Web site

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Prototype GRASS site

based on CMS Made Simple (here at FEM, we are running 10+ portals for two years)

Pages to be transferred from old to new Web site

HTML Site Map (incomplete): http://grass.osgeo.org/sitemap.html

HTML Site Map (complete): http://grass.osgeo.org/sitemap_full.html

  • ...

Pages already transferred

  • ...

Pages to be transferred from old website to wiki

  • Documentation
    • Tutorials
    • Books
    • News
  • Screenshots
  • Applications
  • Support
    • Community
    • Mailing lists
    • Commercial support
  • Development

Pages to be modified before transfer from old to new Web site

  • ...

Pages to be archived

  • ...

Pages to be deleted

For sure, some old stuff is superfluous...:

  • ...

Pages to be newly developed

Inspired by other sites, some new content must be developed:

Leftovers

(a complete list of old pages to be allocated into above categories during the transformation process - are we able to automagically generate it?)

CMS Made Simple editing tricks

  • Select editor to use in "My Preferences"
  • Error "Smarty error: ... unknown tag - ...":
    • You need to protect curly braces '{...}' with '<literal>{...}</literal>'

GRASS Web Site planning

The current GRASS web site appear a bit overloaded and unmodern (since it has been kindly handcrafted with vim since 1998, of course following some evolution from plain HTML to HTML/PHP with RSS integrated). The question is:

  • go Content Management System (CMS)?
  • or stick with static pages?

To keep in mind:

  • traditionally low number of contributors (hey, this could be better with a CMS)
  • mirror sites want to copy/clone the site without more efforts than using rsync (i.e., static copy)
  • the new layout should be modern, fresh and attractive

Update 7/2010: grass.osgeo.org is now running on new hardware on Debian Lenny.

Nice sites

Here a list of sites which are looking nice:

reSt + Sphinx

  • Geotools.org
    • System: Sphinx
    • Advantages:
      • Page files can be maintained in SVN
    • Disadvantages:
      • No WYSIWYG editor
      • I think the GeoTools site is about as fancy as you can get with it (not very).

CMS Made Simple

  • CMS Made Simple
    • System: CMS Made Simple
    • Advantages:
      • WYSIWYG editor
      • Access control via roles
      • Static mirroring seems to be possible via http
      • Very light system, installed in a few minutes
    • Disadvantages:
      • Requires browser for editing

Drupal

  • OSGeo Foundation
    • System: Drupal
    • Advantages:
      • WYSIWYG editor
      • Access control via roles
      • Static mirroring seems to be possible via http (? check)
      • Can be run within OSGeo's Drupal server
    • Disadvantages:
      • Requires browser for editing
      • Rather heavy system, installation may be complex but OSGeo can provide it
  • a command-line admin tool called Drush is available.
"Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal, a veritable Swiss Army knife designed to make life easier for those of us who spend some of our working hours hacking away at the command prompt."
  • Geopublishing
    • System: Drupal (? unsure)
    • Advantages:
      • see OSGeo above
    • Disadvantages:
      • see OSGeo above

PmWiki

  • LyX
    • System: PmWiki
    • Advantages:
      • Looks professional, it's very hard to tell that their front page is actually a wiki
      • Does not make the homepage look like a personal blog (/node12345) or wiki site
      • Wiki editing means low barrier to entry
      • Lightweight (200kb) & snappy
      • html→pmwiki converter: libhtml-wikiconverter-pmwiki-perl
      • The LyX people took good notes on how to set it up (here) and are approachable.
      • A good philosophy (more)
      • Stored on disk in flat files so you can use unix command line power tools to bulk maintain pages.
      • thus Mirrorable
      • See lyx's www-* svn
      • See lyx's RSS feeds
      • Active, monthly/quarterly new releases for the last 5 years
      • Translations status looks nice
    • Disadvantages:
      • All skins look somewhat old-fashioned to me (MN)
      • Install by hand as no Debian package
      • Might have a single administrative password for locked pages (ie homepage), so need to investigate how change history is stored (e.g.).

Wordpress

this page is mostly a "It Works!" placeholder, but gives the idea.

Unknown

unknown
unknown
  • Sakai
    • It's obviously using one but I'm not sure which one it is
(the page code contains "jQuery.extend(Drupal.settings...")
  • Thunar
    • It's obviously using one but I'm not sure which one it is.
or handcrafted with vi? See last line in source code


New OSGeo Web site