G'day Daniël, On 25/09/12 5:35 PM, "Daniël Mantione" <[email protected]> wrote:
>Hi! > >I'm fully aware of limitations, and happy to take take help, but please >understand I am skeptical to plans like "let's install PhpBB" and those >are not fundamental plans. I agree, change for changes' sake is just frustrating to people and time-consuming. Whatever happens has to minimally impact the core of the fpc community, that's critically important. That's one reason why I've offered to help out in that area. >The FPC community predates most forums on the internet and if I'm right >the first messages date from 1999. It maintains full backward >compatibility (even old URL's of the previous generation software) still >work, scales well and is resonably hacker proof. Security is paramount, of course. However, while hackers are prevented from easily attacking the infrastructure you have, so are new users prevented from easily finding the right resources (at the moment, anyway). That's where I hope some changes will help the current admins AND the user base, and hopefully keep as much of this critical archive intact as possible. Preferably 100%, although that's unlikely no matter what happens. But I'm prepared to put the work in to make sure everything possible is kept intact and accessible. (I used to do this for a living, and I do understand the importance of protecting and maintaining historical data, believe me). >So work has to be either on improving the current system, or a >proper thought out plan to replace it with another well working system >that can last again for well over a decade. That's exactly what I'm after! There needs to be a controlled, careful migration to any new process or software, no matter what that is. And rather than coming in and stomping around like a dictator, I would much rather find out what ideas other people have to do the same thing. Eventually, there should be an agreed process, step 1, step 2 Step 500 (or however much it takes, hopefully not 500!), and most, if not all, of the most important members here are happy and comfortable with the process. I mentioned PHPBB because it's incredibly robust, widely used, has good security, is minimally invasive to manage, can be scaled reasonably well, people are familiar with it, and it works. But I'm sure there may be other, better options I'm completely unaware of! What I want to avoid *at all costs* is any pretty, shiny technology that seems fantastic but is largely untested. There is a lot "under the hood" that needs to be discussed too - archive formats, what kind of database will be used, how will that affect hosting, access, and costs, and so on. I would rather cover the a..z and take a few weeks longer to estimate the traps and so on, than jump in with a preconfigured gee-whiz solution that chokes in 5 years' time. I'm even thinking about what human resources on the lists might want to get involved - make it a community effort, with db backend and frontend specialists, scripting gurus, UI designers, anyone with true passion for fpc and a wish to contribute their specialty. I can do all of those things, but none of them brilliantly, so it makes sense to find out who would like to be part of a migration, and who can help the most. I hope this helps to show that I'm not trying to be a cowboy riding into FPC-town telling everyone what has to happen I'm not that kind of person, and it wouldn't be a good thing anyway, except get people nervous and doubtful. But then it's not easy coming in to such an old community and proving I can do what I say I can - that's going to be fun. I'm thinking eventually of just setting up a "dummy" kind of site, where some data could be placed and some users can have a look to see what sort of things work, whether it gives people any better ideas, etc. I'll be happy to host as much as I can (I'm semi-retired, and my business site uses less than 5% of the hosting resources available to me, so that's one option). But by far the most critical thing right now is fixing up the dead wood on the fpc main page, contacting external site admins to see if stuff's been saved or redirected, clean up some of the lists, fix up the global search engine (really important, and I might be able to do that fairly gently), that kind of thing. As long as people who go to that page can see that most everything works, that's a great step forward, I'm sure you'll agree! OK enough for now. I really appreciate your comments and concerns, and I really don't want to stand on anyone's toes it's too important to the community, I know. And I appreciate anything and everything you can do to help guide me! Thanks again, and if anyone else has comments or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear. I think there's a great benefit to everyone if it's done right. Cheers, Pete _______________________________________________ fpc-devel maillist - [email protected] http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-devel
