TPF Website

[mdk]

Hi all,

Welcome to the new members to this mailing list we use this to discuss action items for the TPF marketing. For those of you already on here I have invited several people who are already involved with (Casey, Leo) or expressed an interest in helping (Khaled, Adam) or have a big mouth and a desire to see pretty websites for Perl (Sawyer) to join in the discussion and build for a new website for The Perl Foundation.

So what do we need:

1. A new engine to power the site.

2. A new design for the site.

3. A new hosting location (Dan has already made some very sensible suggestions to this and Casey has the current site stabilised on a server he can control) where it is controlled by the Org.

That's the basic needs. Lets look at the stages, I will briefly overview them, we can narrow it down to a spec. and I will end it when i feel we start to bikeshed and that will be our cue to start the process of building tasks.

Stage 0:

1. Assess what we need to port from the old site.

2. Organise a repo. and snapshot the data to it with updates when content changes.

3. Define a feature list for the first stage of the site

3.1 draw up a huge list of features, wishes, requirements

3.2 triage this down to basic needs

3.3 define from triage list what the stage 1 framework will support/perform

3.4 make up a wish list for future stages

Stage 1.

1. Build framework for new site

1.1 Choose projects, libraries and modules

1.2 Assess requirements (hardware and software)

1.3 Discuss implementation route

That's the 10,000 foot view. I have kept it purposefully simple and a little vague as this stage is to agree to a plan we can then drill down from there.

Please reply in-line - if you want to discuss a feature, have a lot to say then start a new thread.

We will collate this to a document once the discussion starts.

Thanks

-mdk

[Leo Lapworth]

Hi All,

I've been waiting for the existing site content for a while, my plan
is (and I'll just carry on with it if I get the existing content - more than
happy for others to help/improve on my idea)...

On 17 June 2013 19:37, mdk <mark.k...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. Assess what we need to port from the old site.

Anything public - anything private can go somewhere else - google
docs? (insert NSA joke here)

> 2. Organise a repo. and snapshot the data to it with updates when content
> changes.

https://github.com/tpf/www.perlfoundation.org

Let me or mdk know your github account and we can add you.

> 3. Define a feature list for the first stage of the site

Convert existing site to Markup - hopefully if it's a wiki then the
synax won't be too hard to parse *crossing fingers* and convert.

> 3.1 draw up a huge list of features, wishes, requirements

Markup was in response to some people not wanting to have to mange
HTML and also because it's easy to edit (online) and read via github

Later integrate the news blog into the site and home page - but later.

For me this is all that's worth worrying about to start.

> 3.2 triage this down to basic needs
> 3.3 define from triage list what the stage 1 framework will support/perform
> 3.4 make up a wish list for future stages

I'd ignore the rest of this until later because of framework of choice...

> Stage 1.
>
> 1. Build framework for new site

https://metacpan.org/release/Plack-App-Directory-Markdown
So 1 template, a load of Markdown files and that's it - later functionality
can be added via app.psgi config and $stuff - but we shouldn't care
about that for now.

> 1.1 Choose projects, libraries and modules
> 1.2 Assess requirements (hardware and software)

Depending on what's needed later this could be S3's webhosting
(convert the psgi app to generate static pages and update),
but anything that runs Perl and has a processor and 1 gig of ram
and more than 1 person with access to it.

> 1.3 Discuss implementation route

Get me (or better someone with more time, but I'll take it on at
my own pace if I get it) a dump of the existing site's data, to see
if this idea is feasible.

> We will collate this to a document once the discussion starts.

I love working with other people - but that said I'm also a
big believer in JFDI which usually ends up in me just getting
on with it because other people don't have the time or motivation
for what ever reason - I'm not sure we really need to write docs
at this point?

But step -1.... need the data please

Thanks

Leo

[Ya'akov Sloman]

I have a Linode 'node currently answering to perlcommunity.org and being used for small things. It is there for perl community purposes, and could be used to host this, of for redundancy. The only limitation that could be a problem is disk space, but I have no idea how big content is.

Ya'akov

[Torsten Raudssus]

Just want little detail I would change: POD instead of Markdown ;) We are still Perl ;) And if that is all on github available for everybody to pull request update, then we are in heaven already.

[Ya'akov Sloman]

### Hello, Torsten.

**POD** and [**Markdown**][1] aren't interchangeable things, really.  Markdown was designed to make writing web content easy.  It's for the people making content for the pages so they don't have to use tags (though they can), or do anything other than type what (mostly) looks like normal, human readable text.

