2006/9/9, Andrus Adamchik <andrus@objectstyle.org>:
>
>
> On Sep 9, 2006, at 5:10 PM, Borut Bolčina wrote:
> > What is Community and its content?
>
> Mailing lists, info on how one can participate, how to submit bugs,
> some blurb about Apache, etc.
>
> > Development and Issue Tracking don't
> > belong there in my opinion because of their technical natures.
>
> > We will try to pick the option that has two different focuses - one
> > for
> > newbies and lurkers, the other for users and experts.
>
> The site is also used by Cayenne developers. The is a place where I
> go when I want access to SVN, bug tracker, road map, etc. I am a user
> too! :-)
>
> Of course we need to hide all this scary backend information from the
> regular users, but putting it under its own top-level menu is quite
> reasonable I think.
I can live with that, it's just that it discards my idea of two site
focuses. We can experiment, I think we are all very open minded ;-)
> We will try to pick the option that has two different focuses - one
> > for
> > newbies and lurkers, the other for users and experts. That is why I
> > decided
> > to put shortcuts on the right, but as they are important to users
> > of Cayenne
> > framework because they are more frequently accessed, they are more
> > visually
> > exposed.
>
> As I said in my other message, what links are important depends on
> the user.
Don't you think we can profile the users based on user mailing list postings
and decide which items are more important?
> Here we come to some basic questions we must answer. What
> > technology we will
> > decide to use?
>
> I tried to separate the technology discussion from the site structure
> discussion, as I wanted to avoid "maven sucks" type of comments in
I love Maven, but I hate their documentation.
this thread (oops, I just said it :-)), so let's discuss this in
> general terms, and start a different thread if we need to talk
> specifics.
>
> > Who will host it?
>
> Apache Software Foundation - there are no other options.
>
> > Will the site use some server side logic?
>
> There are two parts - static site that will have to be generated
> offline and Confluence Wiki. Offline process can have any logic we
> want it to have, but the output should be static HTML (possibly with
> JavaScript).
>
> > Who will take care of it?
>
> Same people who do it today - Cayenne community. I am trying to
> figure out some legal issues to allow wider participation (e.g. I
> think authorized non-committers should have the ability to submit
> content), but I also want to keep this discussion separate from the
> navigation design.
>
> > How will the content be updated?
>
> That's the sticky question. This is why we have Wiki.
It's a shame Macromedia Contribute
3<http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/>is not a free product.
Changing site is childishly easy and of course the
material must be approved before published.
> Putting news on the front page is a BIG decision. Using RSS does
> > not prevent
> > news being old. [...] Of course it would be great if news section
> > was on the front page with one
> > news every week or so, but this won't happen in my opinion.
>
> I agree, but if it can be conditional (no news - no news section.
> site generation logic can be smart about that).
>
>
> > I am tutoring my coworker in Cayenne and one of his early remarks
> > was that
> > documentation was badly interconnected and structured.
>
> I agree, that's why we are having this discussion.
>
> > I mentioned that already by pointing out the Children section.
>
> This is a matter of updating the wiki and maybe creating a better
> Wiki template, not with the Wiki itself.
>
> > All the documentation should be on main site not on Wiki,
>
> We had main docs checked as XML to SVN before (and we still do for
> the few pages on the site). We switched to Wiki for the docs work to
> increase participation, and this actually happened (at least
> initially after the switch). This is our CMS, and I personally do not
> want to go back to the XML files for the book-like "guides". With
> Confluence auto-export plugin Wiki content looks no different from
> the rest of the static site (provided we create a matching template).
No one wants to write documentation in XML, at least sane people don't. If
this auto export can make the static site visually professional then maybe
the static site can only have titles and excerpts with link to wiki entries.
Why do you think Wiki is the problem?
If used properly, then it is not. When used to freely with no consideration
to product's appearance, then it can be a show stopper. A nice look and feel
of the site makes some percentage of people more comfortable and safe and
this percentage is not low.
BTW, geronimo project is a good example (they also have all docs on
> Wiki). There is a page that points to all documentation resources,
> while the resources themselves are Wiki based:
>
> http://geronimo.apache.org/documentation.html
Yes, it looks quite ok. Then again have a look (click through some
sections) how differently it can be done
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/toplink/quicktour/index.htm.
You see what I mean with a show stopper.
Borut
Andrus
>
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