rather than just talking?

Do we need additional software, yes or no? e.g. http://www.cooperationcommons.com/ or http://moodle.org/

If not, should we get about the business of discussing the structure of the forums on the site?

Seems to me we are just sort of chatting. I thought this period of closed discourse was expressly for 1) the purposes of designing the environment in which discussion would take place and 2) deliniating what we would be about discussing (and what we would not be about because it is divisive or otherwise off topic because it is impolitic).

Am I just not following somehow?

rather than just talking?

Do we need additional software, yes or no? e.g. http://www.cooperationcommons.com/ or http://moodle.org/

If not, should we get about the business of discussing the structure of the forums on the site?

Seems to me we are just sort of chatting. I thought this period of closed discourse was expressly for 1) the purposes of designing the environment in which discussion would take place and 2) deliniating what we would be about discussing (and what we would not be about because it is divisive or otherwise off topic because it is impolitic).

Am I just not following somehow?
I just read through the cooperation commons site.

rather than just talking?

Do we need additional software, yes or no? e.g. http://www.cooperationcommons.com/ or http://moodle.org/

If not, should we get about the business of discussing the structure of the forums on the site?

Seems to me we are just sort of chatting. I thought this period of closed discourse was expressly for 1) the purposes of designing the environment in which discussion would take place and 2) deliniating what we would be about discussing (and what we would not be about because it is divisive or otherwise off topic because it is impolitic).

Am I just not following somehow?
RussellCole talked about structure although he doesn't come here that freqnetly. I think Wikis are alot better idea than your links for the moment simply because people are more familiar with them. I really am not interested enough to dig into those, hopefully others are since there's probably alot of valuable ideas there.

Also, the structure doesn't exist in a vacuum it has to address people's real concerns and I think we having been throwing alot of shit against the wall in the spirit. To me that is a contribution, if not in a pedantic sense..

A couple of thoughts -

The Kucinich board (hanging there a little bit to make contact with old friends and troll for recruits and to test out my new invincible Left wing rhetorical skills thanks to everyone in here) has what sem like dozens of forums for every issue under the sun.

Doesn't that steer people to think in terms of a million separate and isolated causes? Doesn't that also pre-determine for people just what the important causes supposedly are?

Guns, gays, peace, environment, abortion, economy, education, civil rights and so forth and so on and on and on. Let me go look again and see what else they have there.

OK here are about half of the forums they have going there -

LBN, “Rapid Response,” Favorite Quotations and Inspiration, Agriculture and Food, Family vs Corporate Farms, Genetically Engineered Food, Organic Farming, Urban Gardening, Corporate Crime, Death Penalty, Drug War and Marijuana Decriminalization, Gun Laws and Gun Rights, Laws and Crime - General Info and Discussions, Malpractice Suits - Impacts on Health Care, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, Financial Institutions, Forecasting, General Economic Discussions, International Economics - WTO, IMF etc., National Debt, Peak Oil, Social Security and Pension Plans, Stock Markets and the Dollar, Taxes and Tax Plans, Technology Policy, Trade, Jobs and Economic Justice.

I think we need a new approach to how to set up categories and forums. I thought about not setting up any at all, and just having one GD area, but I think that would make it a little too unwieldy.

As for Moodle, WIKI and other collaborative software: I can't get my mind around it yet. Not rejecting it, just can't get a feel for it. Are we trying to collaborate on a finished project? I am thinking we need to go the another direction. Maybe we are too academic, too structured, too pedantic, too bureaucratic. Maybe we need to shake it up. Maybe we need spontaneity, rather than organization, momentum rather than perfection, free flowing and dynamic rather than archived and indexed.

A couple of thoughts -

The Kucinich board (hanging there a little bit to make contact with old friends and troll for recruits and to test out my new invincible Left wing rhetorical skills thanks to everyone in here) has what sem like dozens of forums for every issue under the sun.

Doesn't that steer people to think in terms of a million separate and isolated causes? Doesn't that also pre-determine for people just what the important causes supposedly are?

Guns, gays, peace, environment, abortion, economy, education, civil rights and so forth and so on and on and on. Let me go look again and see what else they have there.

