Web Site Development Status

[Cpt. Lundgren]

To let all of you know how far the development of the new site have proceeded, I will present the status here.

Recruit the initial design and developer team
->Choose CMS/Tools
Design the site
Implement the site
Test the site
Opening day

-> means a current task

[Cpt. Lundgren]

As the forums slowly awakes again, it is time to begin the work on the web site. But to achieve the best result, I need help. One of The first steps is to pick out tools that will be easy to work with. But as a technician I would probably pick out feature rich tools with a hopeless user interface

There might also be something you would like to see, and help with, on the site. Maybe writing a bi-weekly or monthly column about Trek gaming? Something else? What kind of tools would be essential? If there has to be a choice between a WYSIWYG editor and a spell checker, which one is more important?

Identified features so far:
User Contributions
Content approval
Granular Privileges for editors/designers
Supporting Meta information
Multisite support if it should support both Trek and LotR

Also, I want it as writer friendly as possible.

[KillerWhale]

To chime my two cents: for the CMS, I heavily recommend SPIP
http://www.spip.net

It's very powerful and a breeze to use. It needs some heavy configuration in the beginning (you can do any layout you want) but after that it's wonderful. It actually enabled me to btvs-rpg.net (http://www.btvs-rpg.net) back on good tracks. It has an internal text layout engine that is powerful and simple to use. If you're interested let me know I can tell you more about the features.

On the other hand, IMHO, avoid php-Nuke and similar software. It seems powerful but frankly, layouting contribs with it is a true nightmare: I learnt this first hand (btvs-rpg.net ran under it in the beginning).

[Liquidator Queeg]

Originally posted by Cpt. Lundgren
Maybe writing a bi-weekly or monthly column about Trek gaming? Something else?

One or more columns would be great. I don't think you'd have to look hard for volunteers. *Queeg waves hand*

What kind of tools would be essential? If there has to be a choice between a WYSIWYG editor and a spell checker, which one is more important?

Hmm. I'd say a WYSIWYG editor. I suspect most contributors would use their own spell checkers before submitting. At least, I'd hope so!

Identified features so far:
User Contributions
Content approval
Granular Privileges for editors/designers
Supporting Meta information
Multisite support if it should support both Trek and LotR

Also, I want it as writer friendly as possible.

All of the above should come in to play, and it's good you've already identified them. One consideration is how much "editorial approval" you want on the site. There's two options really: any submitted item gets posted by the user/writer, or someone (or several) is responsible for cleaning up (or weeding out munchkin ships and whatnot) submissions which don't meet a defined "quality standard" -- not necessarily creatively, but in terms of proper format (like the RPG books), grammar, established game balance, and so forth.

I look forward to the renewed future of the site!

LQ

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by KillerWhale
On the other hand, IMHO, avoid php-Nuke and similar software. It seems powerful but frankly, layouting contribs with it is a true nightmare: I learnt this first hand (btvs-rpg.net ran under it in the beginning).

I concur. The common misconception is that the *-Nukes are CMS systems; they're not.

I suggest Mambo. Fills all your needs and then some. Incredible support community.

Avoid Typo3 and EZpublish -- they are far too complex and take too long to get working.

Just some opinions.

Oh, and vBulletin 3.

- Don

[KillerWhale]

Just browsed the admin interface with Mambo. Looks like a lot like Nuke to me... Or am I mistaken? Especially when it comes to layouting: you can't escape the HTML... That was the biggest problem for me, especially when it came to layouting tables (it's not difficult, it's just looooooooooooong to do).

SPIP is awesome in that regard: instead of typing all the markup for layouting a table (td, tr and so on), for example, you just have to separate items with pipes:

| Column 1 | Column 2 |
| Data | More Data |

Makes a nice table, totally adapted to your site template which is fully customizable. IMHO, that's the biggest advantage of Spip, it makes layout a breeze.

[Tobian]

I'm wary about volunteering for anything else at the moment as I am already split in several directions at once But I am reasonably confident in HTML and I can help out with graphics if needed.

I'm thinking of starting my own website shortly, so I'm notingdown your comments for future use. I'm not afraid to code HTML so I am still fairly tempted by PHP nuke

[KillerWhale]

Tobian,

Honestly, don't. I've used both and I defintely wish I had tried SPIP harder in the first place.

If you know your way around HTML try to get into SPIP instead. It's less intuitive at first but when you understand how it works it's amazingly powerful. You'll better use your time coding in HTML your own site template with SPIP and then have things running smoothly: you only have to worry abount content. And if you want to change templates, everything is portable.

Nuke will have you spit complex HTML code everytime for everything. It's tiring to focus on that rather than on the content itself. I ended up winded on the long run.

[spshu]

Here was the post I made on the FBR regarding CMS

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Cpt. Lundgren:


Plans for the near future:
Open up the site and allow submissions from the community. Most likely through a CMS. I am currently looking at both EZ publish and TYPO3. If anyone are interested in looking closer at CMS, then http://www.opensourcecms.com/ are a good place to start.

