Website:Planning For Transition

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Introduction

This document describes an overall approach to redesigning and re-implementing caminobrowser.org to better suit the needs of the Camino Project.

This project will be led by Max Ruderburg.

Current Situation

Currently, www.cb.o and jp.cb.o are hosted in a CVS repository for easy updating by various people. There are two staging sites (www-stage and jp-stage) which show the current contents of CVS on checkin. In addition, blogs.cb.o exists which is not in CVS, but rather, simply HTML pages which are updated by FTPing into the server and manually updating them. There is no version control for blogs.cb.o. Finally, wiki.cb.o exists as a place for developers and contributors and is using the MediaWiki back end.

Problems

There are a few major problems with the current setup, some of which are easily fixable, others which aren't.

  1. CVS isn't really that easy to update and isn't up-datable by anyone.
  2. blogs.cb.o can contain posts which aren't Camino-related
  3. blogs.cb.o can only be updated by a few people and causes permissions problems on the server
  4. wiki.cb.o has no set "purpose" at the moment
  5. wiki.cb.o isn't easily translatable.
  6. The "Community Blog" isn't easy to update and must be done manually (editing HTML)
  7. Translating the site should be easy for localizers and not require much (if any) use of CVS.
  8. Information on joining the community doesn't really exist

Solutions & Proposal

We need to solve most, if not all, of the above issues. An overall solution of switching to a content management system (CMS) was previously attempted, but had its own set of problems.

What we should do

  1. Make cb.o mainly "front pages", as in, content that will rarely need updating (includes /, /features/, /download/, and /releases/).
  2. Move all support, development, and community documents to the wiki. (Solves some of 1, all of 4, and some of 7.)
  3. Move blogs.cb.o to a new domain, new design, and new software. (caminoplanet.org using Planet Planet; solves 2 and 3)
  4. Create a wiki for each localization that wants one, similar to what devmo does. (Solves 5 and most of 7.)
  5. Move the Community Blog to a new sub-domain (blog.cb.o; no s) and use blogging software to power it. (Solves 6.)
  6. Make the /community/ replacement (on the wiki) more oriented toward "community". (Solves 8)

What this does

First off, by limiting the amount of pages which are in CVS, we lessen the barrier to entry for our localizers. The content for everything will still exist but will be much easier to update (via the wiki).

Secondly, by moving blogs.cb.o to a new domain, we've disassociated a lot of it from cb.o and allowed off-topic posts to be "okay" (of course, they're okay now). This also makes it alright if it has a different design, which won't require updating when the rest of cb.o updates.

Finally, moving content to the wiki allows anyone (who's registered) to update it. This keeps the load off the select few who happen to have CVS access.

One More Thing

As an aside, a visual refresh of the overall website branding should be worked on and live before 1.1. This includes a theme for the website, wiki, Planet Planet install, and blog.

Comments

All comments should be directed to the talk page. This document is locked for editing and will be updated as comments are made.