OK here are about half of the forums they have going there -

LBN, “Rapid Response,” Favorite Quotations and Inspiration, Agriculture and Food, Family vs Corporate Farms, Genetically Engineered Food, Organic Farming, Urban Gardening, Corporate Crime, Death Penalty, Drug War and Marijuana Decriminalization, Gun Laws and Gun Rights, Laws and Crime - General Info and Discussions, Malpractice Suits - Impacts on Health Care, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, Financial Institutions, Forecasting, General Economic Discussions, International Economics - WTO, IMF etc., National Debt, Peak Oil, Social Security and Pension Plans, Stock Markets and the Dollar, Taxes and Tax Plans, Technology Policy, Trade, Jobs and Economic Justice.

I think we need a new approach to how to set up categories and forums. I thought about not setting up any at all, and just having one GD area, but I think that would make it a little too unwieldy.

As for Moodle, WIKI and other collaborative software: I can't get my mind around it yet. Not rejecting it, just can't get a feel for it. Are we trying to collaborate on a finished project? I am thinking we need to go the another direction. Maybe we are too academic, too structured, too pedantic, too bureaucratic. Maybe we need to shake it up. Maybe we need spontaneity, rather than organization, momentum rather than perfection, free flowing and dynamic rather than archived and indexed.

Why not start with a simple GD area while membership is small and add as groupings become obvious? Personally, I would have two categories: "Important Stuff" and "Crap".

...but then, none of us would want to post to "Important Stuff" (the wages of contrarianism)...

A couple of thoughts -

The Kucinich board (hanging there a little bit to make contact with old friends and troll for recruits and to test out my new invincible Left wing rhetorical skills thanks to everyone in here) has what sem like dozens of forums for every issue under the sun.

Doesn't that steer people to think in terms of a million separate and isolated causes? Doesn't that also pre-determine for people just what the important causes supposedly are?

Guns, gays, peace, environment, abortion, economy, education, civil rights and so forth and so on and on and on. Let me go look again and see what else they have there.

OK here are about half of the forums they have going there -

LBN, “Rapid Response,” Favorite Quotations and Inspiration, Agriculture and Food, Family vs Corporate Farms, Genetically Engineered Food, Organic Farming, Urban Gardening, Corporate Crime, Death Penalty, Drug War and Marijuana Decriminalization, Gun Laws and Gun Rights, Laws and Crime - General Info and Discussions, Malpractice Suits - Impacts on Health Care, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, Financial Institutions, Forecasting, General Economic Discussions, International Economics - WTO, IMF etc., National Debt, Peak Oil, Social Security and Pension Plans, Stock Markets and the Dollar, Taxes and Tax Plans, Technology Policy, Trade, Jobs and Economic Justice.

I think we need a new approach to how to set up categories and forums. I thought about not setting up any at all, and just having one GD area, but I think that would make it a little too unwieldy.

As for Moodle, WIKI and other collaborative software: I can't get my mind around it yet. Not rejecting it, just can't get a feel for it. Are we trying to collaborate on a finished project? I am thinking we need to go the another direction. Maybe we are too academic, too structured, too pedantic, too bureaucratic. Maybe we need to shake it up. Maybe we need spontaneity, rather than organization, momentum rather than perfection, free flowing and dynamic rather than archived and indexed.

A wiki might be better for archiving stuff about any particular issue, they are typically used by sights as primers and site description stuff. At least in the real world, I have no idea how the academics use 'em.

EDIT: @anax, how about Turds and Polished Turds?

Is there a well-defined goal? I don't mean the general goal, but a goal for this site/community specifically.

The Kucinich board (hanging there a little bit to make contact with old friends and troll for recruits

:wink:

Maybe we are too academic, too structured, too pedantic, too bureaucratic. Maybe we need to shake it up. Maybe we need spontaneity, rather than organization, momentum rather than perfection, free flowing and dynamic rather than archived and indexed.


Also it has to be real, human, approachable, flexible, non-intimidating--not over-analytical and intellectually bombastic. I mean this with the utmost sincerity when I say this and I want others to think about it---Is there a place for someone as lowbrow as me who does not aspire to be a member of MENSA?

Maybe we are too academic, too structured, too pedantic, too bureaucratic. Maybe we need to shake it up. Maybe we need spontaneity, rather than organization, momentum rather than perfection, free flowing and dynamic rather than archived and indexed.


Also it has to be real, human, approachable, flexible, non-intimidating--not over-analytical and intellectually bombastic. I mean this with the utmost sincerity when I say this and I want others to think about it---Is there a place for someone as lowbrow as me who does not aspire to be a member of MENSA?

If there isn't a place for you, Raph, then there isn't for me either.

Mensa and similar orgs always bring to mind (obscure reference alert!) Frank Proffitt's comment when asked about Earl Scruggs: "I'd like to be able to do what he does---and then not do it".

