[kdewebdev-site] Another kick in the starter

[Eric Laffoon]

Hi all,
I have gotten the primary objective done on my business site, but I still need 
to do a little more. I'm also less than a week out from a road trip for a 
week to do my first holiday show of the year. This is a new one on our 
schedule and while I'm concerned my animals will freak out with us both being 
gone I do have a laptop so I can be connected when I'm not working. We will 
be going to cyber-cafes and using wireless, which I need to set up and test 
here first. So my schedule could also be kind of wonky.

I would really like to get started, but first I need to call George as I 
haven't heard back from my emails. The poor guy has just been through 4 
hurricanes and I haven't talked with him since the middle of it. I want to 
move the whole site and make some system changes. Dave Reddish has worked up 
some general layouts and I will be presenting some libraries and such soon.

The objective here will be to do several things.
1) Use new technologies. That means PHP5, PEAR libraries, Apache2, Subversion 
and probably WebDAV. We need to start leading in what we do, but I have 
specific reasons for wanting to go with PHP5 and Subversion. PHP5 is much 
nicer for working with XML and the new object architecture is the way to go. 
So you may want to get it installed. I'm not sure about visual tools for 
Subversion, but I do know I like certain things about it way more as an 
administrator. I'll write the tools in Kommander if I have to. 

2) Yes we need an up to date presence. We also need to be able to address 
informational exchange issues with users. On top of that we need tools to 
assist developers. But we also need to work on the KNewStuff interfaces.

3) Quanta is developing new tools for team development. I fully intend to be 
using them and working on them here. So it would probably be required at some 
point to use the CVS version.

Given that I plan on moving the server and still have to do some set up please 
begin doing what ever prep you need to get going. I will keep you updated 
when we're ready to roll but I'm ready now to look at submissions across this 
list. I need to go through old mail sometime too, but we're mainly looking 
forward and I'm going to focus on my objectives.

Because of his dedication and input Dave Reddish will be my assistant on this 
project. I'm going to do it, but I want to hand as much as I can to him.

There is one other factor here. I think a new site with good draw potential 
has the potential to attract and excite people. This is particularly 
important since David Joham is not able to continue his sponsorship at this 
time. Also in September we received exactly zero donations from people not 
sponsoring the project. That is the first time since July of 2003. We also 
have several less sponsors than we expected so over all we are looking at 
potentially $1000-$1500 that I may have to make up by the end of the year for 
Andras and Michal. Needless to say, if you can help me produce something that 
gets people excited and inspires them to contribute to the project that would 
be great. Only a fraction of a percent of our users have pushed us to a very 
successful position as open source projects go so we just need to 
successfully inspire a tiny fraction of our users.
-- 
Eric Laffoon
Project Lead - kdewebdev module