**POD** was designed for writing documentation in the contexts of perldoc. As it says is [perlpod][2]:

Pod is a simple-to-use markup language used for writing documentation for Perl, Perl programs, and Perl modules.

**POD** was designed for something quite different, and really, it is not a very good design.  While there are translators to HTML, it's probably easier, in this context to *use* some subset of HTML if we would otherwise use **POD**.

As an experiment, I wrote this reply in **Markdown**.  I used more markup than was needed, just so there would be formatting embedded.  What would this look like in **POD**?  Would it be as easy to read, and to verfiy syntactically?

It's just my opinion, but I would be much happier working in **Markdown** than **POD**, and I do a lot of content generation.

#### Ya'akov

[1]:[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/]

[2]:[http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html] 

(Run the above through a Markdown to HTML converter to see the output)

[Torsten Raudssus]

But Markdown has no namespace.............. :) I mean i get the point that markdown is a bit better then pod, but pod is in the toolchain and making the TPF webpage available as installable perl package readable via man page reader is just too sexy..... But if you guys dont wanna get the high class route ;-) then its fine.... I just thought staying in toolchain is cooler :) (I mean we still can do it, but who wants to make a markdown to POD converter that then later gets used to probably make some POD2Html again somewhere)

[Ya'akov Sloman]

I suppose if you are willing to write all the content, you could use POD. :)

[mdk]

I am going to executively call for Markdown and for the reasons Yaakov notes. This isn't to make it easier to do lots of toolchain stuff, that's a developer requirement. the Markdown is a content-provider requirement and with that Markdown is easier. You want to volunteer to write a converter that will take Markdown content and on-the-fly turn it to POD for the toolchain/site usage feel free but we are discussing entry level and Markdown wins (if only because the entire SC site can now be written in markdown and then we convert that at request to serve html and I can write in it fine and read it, I also read html but reading md is easier).

[Torsten Raudssus]

So much of a difference for you to put TEXT in? ;) But ok, as said, do as you like, I just gave my 2 cent, why I also made POD the main documentation format at DuckDuckGo.

Another reason I had is: less features. The less features the text formatting has, the less the people think about formatting and think more about actually writing text, which is much more relevant.

I don't want to push anyone of you into something you feel uncomfortable with..  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clZ5pdrc_X8#t=25 :-)

[Torsten Raudssus]

There is much more behind then just integrating into the toolchain, it also allows to reference to a more clear name without requiring a specific URL, referencing to a namespace is easier. But whatever, If you people cant store the text without Markdown, then lets go with that, I never cared enough about the formatting of my text to really have a voice here, it seems you guys WANT markdown so who am i to block you out :)

[mdk]

Me love text, me love formatting, me wanna cookie muhahahaha :)

[Karen Pauley]

On 18 June 2013 03:37, mdk <mark.k...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So what do we need:

> 3. A new hosting location (Dan has already made some very sensible
> suggestions to this and Casey has the current site stabilised on a server he
> can control) where it is controlled by the Org.

The current site is being hosted by Rackspace. This migration
happened recently when they bought over the provider we used to use.
Some of the problems with the site going down lately were caused
because Casey was trying to sort out how we are paying for the hosting
going forward. (Historically this was hosted for free and we weren't
expecting the change.)

TPF has a dedicated server at Pair Networks which is barely being used
and which is provided for free. We used to host our donation site on
it, but we moved to donor.com more than a year ago. Dan has suggested
that we uses this machine for the new website. (He would have liked
us to move the old website to this server but the old version of
SocialText software we are using would be a nightmare for Casey to
rebuild.)

I am sure that Dan can provide login information for the Pair machine.

All the best,

Karen

[Adam Dutko]

TPF has a dedicated server at Pair Networks which is barely being used
and which is provided for free.  We used to host our donation site on
it, but we moved to donor.com more than a year ago.  Dan has suggested
that we uses this machine for the new website.  (He would have liked
us to move the old website to this server but the old version of
SocialText software we are using would be a nightmare for Casey to
rebuild.)

I am sure that Dan can provide login information for the Pair machine.

This would seem to make the most sense. Dan, how can I help? 

[Adam Dutko]

Hi All,

Hi. 

 

I've been waiting for the existing site content for a while, my plan
is (and I'll just carry on with it if I get the existing 

content - more than
happy for others to help/improve on my idea)...

We should be able to do this with wget or if someone has access to the hosts we should be able to get a tarball of directories and dumps of the various wiki storage backends.

