Thread: Website Roundup

Website Roundup

From
"Gavin M. Roy"
Date:
I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www list,
those in the "website team" and those outside of the "team".  There are
many opinions, many cooks in the kitchen, and little overall progress.
As peoples time commitments and abilities vary, what I believe needs to
happen, as I've heard others state as well, is we need to have someone
step-up and manage the process of getting the series of sites to
completion.  I'd be happy to take up that role if you all agree to it,
or we need to find someone with the time and dedication to make it
happen.  Alexey and others have come very far, but not far enough, and
from my perspective there is no end in site, as there appears to not be
any focused group or manager holding the reigns and coordinating
development, testing, and implementation.

My intention is not to step on any toes here, just to offer my opinion
about where the www effort is, and where it's going (or more
appropriately not).   If everyone's moving in the same direction, we'll
no longer be in limbo but working together towards a common goal.  If
I'm wrong about all this, please let me know.

Please let me know what you think, and what we can do as a group and
individually to get this done.

Gavin

Re: Website Roundup

From
David Costa
Date:

On Mar 16, 2004, at 9:08 PM, Gavin M. Roy wrote:

> I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www list,
> those in the "website team" and those outside of the "team".  There
> are many opinions, many cooks in the kitchen, and little overall
> progress.  As peoples time commitments and abilities vary, what I
> believe needs to happen, as I've heard others state as well, is we
> need to have someone step-up and manage the process of getting the
> series of sites to completion.  I'd be happy to take up that role if
> you all agree to it, or we need to find someone with the time and
> dedication to make it happen.  Alexey and others have come very far,
> but not far enough, and from my perspective there is no end in site,
> as there appears to not be any focused group or manager holding the
> reigns and coordinating development, testing, and implementation.
>
> My intention is not to step on any toes here, just to offer my opinion
> about where the www effort is, and where it's going (or more
> appropriately not).   If everyone's moving in the same direction,
> we'll no longer be in limbo but working together towards a common
> goal.  If I'm wrong about all this, please let me know.
>
> Please let me know what you think, and what we can do as a group and
> individually to get this done.
>
+1 for me
I did (my little contribution) the pgsql news feed, never implemented
thou :(((
perhaps the gborg feeds are now live...
ah no :((

cheers
David Costa


> Gavin
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings


Re: Website Roundup

From
Alexey Borzov
Date:
Hi!

First of all, here is the latest portal patch for those wishing to follow the
development:
http://www.alexey.beta.postgresql.org/files/portal-2004-03-13.diff.gz
Should be applied via
patch -p1 -E
in portal dir, as it removes some files.

I've set up a private CVS repo for this stuff, anyone wishing to see their
changes on the dev. version
http://www.alexey.beta.postgresql.org/
please send the patches directly to me.


Gavin M. Roy wrote:
> I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www list,
> those in the "website team" and those outside of the "team".  There are
> many opinions, many cooks in the kitchen, and little overall progress.
> As peoples time commitments and abilities vary, what I believe needs to
> happen, as I've heard others state as well, is we need to have someone
> step-up and manage the process of getting the series of sites to
> completion.  I'd be happy to take up that role if you all agree to it,
> or we need to find someone with the time and dedication to make it
> happen.  Alexey and others have come very far, but not far enough, and
> from my perspective there is no end in site, as there appears to not be
> any focused group or manager holding the reigns and coordinating
> development, testing, and implementation.

Right now I don't have time to work on the website. I added the pending tasks to
the project's tracker, so anyone wishing to help the development can grab one:
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/pgweb/task/tasklist.php

The tasks are for "phase 1" of course.

If you are serious about this management role, then I suggest going through the
list archives and writing a more verbose plan. Then do a checklist for phase 1,
so that it will be easier to track progress.

Then write the functional specification for next-gen website (phase 2+).

> My intention is not to step on any toes here, just to offer my opinion
> about where the www effort is, and where it's going (or more
> appropriately not).   If everyone's moving in the same direction, we'll
> no longer be in limbo but working together towards a common goal.  If
> I'm wrong about all this, please let me know.
>
> Please let me know what you think, and what we can do as a group and
> individually to get this done.

If you really want this project to head somewhere, then you'll need two more
people to work on the website:
1) A professional webdesigner;
2) An editor-in-chief.
Both of them should have a clue on web usability.

But what's really needed right now is lowering the barrier for contributing to
the website development. It is ridiculously high now.