Is there a well-defined goal? I don't mean the general goal, but a goal for this site/community specifically.

Couple of thoughts:

I would like to see the site be a resource for committed activists to discuss among themselves topic that can then be propagated out into the real world by those activists.

As a resource, the site should have some sort of content management to it rather than solely a discussion forum where even the most critical of content eventually disapears down the memory hole. Book marks alone are not enough to get around the disappearing threads phenomenon that is the hallmark of this sort of discussion.

Now if this particularly fascinating thread were linked into a content manager of some kind - be is courseware, wiki, or some other content manager, it would then be able to be found. For example, doing a search for polished turds might be able to bring this discussion thread up in the content manager. Or perhaps tagging this thread with a key word 'site architecture' could then make it a part of a wiki entry for that topic as a link at the bottom of the page, as most of us are well familiar with.

I encourage everyone to take a surf - a Real Surf - through Paul Thompson's EXCELLENT site cooperativeresearch.org. He is well known among DUers and others who are 9/11q skeptics for his 9/11 Timeline on cooperative research. The open content management system he is using, cooperative commons (based on Plone I believe), is able to be used in other ways, but Paul's timelines are constructed of cross-referenced MSM stories. So if you want to search Mohammed Atta, you can find all news stories tagged with his name. If you want to find August 6, 2001, you can also find all news stories out that day or those that contain content having to do with that day.

That is real power for the inquiring mind as well as being an organic platform benefitting and being built by many citizen contributors.

As one begins to drill down from a top level perspective of economic leftism, what I think we all agree is the main gig here at popI, there may be many different directions one wants to go in doing some research. Perhaps by searching for theorists, perhaps by searching for posted news articles that concern, for instance, the topic of nationalization or local economies or local currencies. All of these may be way down the bunny hole from discussion months earlier but they could also be found within content management entries - maybe wiki entries, maybe 'courses.' maybe as part of timelines or another schema we set up using something like creativecommons.

Whatever the case, I see a need for content management to augment, index, and relate the information that will inevitably be birthed through our discussions in this phpBB format.

If we had a wiki or courseware, etc., describing direct actions for issues to do with eminent domain, would it not be great to have entries to discussions about the issue, related news articles, discussions of the successes and failures of other member activists in their own local communities, and all such as that readily searchable - by location, by date, by topic, as historical resource, etc., etc.?

That is what I am hopeful we can discuss here, design, and implement.

Again, I cannot recommend highly enough that y'all spend a few good minutes really exercizing cooperativeresearch to see the power of its relational databse of events, people, news, etc. Give this page a spin for starters and nav through the site using entity tags and timeline tags. Take note of the outside links to source material. Then ruminate on how we would use this sort of funtionality to put all those many splintered issues together under the overarching rubric of economic leftism through time and into the future.

pple

Is there a well-defined goal? I don't mean the general goal, but a goal for this site/community specifically.

Couple of thoughts:

I would like to see the site be a resource for committed activists to discuss among themselves topic that can then be propagated out into the real world by those activists.



Oh I get what you mean now. I guess I wasn't think along that path because it seems like you need a relatively large membership or one dedicated blogger-type to pull off that kind of synergizing and cross-referencing.

Even PI with its 1000+ members might have a hard time pulling that off.

Its a good idea though, I was missing it before.

If there isn't a place for you, Raph, then there isn't for me either.
That is how I feel, too.

As a resource, the site should have some sort of content management to it rather than solely a discussion forum where even the most critical of content eventually disapears down the memory hole. Book marks alone are not enough to get around the disappearing threads phenomenon that is the hallmark of this sort of discussion.
I understand this.

It needs more thinking and discussion. What things specifically do we not want to go down the memory hole, and why?

Why not have a system that allows members to archive stuff, separate from the forum?

I just read through the cooperation commons site.

That's great since I really meant to post this link http://creativecommons.org/

Sorreeeee :(

I just read through the cooperation commons site.

That's great since I really meant to post this link http://creativecommons.org/

Sorreeeee :(
ROFL. Careful with those links, someone might actually use them .

I just read through the cooperation commons site.

That's great since I really meant to post this link http://creativecommons.org/

Sorreeeee :(
ROFL. Careful with those links, someone might actually use them .

Well, the other one is good too, but it is a high level overview, not a prospective app.