 

Anything public - anything private can go somewhere else - google
docs? (insert NSA joke here)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wo47p0FH1WZnS7JLQCYsqrTZ_AaPHXwMUf4UDUbfsws/edit?usp=sharing

 

Let me or mdk know your github account and we can add you. 

StylusEater

 

Convert existing site to Markup - hopefully if it's a wiki then the
synax won't be too hard to parse *crossing fingers* and convert.

Do we know what we're working with yet? 

 

Markup was in response to some people not wanting to have to mange
HTML and also because it's easy to edit (online) and read via github

 

OK

Later integrate the news blog into the site and home page - but later.

OK 

  

Do we have a framework of choice yet?

Are we going to use the Pair server? It would make the most sense.

> existing site's data

Working on it. Here are a few skeletal layouts for now as the download of the site is chewing on the wiki's at the moment.

index.html -- Top Nav

    www.perlfoundation.org -- logo

        /get.html "Download Perl"

        /# "Explore" -- overlay with ...

            News

                blogs.perl.org "Perl Blogs"

                ironman.enlightenedperl.org "Perl Ironman"

                www.perlbuzz.com "Perl Buzz"

                news.perlfoundation.org "TPF News"

            Language

                www.perl.org "Perl.org"

                learn.perl.org "Learn Perl"

                perldoc.perl.org "Documentation"

                search.cpan.org "CPAN"

            Community

                www.pm.org "Perl Mongers"

                jobs.perl.org "Perl Jobs"

                www.perlfoundation.org "Perl Foundation"

                www.yapc.org "Conferences"

index.html -- Left Nav

    

    Search Box

    About

        /who_s_who "Who's Who"

        /steering_committee "Steering Committee"

        /legal "Legal"

        /index.pl?node=IRS&type=document "Tax Returns"

        /contact_us "Contact Us"

        /press_releases "Press Releases"

        /payments "Payments - details"

        news.perlfoundation.org "Foundation Blog"

        /previous_homepage_news "Previous Homepage News"

    Get Involved

        /want_to_help "Want to Help?"

        https://secure.donor.com/pf012/give "Make a Donation"

        https://donate.perlfoundation.org/index.pl?node=Fund Drive Status "Fund Drive Status"

    Sponsorship

        /sponsors "Sponsors"

            /perl_5_core_maintenance_fund "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund"

            /ian_hague_perl_6_development_grants "Ian Hague Perl 6 Development Grants"

    Grants

        /grant_benefits "Grant Benefits"

        /grants_committee "Grants Committee"

            /running_grants "Running Grants"

            /completed_grants "Completed Grants"

            /how_to_write_a_proposal "How to Write a Proposal"

    Initiatives

        /outreach_program_for_women "Outreach Program for Women"

        /google_code_in "Google Code-in"

        /yapc_na "YAPC::NA"

    Download Perl

        /get.html "Perl 5"

        www.perl6.org "Perl 6"

    Events

        yapcna.org "YAPC North America"

        www.yapceurope.org "YAPC Europe"

        yapc.perl.org.br "YAPC South America"

        yapcasia.org "YAPC Asia"

    Affiliates

        www.perl.com "Perl.com"

        www.perl.org "Perl.org"

        jobs.perl.org "Perl Jobs"

        www.pm.org "Perl Mongers"

        perlmonks.org "PerlMonks"

        cpan.org "CPAN"

index.html -- Body

    The Perl Foundation

        www.yapc.org "International Yet Another Perl Conferences"

        www.perl.org/get.html "Perl 5"

        dev.perl.org/perl6/ "Perl 6"

        www.perl.org "perl.org"

        www.pm.org "Perl Mongers"

        www.perlmonks.org "PerlMonks"

        https://secure.donor.com/pf012/give "visit our donation page"

        https://secure.donor.com/pf012/give "LARGE DONATE BUTTON"

        

        Worldwide YAPC Events

            text,link and image to yapc events

index.html -- Bottom Nav

    Foundation Contact Information

    About TPF

        /who_s_who "Who's who?"

        /legal "Legal"

        /contact_us "Contact us"

        /news.perlfoundation.org "Foundation blog"

    Official Wikis

        /perl5 "Perl 5 wiki"

        /perl6 "Perl 6 wiki"

        /parrot "Parrot wiki"

    Get Involved

        /want_to_help "Want to help?"

        https://donate.perlfoundation.org/index.pl?node=Contribution Info "Make a donation"

        https://donate.perlfoundation.org/index.pl?node=Fund Drive Status "Fund drive status"

    Grants

        /sponsors "Sponsors"

        /grant_benefits "Benefits"

        /how_to_write_a_proposal "Write a proposal"

        /grants_committee "Grants committee"

> I'm not sure we really need to write docs at this point? 

