github Wiki, as far as I know there is no way to theme the Wiki.

Github pages can be themed, of course. :-)

[Yasir Ali]

+1 For knolleary

[Nicholas Humfrey]

I think using Github Pages + Pull Requests is the best bet.

Limited vendor lock-in, lots of flexibility, less time deleting spam and with a team of approvers, should be quick to update.

nick.

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[Yodit Stanton]

yes I agree.

[Dominik Obermaier]

I just saw that the MQTT wiki is beeing migrated to a Github Wiki: https://github.com/mqttorg/mqttorg.github.io/wiki

Is this temporary or is this the new final wiki? I would still prefer the Github Pages + Pull requests concept way more than a standard Github Wiki.

In case that this is just temporary, forget this e-mail :-)

Dominik

[Andy Piper]

The site is intended to end up on Pages (that's what the mqttorg.github.io repo is for, but I've not had a chance to move the existing WP content there yet).

It was trivial to move the dokuwiki content over to the GH wiki so I dumped everything there for now. We can either edit it there, or present it via Pages. I just wanted to "draw a line in the sand" and move the content across.

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[Paolo Patierno]

I'm here for any helps to write contents !