:!: Here is a list of apps that can be installed with this web host easy squeezy

Drupal
Geeklog
Joomla
Mambo Open Source
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Post-Nuke
Siteframe
TYPO3
Xoops

Drupal and Mambo are pretty good content management apps. They have alot of mods but really its all about the learning curve.
I am really all about using free resources though.

If we want an easy to use free wiki for some really simple collaboration we can go to an open wiki site provider like wiki.com and we can just link to stuff that is setup in there.

Please everyone take a look at some demos of the above list of applications. I would like to see what everyone thinks. These are readily available and easy to install with the current boards hosting plan.

m

:!: Here is a list of apps that can be installed with this web host easy squeezy

Drupal
Geeklog
Joomla
Mambo Open Source
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Post-Nuke
Siteframe
TYPO3
Xoops

Drupal and Mambo are pretty good content management apps. They have alot of mods but really its all about the learning curve.
I am really all about using free resources though.

If we want an easy to use free wiki for some really simple collaboration we can go to an open wiki site provider like wiki.com and we can just link to stuff that is setup in there.

Please everyone take a look at some demos of the above list of applications. I would like to see what everyone thinks. These are readily available and easy to install with the current boards hosting plan.

m
I have some familiarity with everything there except PHPNuke and Post-Nuke.

:!: Here is a list of apps that can be installed with this web host easy squeezy

Drupal
Geeklog
Joomla
Mambo Open Source
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Post-Nuke
Siteframe
TYPO3
Xoops

m
I have some familiarity with everything there except PHPNuke and Post-Nuke.

So, do you have any opinion on these versus some sort of courseware like the moodle I perused?

So, do you have any opinion on these versus some sort of courseware like the moodle I perused?
Oh oh. Was afraid you might ask that. Yes, I have strong opinions. Summed up - the CMS software available is junk and next to useless.

By "junk" I don't mean poorly written. Rather, the needs of the users and the perceptions of the community designing and conceiving the programs are miles apart. The CMS area is where this problem is the worst of any. They are all needlessly complex, are not user friendly, and squander processing resources. They are toys for programmers, and not tools for users. That isn't entirely fair, because some of the programs do work great for a community of programmers.

Moodle is one exception, IMHO, but it is tailored to being used for online classes, and may or may not be adaptable to what you have in mind. Another project that showed signs of going the right direction was the phpbb portal project. I haven't looked at that in a while. TYPO3 is a great program, but would require someone making a career out of learning it. I am looking at the 8 inch thick manual for it sitting on my desk as I write this.

In terms of heiarchy

The popI site needs a Main Portal that uses our chosen CMS app
for example when you go to populistindependent.org you should see a website that is run using this app.

It should have navigation links to : the phpbb, a wiki, articles by contributers such as yourselves, relevant MSM articles, courseware, etc. etc. etc.

Right now our main page is just one link on a blank canvas.
Lets paint something! and if we don't like it we can get a new canvas but no matter what, this board will still be here to help us get it done.
the important thing is to begin experimentation using one of these Portal CMS open source canned apps

I do think whatever is used should have limited access for contribution and administration by mike or whoever steps up to admin it.
From there, once there is a decent population of folks on here, we can hype up a decent courseware app or whatever kinda app we think would work best and addon to this with other apps.

This site needs a decent and easy to update content management solution that can act as the skeletal structure for what it could become.
We want alot of people to contribute their best without having to understand a bunch of techy hard stuff.
If Drupal or Mambo were used for this structure of content the presence we can create will have a better chance of moving forward than just some bulletin board.

My vote leans more towards Drupal because the features it has are exactly what most everyone has been asking for. There isn't a high learning curve.
Mambo is for a more advanced users and could be something this site could migrate to in the future.

The other apps I haven't had alot of experience with but I am not opposed it using them if there is a good argument for it.
I encourage everyone to do a google search on all of these options and read about them, ask questions and participate in the evolution and structure of what this site could be.

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

this could help

just click the ones that are available in the list from the above posts

I vote for a static home page, and static pages for any onfo that doesn't change often.

duplicate

I agree with Mike.

Most of those systems are designed to impress. But people doing real work don't need to impress. A front end to mysql is all that's really needed, for real work.

I agree with Mike.

Most of those systems are designed to impress. But people doing real work don't need to impress. A front end to mysql is all that's really needed, for real work.
I can teach a person html faster than I can teach them how to use the interfaces on most of these systems, and the result is faster loading pages, more reliable performance, less server resources used, and a smarter webmaster.

