Re: plone based website test

For fun I've been playing a bit with a plone based system to manage
the SPI website. The very first bits are viewable at
http://chic.spi-inc.org:9673/www.spi-inc.org/ . If there is any interest
in using this instead of the current system I'll continue working
on it.

Please note that I have no intention to add or update content,
volunteers to actively work on content are always welcome.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On 13 Jan 2005, at 00:17, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Please note that I have no intention to add or update content,
> volunteers to actively work on content are always welcome.

I think it would lower the barriers to contribute to the web-site as
the content is modifiable directly by the volunteers. However somebody
has to take quite a bit of work to adapt the standard plone design to
the SPI needs. If this volunteer is found I think it would be a nice
idea to switch to Plone.

Just my few bits,
Philipp Kern

Previously Philipp Kern wrote:
> I think it would lower the barriers to contribute to the web-site as
> the content is modifiable directly by the volunteers. However somebody
> has to take quite a bit of work to adapt the standard plone design to
> the SPI needs.

Somebody has to figure out what 'SPI needs' are first. Apparently a
website which has seen no news item appear during all of 2004 has been
sufficient so far so the needs can not be that hard.

But you can do all kinds of modification workflow stuff in Plone so it
should not be a problem. Something where everyone can create content but
a set of people has to review it before it can be published is an option
for example.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 10:48:26AM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> But you can do all kinds of modification workflow stuff in Plone so it
> should not be a problem. Something where everyone can create content but
> a set of people has to review it before it can be published is an option
> for example.

FWIW, Drupal also has that. It's an SPI project now, and I have found
it a lot simpler to set up than Plone. (Though Plone may have evolved
significantly since I last looked at it.)

-- John

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:10:30 -0600
John Goerzen <jgoerzen(at)complete(dot)org> wrote:

> FWIW, Drupal also has that. It's an SPI project now, and I have found
> it a lot simpler to set up than Plone. (Though Plone may have evolved
> significantly since I last looked at it.)

Does Drupal, and Plone, have functional multi-lingual support yet?

SPI's current website is entirely multi-lingual and is based on Debian's
website [1]. The multi-lingual support is based on Apache's content
negotiation [2], which displays web pages corresponding to the visitors'
configured preferences in their web browsers. [3]

Translations of documents on SPI's website are tagged with the version
number of the original document in order to track updates to the
original. Any outdated documents can be found by running a Perl script,
and the textual changes are found using cvs (or more easily with ViewCVS
[4], when it is working).

We need similar features in a CMS.

While content negotiation isn't necessarily needed in a CMS, we do need
a feature that can display untranslated content amongst translated
content like e.g. the news section on the front page and the overviews
of minutes and resolutions.

The translators need some sort of notification mechanism to make us
aware of changes, and also a feature that can highlight changes between
versions of a document.

Just something to think about. :-)

[1] http://www.debian.org/website/
[2] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html
[3] http://www.debian.org/intro/cn
[4] http://cvs.spi-inc.org/webwml/

--
Regards, Kaare - contributing member, Danish translator of the website

Previously Kaare Olsen wrote:
> Does Drupal, and Plone, have functional multi-lingual support yet?

Plone can do it.

> Translations of documents on SPI's website are tagged with the version
> number of the original document in order to track updates to the
> original.

In plone you can do it through .po files, possibly using other methods
as well (I haven't investigated beyond verifying that it is indeed
possible and used in practice).

> While content negotiation isn't necessarily needed in a CMS, we do need
> a feature that can display untranslated content amongst translated
> content like e.g. the news section on the front page and the overviews
> of minutes and resolutions.

If something isn't translated you'll get the default version.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

Previously John Goerzen wrote:
> FWIW, Drupal also has that. It's an SPI project now, and I have found
> it a lot simpler to set up than Plone. (Though Plone may have evolved
> significantly since I last looked at it.)

Nobody is asking you to setup Plone, or Drupal, or something else. There
is a spi-admin committee to take care of little technicalities like
that.

What is needed is people that will actively work on the contents, both
in terms of raw content and in terms of graphical and UI design.

So please lets not turn this into a discussion of what is the best CMS
system, that is really not interesting. In the end the only thing that
matters is content.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

Previously Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Kaare Olsen wrote:
> > Does Drupal, and Plone, have functional multi-lingual support yet?
>
> Plone can do it.

