Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Tom P]

Hi,

I think having the wiki as default page for the project makes a lot of
sense, there is way more information on the Wiki at this point, and it's
pretty well organized.

Of course, a few key pages would need to be locked-down (or maybe not, I'm
an optimist !!). And dynamic pages like the aircraft download don't need to
be scrapped, they could be referenced from the wiki and later integrated as
MediaWiki extensions.

What about having a poll on the forum about this topic?

  Tom


On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 3:06 AM, Gijs de Rooy  wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> last week, James dropped the idea of moving our 
> website(partly) over to the
> wiki . So far I have "discussed"
> this with a couple of people, all of which have different opinions.
> Therefore, I would like to ask anyone that
> cares about our website to reply.
>
> I think we all agree that our current website cannot continue like it does
> right now. We've had multiple discussions
> in the past, even leading to some test website (like the ones by Pete), but
> none of them led to something.
>
> I have listed a couple of pro's and con's (IMO, and based on a small IRC
> duscission) below. This list is dynamic,
> as pro's can become con's and vice versa.
>
> + *Easy to update:* wiki articles can be edited by all people, in stead of
> just a single man (Curt :P). As we have
> seen in the past (and even till today), our website is often out of date. A
> "good" example of this is the CVS/Git
> page , which hasn't been updated since May
> (!), and still does not contain any useful info if I want to use Git.
>  Of course we don't want some of our important pages (main page,
> download etc.) to be edited by just anyone
> with a wiki account. Luckily, we can add usergroups at the wiki and assign
> permissions to them. Thus, important
> pages can be locked (on the edit part) for the ordinary users. We've been
> doing this with all Newsletters, which
> can be edited only by wiki-admins after their publicication. We could
> create various groups, and people can be
> within multiple groups at once.
> + *Easy to link to detailed documentation:* rather than providing an
> external link, we can add internal links to
> each word (okay, that's a little too much). If a text mentions $FG_ROOT, we
> can make that "word" link to the wiki-
> article about it. This will
> decrease the amount of "useless" questions at the forum (which are replied
> by a link to
> the wiki), which is meant for special, personalised help and discussions.
> + *Download page:* since the wiki already contains quite some information
> per aircraft, it could be used to auto-
> generate a more detailed aircraft download page. Each aircraft on that page
> can link to the aircraft's "private" page
> (if existing) and thus provide manuals, status info etc. immediately to the
> user, even before downloading the aircraft.
> As we've had quite some complaints from people that are disappointed after
> dowloading. The wiki can provde various
> screenshots per aircraft (eg. interior, exterior), so users can
> see-what-they-get.
> + *Publicity of the wiki:* new FG users will be immediately aware of the
> existence of a wiki, and therefore be
> stimulated to start developing themselves. This will again decrease the
> "useless" questions at the forum.
>
> - *Less attractive layout:* currently the FlightGear wiki doesn't really
> look like a website. This could be solved
> though by creating/adding a different style/layout.
> - *Less open system:* for example, it will be harder to implement
> additional features (gallery's, search engines)
> etc. However, the alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much opener...
> - *Not much examples:* of a complete wiki website about projects like
> ours. This could be a pro as well, as it will
> allow us to be "renewed" and "different".
>
> Jester (IIRC) mentioned that it is important to check whether pages are
> cached at the wiki, so they won't have
> to be pulled from the database each time. If so, we should enable cache. A
> possible other solution is to have a
> "static" frontpage, which could be nice in various ways, other than the
> cache...
>
> I look forward to receiving your ideas/opinions/questions! When the list
> grow, we might benefit from setting up a
> wiki article to collect ideas/opinions.
>
>  Cheers,
> Gijs
>
>
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Martin Spott]

Martin Spott wrote:

> It's a little bit like buying a house when you're thinking about having four
> kids.

 even though we bought a nice house last autumn which might be suited
to accommodate four children, the above sentence wasn't meant to be
understood as a self-portrait  ;-)

Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Peter Morgan]

I knocked up this site with a templating engine, powered by NOREL on GAE,
http://fg-www.appspot.com/

 I also ported it to php5 to make everyone GPL happy ie not google, m$,
oracle etc..

http://github.com/ac001/flightgear-php << not online but same site powered
by php5

I have intentionally migrated away from
tikiwiki, drupal etc php its fine for small site but scaling it is
difficult, let alone with url rewriting and .htaccess fun

http://github.com/ac001/FlightGear-AppEngine-Cloud << python stuff with
DJANGO templating (easily protable)


I would however steer completely away from the wiki, instead integrate it
into the main site...
CDN is the word and if we increase the user base by 500% what will
the consequences be ??