Re: Website Roundup

From
David Costa
Date:
On Mar 16, 2004, at 9:59 PM, Alexey Borzov wrote:

>
> in portal dir, as it removes some files.
>
> I've set up a private CVS repo for this stuff, anyone wishing to see
> their changes on the dev. version
> http://www.alexey.beta.postgresql.org/
> please send the patches directly to me.

groovy,
would you be able to add my feeds ? :)

David

>
>
> Gavin M. Roy wrote:
>> I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www list,
>> those in the "


Re: Website Roundup

From
Robert Treat
Date:
On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 15:14, David Costa wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 16, 2004, at 9:08 PM, Gavin M. Roy wrote:
>
> > I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www list,
> > those in the "website team" and those outside of the "team".  There
> > are many opinions, many cooks in the kitchen, and little overall
> > progress.  As peoples time commitments and abilities vary, what I
> > believe needs to happen, as I've heard others state as well, is we
> > need to have someone step-up and manage the process of getting the
> > series of sites to completion.  I'd be happy to take up that role if
> > you all agree to it, or we need to find someone with the time and
> > dedication to make it happen.  Alexey and others have come very far,
> > but not far enough, and from my perspective there is no end in site,
> > as there appears to not be any focused group or manager holding the
> > reigns and coordinating development, testing, and implementation.
> >
> > My intention is not to step on any toes here, just to offer my opinion
> > about where the www effort is, and where it's going (or more
> > appropriately not).   If everyone's moving in the same direction,
> > we'll no longer be in limbo but working together towards a common
> > goal.  If I'm wrong about all this, please let me know.
> >
> > Please let me know what you think, and what we can do as a group and
> > individually to get this done.
> >
> +1 for me
> I did (my little contribution) the pgsql news feed, never implemented
> thou :(((

almost implemented... http://www.postgresql.org/pgnews_rdf.php  As I
posted over the weekend (without much feedback) I put the files up, did
some testing, was fairly happy but wanted to change the static url and
see if I could get them to connect via db info in globals.php before
announcing. the second one is really option, i suppose I could leave it
for now, but I do want to get the files generating to news.rss and
events.rss.

> perhaps the gborg feeds are now live...
> ah no :((
>

http://gborg.postgresql.org/news.rss seems to work for me ??


I have 2 or 3 techdocs updates I need to do first, but if the kids go to
sleep tonight without too much incident I hope to get back on this.


Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL


Re: Website Roundup

From
Robert Treat
Date:
On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 15:59, Alexey Borzov wrote:
> But what's really needed right now is lowering the barrier for contributing to
> the website development. It is ridiculously high now.
>

What do you see as the biggest impediments? We have a mailing list for
website discussion and the code is available via cvs... the only thing
that would seem a problem might be our ability to apply patches in a
timely manner when folks contribute large pieces of code... is that
what's dragging you down or is there something else?

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL


Re: Website Roundup

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gavin M. Roy [mailto:gmr@ehpg.net]
> Sent: 16 March 2004 20:09
> To: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
> Subject: [pgsql-www] Website Roundup
>
> I've been fairly quietly watching the events of the pgsql-www
> list, those in the "website team" and those outside of the
> "team".  There are many opinions, many cooks in the kitchen,
> and little overall progress.
> As peoples time commitments and abilities vary, what I
> believe needs to happen, as I've heard others state as well,
> is we need to have someone step-up and manage the process of
> getting the series of sites to completion.  I'd be happy to
> take up that role if you all agree to it, or we need to find
> someone with the time and dedication to make it happen.
> Alexey and others have come very far, but not far enough, and
> from my perspective there is no end in site, as there appears
> to not be any focused group or manager holding the reigns and
> coordinating development, testing, and implementation.

Hi Gavin,

Currently my time is constrained by family issues and my studies, hence
most of what I do is the 'background' stuff that probably only gets seen
by Marc & Robert, as well as odd bits and pieces here and there.
Consequently I am happy for someone to drive the continuing development
of the sites - provided the existing basic plan is followed. This is
basically:

Phase 1: Make the current portal capable of supporting multiple
languages, and remain mirrorable.

Phase 2: Design an new look/feel for the portal that can be extended
across other sites. They need not look identical, but should appear to
have come froom the same stable as it were.

Phase 3: Re-assess the different sites and merge them as appropriate.
Apply new designs/styles to remaining sub-sites to brig them into line
with the portal.

My personal opinion is that the major problem is finding the required
developer time rather than management - both Andreas and Alexey have
made good progress, but both also have other commitments requiring their
time. Still, I do see the value of a formal plan, and if you can come up
with that it would certainly help - even if just to breakup the work
into bitesized chunks that are more likely to get done 'in a spare 5
minutes'.

Regards, Dave.



Re: Website Roundup

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Treat [mailto:xzilla@users.sourceforge.net]
> Sent: 16 March 2004 22:28
> To: David Costa
> Cc: Gavin M. Roy; PostgreSQL WWW Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Website Roundup
>
> On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 15:14, David Costa wrote:
> >
> > I did (my little contribution) the pgsql news feed, never
> implemented
> > thou :(((
>
> almost implemented...
> http://www.postgresql.org/pgnews_rdf.php

Yes, I was just going to say I thought you did that.

> I have 2 or 3 techdocs updates I need to do first, but if the
> kids go to sleep tonight without too much incident I hope to
> get back on this.

