[kdewebdev-site] What's next

[Eric Laffoon]

On Wednesday 09 March 2005 09:59 am, Andras Mantia wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  Seems that others have disappeared from the list... So I want to ask
> what is next? Now we have some kind of framework working and we should
> start to migrate the content from quanta.sourceforge.net to
> quanta.kdewebdev.org.
I'm not sure how much content is worth migrating? I migrated donations and 
much of the rest is just being replaced. Mostly it's pretty old.

Also right now I'm experiencing temporary insanity several days into debugging 
some incredibly complex code I should shoot myself for writing.

> - news: Eric, you said you have some news handling classes
Yes, I hope to bring all the data management over shortly.
> - articles: do we use the same engine?
Yes, and we can add developer blogging too.
> - howto and tutorial page: I think we need this for howtos, tutorials
> and tips and tricks. The gubed tutorial is a good candidate.
I don't really care to get extensively into this. I do plan on doing a support 
oriented membership site next to help sponsor the project and at this time I 
don't see a lot of people jumping forward to volunteer. I do think I should 
talk with Linus about putting some Gubed information on the site though and 
this is a howto we should definitely have.
> - screenshots: I suggest someone writes some PHP class that generates
> screenshot pages. Maybe using similar technique to releases.inc.php, so
> screenshots are described in an XML file? Anyone wanting to do it?
I have something like this for kittyhooch.com and a Kommander dialog that 
takes the images and creates thumbnails and outputs text. I can make this 
available for use. It can be modified. We just need someone to take the 
simple job of making screenshots. Maybe we should ask on the user list?
> - releases: where will we put the latest releases? Do we use
> Sourceforge? It has the advantage to have lots of mirror sites and
> download counting, statistics. I can create a release page like for
> Kallery/KLinkStatus where the files itself are stored on SF.
George says the bandwidth is not a problem. That means we could keep them 
locally, but I want a download counter regardless so if they're local they 
need that.
> Also what about Quanta releases? I think we should have the releases on
> the main kdewebdev.org, but have a section on Quanta as well, but that
> one should point to the main kdewebdev.org release section as there are
> not really separate Quanta releases. Of course if we want to list old
> versions, we need a separate page.
kdewebdev package releases go in the main section and independent releases go 
in the application section. News and cross links should cover that.
> - newstuff: we have some problems here regarding the upload...
I will address that ASAP.
>
> The old site has some other content as:
> - do list: I think we should use the KDE wide feature plan. Maintaining
> two todo lists is not fun.
If I thought that I would probably not have done this site. I get the feeling 
you have not seen the whole vision. The developer section will function to 
extend the benefits of the user list with a web based interface and it will 
do a lot more than we've ever done before. It will be a complete project 
management tool for the first time enabling quick and easy entries to save us 
a lot of time and be more organized. It will also interact with an 
intelligent feature request system where users can easily see how requests 
are addressed and track linkage to what is in progress. The feature 
management will not only help us organize and make key information from the 
mailing list persistent but it will also be able to generate the XML for the 
KDE wide feature plan. 

So instead of the KDE feature wide plan being a pain we have to go through and 
update for schedules it will be integrally generated whenever we wish to 
output our current work plan from our own internal management tool.

Additional benefits will be:
* New developers will be able to easily see what is in work.
* Developers working on a project will be able to post open jobs where they 
would benefit from assistance.
* Users will be able to view project information so they don't have to ask or 
wonder... or request a feature that is in work.
* Developers won't have to duplicate their efforts because they can optionally 
do an entry and tell it to mail it's content to the developer list. This 
would be for task or project logs.
* feature review and planning become simple integral parts of the project.

The only issue here is having developers use the system and as the benefits 
are huge I intend to make usage as easy as possible and benefits as clear as 
possible. The central idea here is that I am working from a list of weak 
points I want to address in our approach. The mailing list was a big step 
forward, but it has inherent weaknesses, as do project tools. My idea is to 
take the strengths of each and marry them into a hybrid system. My hope is 
that once I can demo it developers will like the benefits enough they will be 
willing to change their habits and make a small portion of their entries 
through a web interface instead of a mail program.
> - Help Wanted: this is something for developer.kdewebdev.org, isn't it?
This will all be directed there yes.
> - Be a developer: do we need it? Yes, it's nice, but anybody wanting to
> be a developer should be directed to the developer lists.
Right.
> - team members: nice, but not critical to have. But if somebody wants,
> can write a (new list) of developers, as the one on the SF is quite old
> and not complete/true.
Developer registration will automatically handle this, though I guess if 
someone wants to protect their privacy I could extend that option.
> - sponsors page: we can migrate this as it is.
Okay, and I want to also make a page for people contributing who want to be 
listed. This will be easy with the current donation form and some 
modifications.
> - promo products: Eric, are they still available? Also
They did so horrible I have not kept them up to date. I'd really like to have 
them, but a mousepad or T-Shirt once a year or so is hardly worth it. Maybe 
we should have a petition to bring them back? ;-)
> donation/sponsors/promo products might be grouped somehow together, I
> think under the name of "Supporting Quanta" or something like that.
> - links: it's OK, I think to have it

Yes we want that.
>
> I hope I didn't forget anything.
> So if somebody is interested in an area let us know asap.
>
> Andras
I had something... but while I was answering this I forgot it. ;-)
-- 
Eric Laffoon
Project Lead - kdewebdev module