Meh. Not that hard ... 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wo47p0FH1WZnS7JLQCYsqrTZ_AaPHXwMUf4UDUbfsws/edit?usp=sharing

Does everyone want an invite to edit?

> But step -1.... need the data please

See info above and once the download is done I will create a gzip tarball for our mutual enjoyment.

[Leo Lapworth]

<lost> - my other post to the group - nothing important... </lost>

On 30 June 2013 16:47, Adam M. Dutko <dutko...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ahh OK. I've never served anything from github. Or, are you suggesting we
> have a job to git pull?

Probably just a cronjob to do a pull (I run a few sites like this).

> I should be getting access to the Pair box soon so once I do I'll let you
> know. Do you have access to it?

Nope - but not asked yet - setting up a server is the last step really,
getting the content out and into something workable is the first step.

You now have access to https://github.com/tpf/www.perlfoundation.org
if you could:

1) drop a wget copy of the site in there (so we have an archive)
2) Make something to convert the core (e.g. without navigation) of
each page into markdown
3) Have a think about metadata for each page (title/keywords etc,
bascially is there anything else we need to extract and config somehow
- maybe as a JSON file of meta data next to each .md file? - something
like that maybe.

That would be an amazing start.

> Do you have a varnish config you'd like to use? (to put in front of Starman for https://metacpan.org/module/Plack::App::Directory::Markdown)

Nope - but what comes out of the box with a tweak is probably enough

Cheers

Leo

[Adam M. Dutko]

> 1) drop a wget copy of the site in there (so we have an archive)

Still chewing on the wiki but I did manage to push a skeletal copy and create a pull request. I figure we can help merge each others requests in case we want some sort of check. Thoughts?

> 2) Make something to convert the core (e.g. without navigation) of

> each page into markdown

I've not done a lot of work with markdown but I'll give it a whirl.

> 3) Have a think about metadata for each page (title/keywords etc,

> bascially is there anything else we need to extract and config somehow

> - maybe as a JSON file of meta data next to each .md file? - something

> like that maybe.

That would make sense. It seems from my scrape I'm discovering various tags so maybe we can use some of those pieces? On a somewhat related note I've also noticed embedded styles and remote urls for some content. 

So, from what I can recall we're currently discussing the following components in no particular order ... (others please chime in)

1) varnish

2) https://metacpan.org/module/Plack::App::Directory::Markdown

3) github

4) ...

Are we expecting TPF folks to make changes to a git clone then push or is there an online editor somewhere? I guess I'm wondering then why we aren't leveraging Github Pages and Jekyll?

https://help.github.com/categories/20/articles

My personal objection to using pages and jekyll simply revolves around dependency on a particular company/service. What if *gasp* Github goes away for some reason or another?

Just a few thoughts. I look forward to continuing the discussion with everyone.

Thank you,

Adam

[Leo Lapworth]

Hi Adam,

On 1 July 2013 00:48, Adam M. Dutko <dutko...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1) drop a wget copy of the site in there (so we have an archive)

Still chewing on the wiki but I did manage to push a skeletal copy and create a pull request. I figure we can help merge each others requests in case we want some sort of check. Thoughts?

Just commit for now - don't worry about pull requests - unless you actually want a review.

If what you committed is the whole site then I'll happily just convert to Markdown manually, I assumed there was more to it!

> 3) Have a think about metadata for each page (title/keywords etc,

> bascially is there anything else we need to extract and config somehow

> - maybe as a JSON file of meta data next to each .md file? - something

> like that maybe.

That would make sense.

 

It seems from my scrape I'm discovering various tags so maybe we can use some of those pieces? On a somewhat related note I've also noticed embedded styles and remote urls for some content. 

Euu and euuu

 

So, from what I can recall we're currently discussing the following components in no particular order ... (others please chime in)

1) varnish

2) https://metacpan.org/module/Plack::App::Directory::Markdown

3) github

4) ...

Are we expecting TPF folks to make changes to a git clone then push or is there an online editor somewhere?

All text files in github have an 'edit' button on the top right when you see the full file.

 

I guess I'm wondering then why we aren't leveraging Github Pages and Jekyll?