Hehehe. I'm just catching up whilst waiting for no. 3 to wake up for his
midnight feed!

/D

Re: Website Roundup

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Treat [mailto:xzilla@users.sourceforge.net]
> Sent: 16 March 2004 22:33
> To: Alexey Borzov
> Cc: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Website Roundup
>
> What do you see as the biggest impediments? We have a mailing
> list for website discussion and the code is available via
> cvs... the only thing that would seem a problem might be our
> ability to apply patches in a timely manner when folks
> contribute large pieces of code... is that what's dragging
> you down or is there something else?

Actually the last time round there was somewhat exceptional
circumstances preventing me doing that for a couple of days. I was just
about to review the latest now....

Regards, Dave.

Re: Website Roundup

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alexey Borzov [mailto:borz_off@cs.msu.su]
> Sent: 16 March 2004 21:00
> To: Gavin M. Roy
> Cc: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Website Roundup
>
> Hi!
>
> First of all, here is the latest portal patch for those
> wishing to follow the
> development:
> http://www.alexey.beta.postgresql.org/files/portal-2004-03-13.diff.gz
> Should be applied via
> patch -p1 -E
> in portal dir, as it removes some files.

Thanks, patch applied.

Regards, Dave.

Re: Website Roundup

From
Chris Ryan
Date:
--- David Costa <geeks@dotgeek.org> wrote:
 -- snip --
>
> thou :(((
> perhaps the gborg feeds are now live...
> ah no :((
>
> cheers
> David Costa
>
 -- snip --

    The GBorg feeds are live at http://gborg.postgresql.org/news.rss.
They are generated once and hour. The thing is there just isn't alot of
daily news updates so it probably doesn't look like it is live.

    The only aspect I haven't done yet is place a link to the feed on
the site somewhere.

Chris Ryan


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Re: Website Roundup

From
Robert Treat
Date:
On Tuesday 16 March 2004 19:03, Chris Ryan wrote:
> --- David Costa <geeks@dotgeek.org> wrote:
>  -- snip --
>
> > thou :(((
> > perhaps the gborg feeds are now live...
> > ah no :((
> >
> > cheers
> > David Costa
>
>  -- snip --
>
>     The GBorg feeds are live at http://gborg.postgresql.org/news.rss.
> They are generated once and hour. The thing is there just isn't alot of
> daily news updates so it probably doesn't look like it is live.
>
>     The only aspect I haven't done yet is place a link to the feed on
> the site somewhere.
>

what do folks think about putting the gborg news at
http://www.postgresql.org/projects.rss ?

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Re: Website Roundup

From
Robert Treat
Date:
On Tuesday 16 March 2004 17:38, Dave Page wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert Treat [mailto:xzilla@users.sourceforge.net]
> > I have 2 or 3 techdocs updates I need to do first, but if the
> > kids go to sleep tonight without too much incident I hope to
> > get back on this.
>
> Hehehe. I'm just catching up whilst waiting for no. 3 to wake up for his
> midnight feed!
>

ok.. news.rss and events.rss are functional... didnt do the db stuff though
and i hacked buildsite to build the rss files, feel free to take a look, it
will need to be committed to cvs..

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Re: Website Roundup

From
Alexey Borzov
Date:
Hi!

Robert Treat wrote:
>>But what's really needed right now is lowering the barrier for contributing to
>>the website development. It is ridiculously high now.
>
> What do you see as the biggest impediments? We have a mailing list for
> website discussion and the code is available via cvs... the only thing
> that would seem a problem might be our ability to apply patches in a
> timely manner when folks contribute large pieces of code... is that
> what's dragging you down or is there something else?

I'm not speaking about myself here, I'm speaking about someone completely new.
1) How does he find about the list and the public CVS?
2) How does he learn about the current TODO list?

and compare this to the PostgreSQL-the-DB development...


Re: Website Roundup

From
Alexey Borzov
Date:
Hi!

David Costa wrote:
>> I've set up a private CVS repo for this stuff, anyone wishing to see
>> their changes on the dev. version
>> http://www.alexey.beta.postgresql.org/
>> please send the patches directly to me.
>
>
> groovy,
> would you be able to add my feeds ? :)

Definitely, if you do the patch against the current CVS of 'portal'. ;]



Re: Website Roundup

From
"Dave Page"
Date:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Treat [mailto:xzilla@users.sourceforge.net]
> Sent: 17 March 2004 05:14
> To: Dave Page; David Costa
> Cc: Gavin M. Roy; PostgreSQL WWW Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] Website Roundup
>
>
> ok.. news.rss and events.rss are functional... didnt do the
> db stuff though and i hacked buildsite to build the rss
> files, feel free to take a look, it will need to be committed
> to cvs..

I've added news/events.rss and commited the lot. Anything else I missed?

Regards, Dave