What I have been looking for without success, is a simple submit form - template including - mysql page creator that will reside in a staging environment in a folder at the server not accessible to the public, and then publish static files to the public folder. That is the best of all worlds. Ask a programmer for that, though. They will try to argue you out of what you want rather than tell you how to do it.

No sooner did I write that last post, then I came upon this exchange:
Hi,

I've recently moved from blogger to WP. Although, i am a regular poster to my blog, i do not post every 5 minutes and hence i'm not a big fan of dynamic pages. Is there a plugin somewhere that will let me use WP and publish my blog as static htmls to my webserver?
Nice polite friendly request for a very simple thing.

Why would you want to print your posts as a Static page?

WP stores information in the database, offers you permalinks, thus allowing updating / backup to be easily done.
In other words, get lost.

I have seen exchanges just like this between users and oprgrammers hundreds of times.

User: I need this
Programmer: You are wrong

Here is the rest of the exchange:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/37371

Bake, Don’t Fry

I really got started with this whole Web mess with the ArsDigita Prize where I learned how to build database-backed websites by building one myself. However, it was always assumed that these sites would be built by having a bunch of code on the server which generated pages for the user on demand by calling the database. That was simply how such sites were built, I never questioned it.

Now, a number of tools are challenging that assumption. Movable Type, the program that runs this weblog, has a series of Perl scripts which are used to build your webpage, but the end result is a bunch of static pages which are served to the public. All the content here is plain old web pages, served up by Apache. Tinderbox uses a similar system, drawing from your database of notes to produce a bunch of static pages. My book collection pages are done this way. Radio UserLand statically generates the pages on your local computer and then “upstreams” them to your website.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000404

Building Baked Sites

Bake, Don’t Fry has been one of my more successful blog entries. I wonder if this was because of style or content (or both?). Anyway, since people seem interested in it, I thought I’d sketch out my views on how to make baked sites work.

First, let me clarify that using static web pages for your site does not preclude things that people generally associate with dynamic sites (like templates, newsboxes, stock tickers, etc.). Nor does it mean that your site can’t have any interaction or collaboration (comments, boards, polls). While these things obviously won’t work if you move platforms or server software, at least the content already on your site won’t die. The key is to keep a strict separation between input (which needs dynamic code to be processed) and output (which can usually be baked).

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000406

I agree with Mike.

Most of those systems are designed to impress. But people doing real work don't need to impress. A front end to mysql is all that's really needed, for real work.
I can teach a person html faster than I can teach them how to use the interfaces on most of these systems, and the result is faster loading pages, more reliable performance, less server resources used, and a smarter webmaster.

What I have been looking for without success, is a simple submit form - template including - mysql page creator that will reside in a staging environment in a folder at the server not accessible to the public, and then publish static files to the public folder. That is the best of all worlds. Ask a programmer for that, though. They will try to argue you out of what you want rather than tell you how to do it.
Tell me what you want (in some detail :D )

Tell me what you want (in some detail :D )
We need to have a bunch of collaborators on content on some projects. They need a simple submit form that inserts content into a pre-defined template with the layout and design elements. Mysql and php works fine for that, many programs can do that. But 90% of what we want in the public folder will never, or rarely change. No need to be generating dynamic pages every time a visitor makes a request for a page. We want those pages static. Dynamic content in the public folder can be handled completely separately - for example we run a weather program that changes frequently and is customized to the user's location.

Seems to me that we could run two versions of a site - one dynamic and editable version in a protected folder, and one static version in the public folder. The missing link is a program that takes the pages outputted in the dynamic folder, writes them as static html, and publishes them to the public folder.

What I have been looking for without success, is a simple submit form - template including - mysql page creator that will reside in a staging environment in a folder at the server not accessible to the public, and then publish static files to the public folder.

You dont need a database to do that.

Basically what you have described in your statement is this:

Build your stuff locally on your box then ftp it up to the server.

Do you want to teach everyone how to code in html, css, how to code for ie, firefox, opera?

Can you teach all of them how to do it Mike?

Maybe you should make an html page that says "Welcome to Mikes HTML learning page. If you would like to contribute your writing please get in line classes start soon?

No matter what your personal feelings on how software works there are good reasons why most CMS apps are built using a database to control layout and when and how content is used.

Before you can tell a programmer what you want you have to know what is possible and more importantly how to describe it. If you can't communicate it in a way the programmer can understand because you DON'T understand it but your ego thinks you do then no matter how you want to spin it nobody is going to be happy.

So lets try to understand the need to dumb it down for the non-tech writers out there and take the processor hit so they can contribute without worrying about why thier page doesn't load in ie because they wanted to make their font pink and blinky with underlines.