See http://plone.org/development/teams/i18n/copy_of_index_html

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 05:37:49PM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Previously Kaare Olsen wrote:
> > > Does Drupal, and Plone, have functional multi-lingual support yet?
> >
> > Plone can do it.
>
> See http://plone.org/development/teams/i18n/copy_of_index_html

For Drupal, see:

http://drupal.org/node/290
http://drupal.org/node/8562

Basically, there are separate mechanisms for interface and content.

-- John

Maybe you should form a content management system selection committee.

Who cares what gets used if it generates useful action? Arguably, technology
isn't the problem since Debian uses the exact same system and manages to keep
hundreds of pages updated on a regular basis in many languages. It's a people
problem.

If technology will help ease the people problem, however, then great. Get on
it. Use Drupal, use Plone, whatever. Hell, use MediaWiki. It has lots of
buzz. Anything that generates some utility from SPI would be an improvement.

On Thursday 13 January 2005 10:28 am, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Nobody is asking you to setup Plone, or Drupal, or something else. There
> is a spi-admin committee to take care of little technicalities like
> that.
>
> What is needed is people that will actively work on the contents, both
> in terms of raw content and in terms of graphical and UI design.
>
> So please lets not turn this into a discussion of what is the best CMS
> system, that is really not interesting. In the end the only thing that
> matters is content.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 05:37:49PM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Previously Kaare Olsen wrote:
> > > Does Drupal, and Plone, have functional multi-lingual support yet?
> >
> > Plone can do it.
>
> See http://plone.org/development/teams/i18n/copy_of_index_html

For a Portal wide thing, what you need is LinguaPlone, a Zope product
developed by PloneSolutions:

http://www.plonesolutions.com/products/linguaplone

Regards,
--
teo - http://blog.eltridente.org

"Res publica non dominetur"

Debian doesn't generally erect committees that /instruct the people who
do the real work/, I don't think SPI needs to either. Wichert is the
only volunteer we've heard from, let him and any other volunteers who
want to do real work decide how to do the technology. If they choose
Plone, it is easy to manage and it's real simple to add content.

Thanks

Bruce

Ean Schuessler wrote:

>Maybe you should form a content management system selection committee.
>
>Who cares what gets used if it generates useful action? Arguably, technology
>isn't the problem since Debian uses the exact same system and manages to keep
>hundreds of pages updated on a regular basis in many languages. It's a people
>problem.
>
>If technology will help ease the people problem, however, then great. Get on
>it. Use Drupal, use Plone, whatever. Hell, use MediaWiki. It has lots of
>buzz. Anything that generates some utility from SPI would be an improvement.
>
>On Thursday 13 January 2005 10:28 am, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>
>
>>Nobody is asking you to setup Plone, or Drupal, or something else. There
>>is a spi-admin committee to take care of little technicalities like
>>that.
>>
>>What is needed is people that will actively work on the contents, both
>>in terms of raw content and in terms of graphical and UI design.
>>
>>So please lets not turn this into a discussion of what is the best CMS
>>system, that is really not interesting. In the end the only thing that
>>matters is content.
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Spi-general mailing list
>Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
>http://lists.spi-inc.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/spi-general
>
>

It seems nobody is interested in working on content for the website,
so I'll just remove the CMS stuff I was playing with.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 11:22:22AM +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> It seems nobody is interested in working on content for the website,
> so I'll just remove the CMS stuff I was playing with.

Well, I did some commits last week.

I personally am pretty indifferent to the question of whether SPI needs an
exciting new look to its website.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Deputy Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
branden(at)deadbeast(dot)net
http://www.spi-inc.org/

I'm happy to give you a hand. I don't know anything about Zope or Python
though.

On Monday 17 January 2005 4:22 am, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> It seems nobody is interested in working on content for the website,
> so I'll just remove the CMS stuff I was playing with.

--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com

Previously Ean Schuessler wrote:
> I'm happy to give you a hand. I don't know anything about Zope or Python
> though.

Write new content. Make a new design that looks like something made this
century. That is the kind of stuff we need.

The CMS backend used is a boring technicality that the admin team (ie
Josip and me) can take care of.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.