Mostly I've not played with it so didn't think of it, also (and I'm probably just not finding it) it seems to still require you to edit HTML? - which if we can avoid would be great.

As long as we can export the data easily after then this sounds like it might work, any chance you can mock up an example of how it would fit together?

My personal objection to using pages and jekyll simply revolves around dependency on a particular company/service. What if *gasp* Github goes away for some reason or another?

If we can download the data then this isn't really an issue.

 

Thanks for looking into all of this.

Leo

[Adam M. Dutko]

Check this out ... pair server (Thanks Dan!) ... pf markup and styles with minimal adjustments ...

http://216.92.203.215/

Thank you,

Adam

[Torsten Raudssus]

http://216.92.203.215/running_grants 

http://216.92.203.215/completed_grants

http://216.92.203.215/yapc_na

http://216.92.203.215/google_code_in

doesnt work (all linked from the sidebar)

http://216.92.203.215/grants_committee_charter

..

and several more, i think there is still some general problem (while the rest seems fine)

so ++!

[Adam M. Dutko]

Grr... reply all this time...

"Crap, you caught me before I did sed rewrites. Try now!"

You'll probably notice I appended .htm to the files too because I tried fiddling with .htaccess and rewrites but encountered an issue. Maybe that's not allowed by the current config? 

Anyway, I figure this is a good start. We should probably start doing more of what leo suggested now... 

MDK and everyone else, you seem to be quiet. Should we consider that approval of current direction???

Thank you,

Adam

[Adam M. Dutko]

http://216.92.203.215/TODO

Thank you,

Adam

[Leo Lapworth]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for all the work...

My only comments:

- I'm not sure what 'pf' markup is?

- If URL's (ie. without the .htm) could be maintained - for SEO - that would be great

Could you put this everything (even the TODO) in:

https://github.com/tpf/www.perlfoundation.org/

That way it's easy to see what (and how) it's all going.

You seem to be on the case with all of this, so if it's ok we will just let you get on with it?

Do ask for any help with anything you need though :)

Many thanks

Leo

[Daniel Wright]

Something that we should also keep in mind is that we might need to be able to dual-brand the TPF web site.

An often forgotten fact is that we are actually the "Yet Another Society".    "The Perl Foundation" is just a registered business alias for YAS.    

But, it turns out that YAS might be picking up an additional business alias soon as "The Parrot Foundation."   So, we may need to develop a site that conveys that we are both Perl and Parrot.   Or, possibly, have one site that appears with different skins depending on the host name that you connect to.

-Dan

[Leo Lapworth]

Hi Adam,

How are things going? - do you need help in any way?

Cheers

Leo

[Adam M. Dutko]

OK

I think I've got my head wrapped around how we might be able to use markdown. I'll commit what I have tomorrow so everyone can take a look. In general, I'm thinking the "main" area of the site, what I've dubbed the content pane on the right side, will be edited the most so I'm focusing on making it easy for folks to add content in that area. The styling is proving to be the trickiest part so far with our current approach. 

I'm actually in favor of keeping the markup and just volunteering to make edits when we want them done but I suspect that's a forgone conclusion.

-Adam 

Thank you,

Adam

[Adam M. Dutko]

I'm still churning. :-) I want to make sure my next commit is close to beta as much as possible.

Thank you,

Adam

[Leo Lapworth]

Thanks for keeping going on this Adam - and the update

Good luck

Leo

[sawyer x]

I am horrible.

On a different thread with Mark I explained how sending emails to multiple people often produces a side-effect of some people not responding. Add to that the effect of the "rolling snowball" of all responses so far. I haven't responded till now. I'm terribly sorry about that.

Anyway, I just wanted to state that I'm still on-board. The project of beautifying Perl project is continuing and there are quite a few designs by now.

As far as I know TPF is not on the table, but we could definitely add it. Is someone working on the design, or should we handle it?

(I haven't thoroughly read through the entire thread, just skimmed, so I might have missed possible answers)

Is there anything else I can help with?

[Adam M. Dutko]

I am horrible too so you're not alone. I'm currently mired in a project for my graduate advisor. I am attending PPW in a few weeks so if anyone else in town that would like to hammer the site revision out with me please let me know. I'd like to get the stuff I've worked on revised and to a useful point before the conference is over. Ambitious? Maybe. Possible? Yes!

Any takers for hacking this at night on 10/5 and 10/6?

Thank you,

Adam

[sawyer x]

I have company over at that time, so I won't be able to attend. Sorry.

Good luck!