Please people think critically about this and not reactionary.

about this, okay? 8)


Mike, if what you're after is a very simple, standardised layout (Title, Author, BonaFides, Body, References) plus possibly some keyword tags, fairly vanilla formatting (ital,bold,underline,typesize,tables,lists; no images, gewgaws, or colors), a preview mechanism, and a similarly simple retrieval mechanism (pull it up from a page cache and pump it out) then it's not hard to do (about a person-week to write, debug, and then make the inevitable changes). One person has to be responsible for assembling the final page, though, because it just doesn't make sense to try to do that in software--it's a heuristic problem.

We need to have a bunch of collaborators on content on some projects. They need a simple submit form that inserts content into a pre-defined template with the layout and design elements. Mysql and php works fine for that, many programs can do that. But 90% of what we want in the public folder will never, or rarely change. No need to be generating dynamic pages every time a visitor makes a request for a page.

The database can cache queries. The amount of overhead really is minimal. Most network appliances at a web host will cache this stuff an push it out.



Seems to me that we could run two versions of a site - one dynamic and editable version in a protected folder, and one static version in the public folder. The missing link is a program that takes the pages outputted in the dynamic folder, writes them as static html, and publishes them to the public folder.

This isn't a new concept and has been done but it is flawed here is why:

How does the system know when and what should be pushed?
What would it do if a push when bad? Would it be able to correct it?
How would you organize it?
How would you make sure that someone doesn't put in malicious code?

Accessing a database is less overhead, less data stored in the limited space of the webserver than static images and html pages. Accessing a file system will tax the server more than running the query generating the page and displaying the content. Copying images and html files everytime a change is made and doing that programmatically would cause so many problems.

With a database there is transaction management. With the text editors built into most canned CMS apps this is a no brainer.

With a file system a myriad of things can go on unchecked.

Backing up a database keeps everything in 1 much smaller file that you can store on your local machine at home or on the server.

Backing up an entire website (or two in your scenario) is many many files that can only lead to more complexity than you realize.
A corrupted zip file means you dont get it all back.

being able to zip up your directories on the server .... can't be done without a way to term in with ssh. So if I wanna back up my site I have to do it one file at a time.

Databases solve these problems.

Regardless to run a system like you are proposing and still have half the flexibility and control of most popular CMS open source apps would require a database application that is more complex less secure and way more taxing on server that has many many more points of failure.

The list I gave are the easy options that are available. I say we pick one. We can argue computer science every day for the rest of the week and you can throw your justifications for your utopian web publishing system dream at me the whole time but it doesn't turn black to white make the poor people rich.

These apps are built the way they are built for a reason? And its not capitalism....(well not completely)

m


[/quote]

What I have been looking for without success, is a simple submit form - template including - mysql page creator that will reside in a staging environment in a folder at the server not accessible to the public, and then publish static files to the public folder.

You dont need a database to do that.

Basically what you have described in your statement is this:

Build your stuff locally on your box then ftp it up to the server.



WebDevs are such sensitive little bitches :)

N E Wayz...

why not just drop a wysiwyg out there like my frappr blog has?

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/sitemaker.resources/files/wysiwyg.jpg

Basically what you have described in your statement is this:

Build your stuff locally on your box then ftp it up to the server.
No. You misunderstand.

Breaking the PC bottleneck - breaking the whole PC mentality - is a prime objectove.

Please people think critically about this and not reactionary.
Please don't accuse me of that when you don't understand what I said.

All great answers, but unfortunately they don't answer my question.

I was talking with Mairead about an application for other than at PI, by the way.

Quite familiar with databases, with the advantages of same, and with dynamic page generation. Familiar cache, Apache rewrite, etc. WYSIWG is not germane to what I was talking about, either.

The database can cache queries. The amount of overhead really is minimal. Most network appliances at a web host will cache this stuff an push it out.
Of course.


How does the system know when and what should be pushed?
On command, or if we insist on automation, by a Cron job.

What would it do if a push when bad? Would it be able to correct it?
No harm done by that, since a static page is being pushed, just as with FTP.

How would you organize it?
Organize which?

How would you make sure that someone doesn't put in malicious code?
Put malicious code into what?

Accessing a database is less overhead, less data stored in the limited space of the webserver than static images and html pages.
That is of course not true. Disk space hasn't been an issue in a long time, and never was for 99% of the websites online.

