Helping with the web site once it's on github

[T.J. Crowder]

Hi folks,

I think most on the list know that Tobie's trying to move the website
off Mephisto and onto GitHub, because GitHub has some lovely features
in this regard.

Once that has happened, what's the *minimum* that a user needs to have
on their machine to contribute to the website?

-- T.J. :-)

[Tobie Langel]

Git.

Jekyll is totally optional for regular content contribution.

Installing Jekyll is rather straightforward, though.

http://wiki.github.com/mojombo/jekyll/install

Best,

Tobie

[T.J. Crowder]

Thanks. Purely git? Not ruby (unless you also want to install Jekyll)?

Mind you, it seems to me even git is a barrier to casual helpers, if
they don't already use it.

-- T.J.

[Tobie Langel]

> Thanks. Purely git? Not ruby (unless you also want to install Jekyll)?

Yup.

> Mind you, it seems to me even git is a barrier to casual helpers, if
> they don't already use it.

I think I can live with that.

[Mislav Marohnić]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 18:34, T.J. Crowder <t...@crowdersoftware.com> wrote:

Thanks. Purely git? Not ruby (unless you also want to install Jekyll)?

People can edit pages from the website and preview the result in their text editor if it supports Textile/Markdown. Jekyll is only needed if they want to generate the complete site to see how will a reflect when put online (not necessary in most cases).

Speaking of Textile/Markdown, we're going to standardize on Markdown, right? I think that we should get rid of all Textile in this process, then? I recall we started with Textile on Mephisto but eventually started writing mostly in Markdown.

[John Long]

Octopress might also be a good option:

http://github.com/imathis/octopress

It's built on Jekyll, but has a number of additional features. Ryan
Daigle is using it on EdgeRails.info:

http://brandonmathis.com/blog/2010/02/09/edgerails.info-and-open-blogging/

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com
http://recursivecreative.com

[T.J. Crowder]

@Tobie:

> > Mind you, it seems to me even git is a barrier to casual helpers, if
> > they don't already use it.
>

> I think I can live with that.

We'll have to disagree on that, then, and it's your project. For a
project I was running, I would consider it a completely unacceptable
barrier to non-code contribution.

@Mislav:

> People can edit pages from the website and preview the result in their text
> editor if it supports Textile/Markdown.

That's a feature of GitHub? Browser-based editing of content? The
content Tobie's talking about (as opposed to other stuff)? If so,
result!

-- T.J.

[Tobie Langel]

> > I think I can live with that.
>
> We'll have to disagree on that, then, and it's your project. For a
> project I was running, I would consider it a completely unacceptable
> barrier to non-code contribution.

I'd like the perfect solution as much as anybody, I just haven't
bumped into it yet.

If you have, please speak up. If not, please spare me that kind of
remarks. They're just completely counter-productive

Thanks.

Tobie

P.S.: For the record. Mislav's right, you can fork the project and
edit it in the browser.

[T.J. Crowder]

Tobie,

> I'd like the perfect solution as much as anybody, I just haven't
> bumped into it yet.
>
> If you have, please speak up. If not, please spare me that kind of
> remarks. They're just completely counter-productive

Oh for cryin' out loud, Tobie. There are roughly 50 wiki engines out
there that make contributing a darn sight easier than using flippin'
git. But:

> P.S.: For the record. Mislav's right, you can fork the project and
> edit it in the browser.

Excellent! So minimum requirement is a browser.

-- T.J.

[Mislav Marohnić]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 09:47, T.J. Crowder <t...@crowdersoftware.com> wrote:

We'll have to disagree on that, then, and it's your project. For a
project I was running, I would consider it a completely unacceptable
barrier to non-code contribution.

From my experience: I'm working on an open-source project right now for my employer. This project has had a number of contributions over the past 3 weeks (since I started), most of them coming from people that don't know git. These contributions were translations, design changes, copywriting. It was generally more difficult and time-consuming to merge in changes submitted by people who didn't use git than from people that did. Also, patches from people generated by git were generally more quality.

I fully back Tobie's decision to set up some bar for contributors.

[T.J. Crowder]

Mislav,

Fair nuff. I'm not going to argue the point, though I think one could
argue it from a ... no, wait, saying "from a ___ perspective" would be
arguing the point, and I'm not going to, because:

1. It's not my project

2. It's not my project (I think it's worth saying twice) :-)

3. The people *actually running the project* have made their decision

4. GitHub makes life fairly easy for people who don't use git, so this
whole discussion was pretty much unnecessary. You don't need git to
help out. You just need a browser. Thank you again for pointing that
out.

-- T.J.

[Tobie Langel]

> Oh for cryin' out loud, Tobie. There are roughly 50 wiki engines out
> there that make contributing a darn sight easier than using flippin'
> git. But:

Hosted, fully style-able wikis with an integrated blog engine, which
allow inclusion of static HTML pages (the generated API doc), and can
live on their own domain name for less than $7/month ?

Yes please!!

[T.J. Crowder]

Tobie,

I'm just not going to continue this, it's a pointless aggravation for
both of us.

Have a good one,

-- T.J.