[RULE] Call to arms and requirements for the website

[Marco Fioretti]

Hello,

following the several suggestions on how to manage the website, here
goes a random list of requirements. The bottom line is that I know quite well
what is missing, but have no deep experience of the several CMS
solutions suggested, or of others. I do know my bit of perl, mysql and
php, however, and am more than willing to maintain the site.

This means that I can patch and improve something that already exists,
but very frankly have no possibility now to set it up from scratch
(including building the required forms or installing any CMS sw).

Hence, please, please please somebody else do set up now whatever
solution, according to the guidelines below. I'm eager to help with
*testing* it and take since now the responsibility to take it over and
maintain it, tweaking whatever configuration and PHP/mysql bits
will be necessary later on the road.

 I "just" :-) need to find the initial framework as below in place.

Of course, almost nothing below is set in stone. Any feedback is,
well, mandatory :-)

Deadline: none mandatory, but it would be really, really nice to be
ready when FC2 is released (~ early april, IIRC) and for that
Ethiopian ICT congress I mentioned yesterday.

Thanks in advance,

Marco Fioretti

content in pure text format??:

    frankly, I personally find adding stuff in a web form (wiki-wise)
    expensive for dialup contributors and in general cumbersome and
    limited (unless you do everything outside in a real editor and
    then just paste it into the form). This is why I tried to set it up
    web content as today:

	produce pure ASCII content, without an HTML editor, with such a
        markup that the source is perfectly readable.

        upload the ASCII text

	have a cron script converting it to HTML

    If this is not possible using standard CMS system nor recommended
    by more expert webmasters, html is also OK for me as long as it
    remains possible to

	     not care of site layout, ie generate/maintain only the
	     actual page content (no headers, footers, etc)

             do it offline and upload the result

             upload at once many pages, specifying for each its
             location in the directory tree

	     insert in each page pointers to chunks of PHP code (see
	     as example the source of the current home pages)

Access to manage web site:

    everything below must be doable via web (https) but not on ports
    usually blocked by company proxyes and firewalls. One big problem
    I have with the current system is that I can't do RULE
    housecleaning during lunch break.

roles:

    I must be able to delegate upload of files in some areas and
    posting of news to other project members. It must also be possible
    to external users to submit news, test PC data/reports and sw
    packages in a "pending approval" mode: they don't show on the web
    pages, but I am sent an email to go and reject or approve for
    publishing the new material.

Interactive threaded web forums:

    not needed, really. Most of our subscribers, current and
    potentials, have no decent conectivity to use them, and want/are
    forced to stay online as little as possible.

news:

     it must be possible to insert news (title, link to complete
     article, short description) so that the N most recent are
     constantly shown on the home page. Complete news database must
     remain readable online, as today.

useful links

     it must be possible to insert links to useful non RULE resources
     (title, category, URL, short description) so they are all
     displayed in a bookmark kind of page

threaded customizable site map:
 
     an evolution of the current one: show directory structure, size
     and change date, show only some subdirectories, or only the pages
     updated in the last N days.
   
web page management:

    it must be possible to show as today the N most recently changed
    web pages on the home page

mirror friendliness:

     easy to mirror automatically: HTTP headers telling what changed
     since last weeks, relative URLs, etc..

support of test PCs and software map at least as today.

when news, new pages, or new SW is added, they should be announced
automatically on mailing list. RSS feed generation is also very nice.

*LIGHT* HTML code and page layout:

     The site structure and content must certainly become easier to
     understand and navigate than today, but think to people trying to
     know how to get RULE through a 14.4KBps modem, links, a 486 and a
     monochrome monitor (not to mention blind users). Let's limit as
     much as possible frames, nested tables, colors, JavaScript.

tarball(s) with all the site content and mailing list archive must be
generated daily and available for download.

     the reason is to make possible easy download and offline
     consultation of all RULE site, also for the purpose (as it
     happened last summer for Linux Pakistan to burn and distribute it
     on Cd-rom

multilingual support: yes please

search whole content: yes please



_______________________________________________
Original home page of the RULE project: www.rule-project.org
Original Rule Development Site http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/rule/
Original RULE mailing list: Rule-list at nongnu.org, hosted at http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/rule-list