Long term plans:
Work to make TrekRPGnet regain its status as a hub to all Star Trek based role playing games. Both through own content on the site (like the submitted files), and links to other sites.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I have been looking at Content Mangement System at http://CMSmatrix.org . It is good place to start looking before going to opensourcecms.com. I am look at number of CMSs including Mambo -- it was the CMS Don was going to use. Is anyone else looking? Is there anything else besides that it should be free, use Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL and have the follow features: Content Approval, User Contributions?

Here are some features that CMS Matrix.org tracks:
Content Approval
Granular Privleges
Authentication
Problem Notif.
SSL
Versioning
Dev. Comm.
online help
Public Forum
Public Mailing list
3rd Party Dev.
Adv. Caching
Ad manager
Affiliate Tracking
Asset Manager
Content Reuse
Content Scheduling
Content Staging
Content Syndication (RSS)
xtensible profiles
Friendly URLs
FTP support
Inline Adm.
Interface localization
Multi-lingual
Multi-site Deployment
Online Adm.
Package Deployment
Page Caching
Sub-sites
Template language
Themes/Skins
Trash
UI levels
Undo
URL rewriting
Web stats
web based style/Temp. Managment
web-based translation managment
Wiki aware
Workflow engine
WYSIWYG editor
Blog
Chat
Classified
Contact Mangment
Data Entry
DB reports
Forum/Discussion
Doc. Management
Calendar
Exp.Reports
FAQ Manager
file dist.
Graphs & charts
Groupware
Guest Book
Help Desk/Bug Reporting
in/out board
Job postings
Link Manager
Mail Form
My Page/Dashboard
Photo Gallery
Polls
Product Managment
Project Tracking
Search Engine
Cart/ E-commerce
Surveys
Sydicated Content (RSS)
Tests/Quizzes
Time Tracking
User Contributions
Web Services Front End

[Cpt. Lundgren]

According to http://CMSmatrix.org is Mambo stronger than TYPO3 when it comes to Meta data, but lacks in some other areas (which I don't even know if they are needed). As Spip doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor, does it require more technical skills and time from writers.

I am setting up a test server, so I can try some of them out. So What I think after installing them is a completely different matter

About vBulletin 3, it is downloaded and waits for the test server.

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Cpt. Lundgren
About vBulletin 3, it is downloaded and waits for the test server.

Just dupe the vbulletin SQL DB, install vB3 in a different directory (give an optional subdomain for testing) and run the upgrade script.

You are allowed two installations of vBulletin at the same time, provided the second one isn't available public and is used for testing only. (Keep the URL to yourself).

Your server can easily run two instances of vBulletin for testing purposes. Drop me a line if you need some help with the conversion or changing the graphics; I have some experience.

- Don

[Cpt. Lundgren]

Originally posted by Don Mappin
Your server can easily run two instances of vBulletin for testing purposes. Drop me a line if you need some help with the conversion or changing the graphics; I have some experience.

I might do just that However, getting my own hands dirty is a very good way to get some needed experience myself. Doing it locally allows my to crash it a couple of times

[KillerWhale]

SPIP is not WYSIWYG but doesn't need to be: it's very, very easy to layout pages.

For example:
{italic} makes italic
To hyperlink to another site article (eg n°12), just enclose it the text link between [] and add "->12"

Adding images is just as easy.

Even complete ignorants in layout can produce good-looking documents because the graphical chart is the same for everyone.

A WYSIWYG editor is not needed: you just say to the system "this is a title" "this is a table" with very easy shortcuts. You cannot go wrong, while a WYSIWYG editor, if offering more freedom... allows you the freedom to go wrong as well.

[Tobian]

I am assuming by that you mean it is a CMS but you can use bbscript style comments to add items / links/ pictures etc.

Otherwise if it's not a CMS what's the point

I'm not sure it sounds ideal, and Wysiwig should mean there aren't errors, because you can' thave someone forget to put a comment in or something.. which can make a real mess of things!

[KillerWhale]

No, it's much easier/smarter/whatever than bbscript. It's faster.

Instead of typing all the time (i) (/i) you just type { }.

Instead of typing (table cellspace... width... ) (td) (tr) ... (/td)... (/tr) and the whole shebang which can get quite exhausting, you just type your data between pipes ( | ). It seems nothing. But it's an amazing gain of time and in my case, it may mean the difference between life and death of the site.

WYSIWYG editors allow you to do whatever you want (and so far, no CMS WYSIWYG editor allow you to do tables!). For that reason, you can end up doing anything and not be coherent with the rest of the site.

And if you decide to change the graphical charter of the site, what happens? You just have to redo all the layout!

With SPIP, as the marks have semantics (this is a title, this is a table), layout is adapted to the new graphical charter if you want to change it.

Keep in mind: why are you using CMS? To gain time and automate tasks. What good is that if you still spend a long time layouting contribs? When you know how to use it, SPIP is the most automated and quick to use CMS I've ever used and known. Even Mambo, which still looks interesting, doesn't have this level of automation.