Accessing a file system will tax the server more than running the query generating the page and displaying the content.
Calling up an html file takes more resources than querying a database and generating a dynamic page?

Copying images and html files everytime a change is made and doing that programmatically would cause so many problems.
That happens regardless of the system used.

With a database there is transaction management. With the text editors built into most canned CMS apps this is a no brainer.
Not looking for a “no brainer” nor a “text editor.” Also did not suggest eliminating using a database, so transaction management is not at risk.

With a file system a myriad of things can go on unchecked.
Other than by humans, who are presumably motivated to care about what goes on.

Backing up a database keeps everything in 1 much smaller file that you can store on your local machine at home or on the server.
Storage space is not an issue these days that I can see.


Backing up an entire website (or two in your scenario) is many many files that can only lead to more complexity than you realize.
A corrupted zip file means you dont get it all back.
Please. I have managed hundreds of sites, done many backups, and recovered from a complete server meltdown and needed to restore 7800 pages, and close to 100,000 files across 50 URLs from a fourth tier backup, overnight by myself.


Regardless to run a system like you are proposing and still have half the flexibility and control of most popular CMS open source apps would require a database application that is more complex less secure and way more taxing on server that has many many more points of failure.
Let's say we run Mambo in one folder. Let's say we have a static version of the site in another. One simple app between the two that creates a static version and FTP's those files to the other folder. Voila. There are no more problems introduced than were already there, from any standpoint.


The list I gave are the easy options that are available. I say we pick one. We can argue computer science every day for the rest of the week and you can throw your justifications for your utopian web publishing system dream at me the whole time but it doesn't turn black to white make the poor people rich.
I am not arguing computer science, I am arguing usability.

about this, okay? 8)

Mike, if what you're after is a very simple, standardised layout (Title, Author, BonaFides, Body, References) plus possibly some keyword tags, fairly vanilla formatting (ital,bold,underline,typesize,tables,lists; no images, gewgaws, or colors), a preview mechanism, and a similarly simple retrieval mechanism (pull it up from a page cache and pump it out) then it's not hard to do (about a person-week to write, debug, and then make the inevitable changes). One person has to be responsible for assembling the final page, though, because it just doesn't make sense to try to do that in software--it's a heuristic problem.
Thanks Mairead.

Many CMS programs can assemble and display html pages from user input of content into the DB - I am doing that this moment when I post here - and template files and CSS. So we know that we can do that. We also know that what the browser will read and display will be a pure html file - merely looking at the source for this page confirms that. With a bulleitn board, we want the ability to change pages continually and isntataneaouly, so creation if dynamic pages on the fly each and every time a request is made is necessary, of course.

It would be a simple manner for me to make alterations to the templates and other phpbb php files, changing layout, etc. and use phpbb to create any sort of a website I like, with or without the possibility of user interactivity. Final page assembly happens all of the time right here, done by software.

We are missing one ingredient - the ability to create a static version of the output from the DB, and to then transfer those files to another location - a folder or a different server even. We would then have two identical versions of the site. One which allowed multiple editors - with various levels of permission perhaps - and one that was entirely static.

I was not originally thinking about PI when I asked, by the way. Sorry of that was not clear. We have a couple of big projects that need this two version staging solution. There are six figure "enterprise solution" software packages that can solve this, but I am working with small farmers, not corporations. Weeks of discussion have already gone into this, and we are sure that this is what we want to do.

Typesize, bolding text formatting and the like – there are good open source solutions to this. That isn't an issue.

Quite familiar with databases, with the advantages of same, and with dynamic page generation. Familiar cache, Apache rewrite, etc. WYSIWG is not germane to what I was talking about, either.

OK, so I better understand from your post downthread now. Please further explicate the 'two big projects' for those of us who are far less technical.

I recall your having mentioned before having the static content, but two identical sites - one editable and one not? That seems very different from what I had had in mind... How does the content from a bb format jibe with the conversation about wikis or other cms then?

How does the content from a bb format jibe with the conversation about wikis or other cms then?
My mistake. I was talking to Mairead about two projects at work that have nothing to do with Pop Indy.

How does the content from a bb format jibe with the conversation about wikis or other cms then?
My mistake. I was talking to Mairead about two projects at work that have nothing to do with Pop Indy.

-OH-

Make it hard on us mere mortals, why dontcha?

Quite familiar with databases, with the advantages of same, and with dynamic page generation. Familiar cache, Apache rewrite, etc. WYSIWG is not germane to what I was talking about, either.

OK, so I better understand from your post downthread now. Please further explicate the 'two big projects' for those of us who are far less technical.

