[OpenAFS] New OpenAFS website proposal.

[Harald Barth]

> > Certainly it seems functional; What's the backend? The current web
> > site, being emitted,
> > has the advantage that we could clone it around the world simply by
> > pointing numerous web servers
> > at the content in AFS.

Which kindof is a big plus because most of the folks involved with AFS
know how a AFS backend works.

> The site is based on Plone ( http://plone.org/ )

I was afraid to hear that, some webadmin some time ago chose it for
the contents of www.pdc.kth.se and I really have learned to hate it.

* It is a kindasorta web server, but a dumb one, so it needs an apache
  anyway to front it.

* It has some content management backend (zope?) which so far noone has
  managed to reallt learn, so every upgrade is a 'do we dare' nightmare

* The only way I know to get content into it is the horrible builtin editor.

* There is a markup language, but as noone knows if you can do that particual
  thing in the markup language and it is difficult to find out, people
  write HTML anyway.

* I don't know how to get content out again.

* It has builtin user management and what you see depends on if you
  are logged in or not (the articles have states, like "published"
  which are not visible for everyone), for me this results in an
  login-logout-login work cycle.

* We still have bugs like "can not see version history" which we have
  not figured out (well, we are not a web shop, but OpenAFS is neither).

> which is a Python
> powered content management system. The downside to this solution is
> that it requires a long-running process and a bit more resources than
> classic "bunch of php" would use and needs a slightly more exotic
> configuration in the frontend web server. 

The CPU cycles are not a problem today.

> On the upside, it is
> self-contained and requires little more than modern gcc and svn to
> clone the whole site.

As the OpenAFS web site does have very little interactive content and
all the people who contribute know how to edit a file in AFS, I'd
recommend a setup which builds on these skills, maybe with some "make
&& make install" which does checks and builds the menu and does a vos
rele.

# All this does not mean that we do not need a refurbished web site.

# Appearence is of course made with css, CMS or not.

Harald.