[kdewebdev-site] Activating the site

[Eric Laffoon]

Hi everyone,
Dave Reddish sent me an update of the site based on his visual layout which I 
like. I am currently doing some work with it this morning as well as 
extracting some of the XHTML into PHP and setting up the initial base include 
library. There are several factors about the site design to keep in mind. For 
one I want to do PHP5 and the new XML features in PHP5 continue to seem like 
a useful thing to use. For another I want to use a Subversion respostory. 
Finally I have a large number of ideas that I want to accomplish and I'm now 
confident there is only one way to do this... I really need to lead the 
development here. Andras has pointed out my time factors and I consider time 
to be less than relevent because it can be worked around. The problem is 
various associated factors and how much work we want to throw away. 
Everything will be moving to a virtual server running PHP5 and Subversion 
which I will maintain.

There are several key factors that need t be addressed.
1) organization and content - to some degree this has been addressed by 
subdonamains.
2) KNewStuff - we need to either set up PostgreSql or rewrite some things for 
MySql
3) Initial and transitional server management - currently there are problems 
accessing the active server running PHP4 from user accounts and CVS
4) Setup of the database and registration and population

I could present a long list of what I want to accomplish, but there has been a 
lot of talk and not a lot of action, so I'll try to give a concise thumbnail. 
Along with the obvious the site will consist of these principal elements...
1) Main section as an umbrella for the site housing donation and central news, 
select screen shots, etc...
2) Application sections which will have more specifics including introduction 
to the application, screenshots, online docs, app news, user bullitens, faqs, 
feature request, etc...
3) Developer section which will have information on getting involved as well 
as a complete database centered interface for planning, tracking and managing 
development. I have the database designed and have been working on data 
management classes that allow for incredibly quick development and work with 
Kommander dialogs. I'm rewriting these now and with them I can make radical 
interface changes that are clean error free in a matter of minutes. The 
entire design here has taken a tremendous amount of thought so that it will 
be easy to use with the least effort and will seamlessly integrate with our 
developer mailing lists, planning and feature requests. There will be a 
number of benefits to this too long to list, but for starters it will give 
users a view inside the development process to see what is happening in a way 
never before done and it will give developers and team leaders instant 
information. This will eliminate many problems with managing the project 
through mailing lists, though the lists will of course continue to be used as 
they will integrate.

Several things will happen with the site. For one, in order to use KNewStuff 
and make a submission you will need to register for obvious reasons. This 
will be used for the resource management system. The system will apply a rule 
based filter to manage risk levels and make the resource administrators lives 
easier. It will look something like this.
1) new and unknown 
2) known and (probably good || probably not good)
3) trusted || not trusted
4) automatically (accepted || rejected)
This will be based on factors of quality, security, general design rules and 
redundancy. In other words if someone is submitting a lot of good and usable 
resources eventually they are promoted to trusted, but if their submissions 
have problems  or duplicate existing things in much less elegant ways they 
will only go to probably good. If their heart is in the right place but their 
submissions never pass the test they could become not trusted and if they 
demonstrate clear malice they become an automatic rejection.

Logically the case could be made to also have the user register to use 
KNewstuff for download too. This way if something they install proves to be a 
problem they can be notified. They can also choose to receive email or of 
course RSS for new resources of interest. The particular advantage for me is 
that I have an interest in how many users might actually register and it 
would be fun to show the registered user number on the site. If KNewStuff 
offered a simple and private name and email address registration this would 
be great. It occurs to me maybe we should have done prep for this in Quanta 
sooner but now I'm pondering web interfaces, DCOP and Kommander. Anyway, my 
long term objective is to generate these registrations because I believe 
there are several areas they will prove to be good for the project.

Currently what we need to do is to check who is active and wants to be part of 
the project and begin some preliminary work which will mostly be able to be 
translated to our new server. I'll post a separate email on that. Presently I 
still have a few related things I'm doing that will affect to a small degree 
my preparation to transition but I will begin working on the virtual server 
shortly. In the mean time we can get some things up on site.
-- 
Eric Laffoon
Project Lead - kdewebdev module