I recall your having mentioned before having the static content, but two identical sites - one editable and one not? That seems very different from what I had had in mind... How does the content from a bb format jibe with the conversation about wikis or other cms then?
Although I wasn't thinking about PI, now that I think about it I think that this might be perfect for what you had in mind.

I was not originally thinking about PI when I asked, by the way. Sorry of that was not clear. We have a couple of big projects that need this two version staging solution. There are six figure "enterprise solution" software packages that can solve this, but I am working with small farmers, not corporations. Weeks of discussion have already gone into this, and we are sure that this is what we want to do.
Yep, you're right, it wasn't clear :)


We are missing one ingredient - the ability to create a static version of the output from the DB, and to then transfer those files to another location - a folder or a different server even. We would then have two identical versions of the site. One which allowed multiple editors - with various levels of permission perhaps - and one that was entirely static.
Fairy Nuff. So what's doing the formatting? Normally some human will write a mix of php and html and ding around with it til it looks right with their browser. Then, depending on how complex and non-portable the code is, they have to do it all over again (well, not all over again, but a big chunk) for each of several other browsers. (you've been there!) So who's doing the formatting for the pages you're thinking about here?

I could write some plugin php code that you insert one line up at the top of your page, one line before you start the formatting of your page, and another line afterwards, 3 lines altogether, and put some destination info into a table, and the code behind those lines will go put static copies of the formatted page (the part in between the aforesaid lines) wherever you like as per the destination instructions in the db table. Is that what you're looking to have happen?

Or do you need something that ALSO will expand some extremely high-level page-description language into the final html before it does the static build-and-ship?

The former's doable without too much misery, the latter isn't.

Just remembered a guy who is close to what we are looking for, at least the write-to-static part. ("We"meaning people here at work, not PI folks)

http://www.cplinks.com/features.html

If I remember, he handles file-naming and linking by naming everything "index.html" and the program creates a separate subfolder for every page. URL's then, are - root/folder name/index.html

There y'go, Mike. Sounds like he might already have written what you're looking for...though I think I'd be a little nervous about anyone claiming to get data out of a mysql db without a query :wink:

It's not rocket science:

ob_start();
//build your page here
$finished_page = ob_get_contents() ;
ob_end_clean() ;

mysql_query('insert into buffer_table set page="'.$finished_page.'"', $link) ;

$dset = mysql_query('select destination from export_table',$link);
while ( $rec = mysql_fetch_assoc($dset) )
// do whatever you need to do to export the finished page
// for example doing a tcp/ip file transfer into someone's web server space

Maybe you should know that I can barely log on from this computer. And, if after numerous attempts, I finally make it through, I continually have to log on. Now, I don't know much about computers and I think discussions about them are boring, but this site is not user friendly and if I can't get it to function on the most fundamental levels then you can be assured others will have problems--others that expect it to at the very least open, without going deep into techno diagnosis.

Maybe you should know that I can barely log on from this computer. And, if after numerous attempts, I finally make it through, I continually have to log on. Now, I don't know much about computers and I think discussions about them are boring, but this site is not user friendly and if I can't get it to function on the most fundamental levels then you can be assured others will have problems--others that expect it to at the very least open, without going deep into techno diagnosis.
Can you describe in detail what happens, Raph?

Maybe you should know that I can barely log on from this computer. And, if after numerous attempts, I finally make it through, I continually have to log on. Now, I don't know much about computers and I think discussions about them are boring, but this site is not user friendly and if I can't get it to function on the most fundamental levels then you can be assured others will have problems--others that expect it to at the very least open, without going deep into techno diagnosis.
Can you describe in detail what happens, Raph?

I am unable to logon to this site from my PDA phone, always being kicked back to the login screen. That same borwser on my PDA will login to my bank, gmail, PI, etc...

Do you have cookies turned on for this site? And what kind of browser is your phone reporting itself to be?

Sorry, mugafuga and PPLE I hijacked the thread.

Have you guys seen this phpbb portal? I played with it a year ago or so and was impressed with it. Seems to still be growing and well supported.

http://www.mx-system.com/

Module demo here -

http://www.mx-system.com/page134/catlin ... 51f3c7d09c (http://www.mx-system.com/page134/catlink5?sid=4eb5cb00fd858c4ed4d25251f3c7d09c)

Do you have cookies turned on for this site? And what kind of browser is your phone reporting itself to be?

I use a third party browser from Bitstream running under Pocket PC 2002