On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 12:24:32AM -0500, Russell Hires wrote:
> Hello all!
>
> I've presented to three different SLUG meetings a proposed new SLUG
> website that I've built using the current site's content, and a Content
> Management System (CMS) called Plone (see http://www.plone.org/ for
> details) built on top of a web application server/development
> environment called Zope (see http://www.zope.org/ for more information
> about that).
>
> So...if you want to see what's been developed, have a look at
> http://www.village-smurf.com:8080/Test_SLUG
>
> Tell me what you think! Please note that the URL is case sensitive, a
> side effect of the whole thing being written in Python. The site is
> hosted currently on my G3/266 Powermac, and hasn't been optimized.
If you find the site slow, this is why.
> At
> some point, if every one likes it and we can put it on nks's servers,
> the SLUG site will run on zope/plone behind Apache. Also, I'm not
> completely done. I haven't created a todo list yet...but I'm getting
> closer to writing one up every day! :-)
I have a message into NKS about this, but they are swamped. So I don't
know if or when they can host with Zope/Plone. When I do know, I'll pass
on the info.
>
> I'm still going to do a presentation in Dunedin...
>
Let me know when you plan this.
> Features/Benefits:
> # Meeting Calendar
> # Workflows
> # User created content
> # Security/Access Control Lists
> # Opt-in/opt-out of website related changes (such as a job posting)
> # Searches
> # Scales well to 1000's of users (not that we will need that)
>
> Potential drawbacks:
> # Requires maintenance/care and feeding
> # So far, I'm the only one who knows Zope/Plone!
>
> My goal in creating the site was to address a need that some folks had a
> couple of years ago, but since they've gone off on their own...Lately
> I've been able to sit down and take my flash in a pan idea and make it
> into something worthwhile. I'm happy to contribute back to my community
> in this fashion.
>
> The need I'm speaking of is job postings. The current situation requires
> someone filling out a form, and having Paul send an email to the list
> saying there's a job posting. My solution is that a user fills out a
> form (aka a job type), and submits it. After this, the reviewer looks at
> it, decides it's okay, and publishes it. The act of publishing causes an
> email to go out to everyone that has opted in (through their user prefs)
> to receive these emails that announce the job. Plone has a facility for
> having content be available for a set period of time, after which it is
> not available for viewing. This greatly simplifies the process, believe
> it or not. :-) Many of the manual steps become automated.
FWIW, the only manual step in this process currently is me selecting
three menu options on my computer. I tell it to re-sync the Jobs page
content with the (newly revised) database, then tell it to rebuild the
site, then ftp it up. Takes me all of three minutes, if that.
What has not been set up is a list that would email job listings out to
those who s*bscr*bed. There were several reasons why this was never
done, not the least of which was the need to admin yet another list, on
top of the six or so SLUG lists I already administer.
(Russell, correct me if I'm wrong here.) The new site would allow
members to "subscribe" to the site, and set various parameters, like
receiving job offers, etc. Potentially, there could be more of a
community built around the website, as there is around sites like
lwn.net, slashdot, etc. I don't foresee the same "interactive" quality
of slashdot and the like, though. This would not be like a wiki site.
Visually, the new site is much much prettier than the current site, and
has a more pleasing visual organization. The calendar on the main page
is kinda slick, too. The existing site got to a point some time back
where I was "done" messing with it. It was functional, but not
beautiful.
Paul
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