What we all want is a development enviroment of constant imprvment on the
website shared by everybody with input at a guess.
pete



On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 5:21 PM, Martin Spott wrote:

> Hi Curt,
>
> Curtis Olson wrote:
>
> > 2. I've played a bit with drupal, and in comparison to wordpress, it
> feels
> > much more adhoc and clunky, much less thought out, much more
> disorganized,
> > much less intuitive, much harder to admin, and much harder to make it do
> > what I want to do.
>
> Well, Drupal is primarily a website CMS whereas WordPress, to my
> understanding, is prominently meant to serve for blogs.  Therefore it
> doesn't come by surprise that you're experiencing significant differences.
> Django in contrast has an even steeper learning curve, but it does almost
> everything for you, if you add some code - just the usual "versatility vs.
> convenience" story  ;-)
>
>
> > 4. I hear you folks who want to be able to program php/perl/python the
> > backend and really customize the site.
>
> Let me put it into different words to clarify my intention: Re-doing a
> website almost from scratch requires a pile of work and when people start
> thinking about migrating the website over to whichever flavour of 3rd party
> 'framework', thus making the site _dependent_ on this framework, then I'd
> recommend not to choose one whose structural deficiencies are becoming
> obvious already _that_ in the early planning stage.
>
> It's a little bit like buying a house when you're thinking about having
> four
> kids.  In the "planning stage" you'll never know the exact details, but
> even
> in the early phases it's pretty much obvious that the needs _are_ going to
> develop their own life  ;-)
>
> Cheers,
> Martin.
> --
>  Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are !
> --
>
>
> --
> Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Curtis Olson]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Martin Spott wrote:

> Well, Drupal is primarily a website CMS whereas WordPress, to my
> understanding, is prominently meant to serve for blogs.


This is all true, but wordpress does have some capabilities in the CMS arena
too.


> Therefore it
> doesn't come by surprise that you're experiencing significant differences.
> Django in contrast has an even steeper learning curve, but it does almost
> everything for you, if you add some code - just the usual "versatility vs.
> convenience" story  ;-)
>

Not to mention everyone has a strong opinion about what the best platform
should be. :-)


> Let me put it into different words to clarify my intention: Re-doing a
> website almost from scratch requires a pile of work and when people start
> thinking about migrating the website over to whichever flavour of 3rd party
> 'framework', thus making the site _dependent_ on this framework, then I'd
> recommend not to choose one whose structural deficiencies are becoming
> obvious already _that_ in the early planning stage.
>
> It's a little bit like buying a house when you're thinking about having
> four
> kids.  In the "planning stage" you'll never know the exact details, but
> even
> in the early phases it's pretty much obvious that the needs _are_ going to
> develop their own life  ;-)
>

My concern is that it's so easy to over design initially and come up with a
list of requirements that end up being too expensive, too time consuming, or
too complicated to successfully build.  This is a natural tendency any time
we have an open discussion.  Everyone wants to contribute (which is good)
and people often times take it personally if their suggestion isn't given
enough weight or isn't immediately acted upon.  Any time we make a change we
gain things and lose other things (often things that have substantial
emotional investment.)

Definitely CMS is the future ...

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org -
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Martin Spott]

Hi Curt,

Curtis Olson wrote:

> 2. I've played a bit with drupal, and in comparison to wordpress, it feels
> much more adhoc and clunky, much less thought out, much more disorganized,
> much less intuitive, much harder to admin, and much harder to make it do
> what I want to do.

Well, Drupal is primarily a website CMS whereas WordPress, to my
understanding, is prominently meant to serve for blogs.  Therefore it
doesn't come by surprise that you're experiencing significant differences. 
Django in contrast has an even steeper learning curve, but it does almost
everything for you, if you add some code - just the usual "versatility vs. 
convenience" story  ;-)


> 4. I hear you folks who want to be able to program php/perl/python the
> backend and really customize the site.

Let me put it into different words to clarify my intention: Re-doing a
website almost from scratch requires a pile of work and when people start
thinking about migrating the website over to whichever flavour of 3rd party
'framework', thus making the site _dependent_ on this framework, then I'd
recommend not to choose one whose structural deficiencies are becoming
obvious already _that_ in the early planning stage.

It's a little bit like buying a house when you're thinking about having four
kids.  In the "planning stage" you'll never know the exact details, but even
in the early phases it's pretty much obvious that the needs _are_ going to
develop their own life  ;-)

Cheers,
Martin.
-- 
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--

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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Curtis Olson]

This discussion has branched out in a couple directions, but let me just
share a couple of my own thoughts.

1. I've been playing around with wordpress for my own selfish purposes:

http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/

I *really* like wordpress.  It's slick, it's well done, it's well conceived,
it's easy to admin, it makes sense, add ons are easy to install and update.
 It's a brilliant gem of a software package.  But it's focused on blogs and
I'm not sure it would have the flexibilty or capabilities to do everything
we'd want to do.  But we could do a lot with it and I could be talked into
trying this route.

2. I've played a bit with drupal, and in comparison to wordpress, it feels
much more adhoc and clunky, much less thought out, much more disorganized,
much less intuitive, much harder to admin, and much harder to make it do
what I want to do.  My gut feeling when I was fiddling with it was that it
was weird, it didn't make good sense how it was laid out and organized.
 Wordpress seems to be developed by a team that really "gets it".  Drupal
seems to have evolved from a simpler system to a much more complex system
without someone keeping tabs on the high level vision that ties everything
together.  That's my opinion.  But drupal is *far* more flexible and
powerful so if we want to do things "our" way and really customize the site,
rather than go with a simpler wordpress way of doing things, drupal would be
an option, just a lot more clunky under the hood and a lot more effort to
get there.

3. The wiki is another interesting and viable option.  I don't have a strong
opinion about setting it up and managing it because Simon has done all the
leg work on that, and now it is here and available.

4. I hear you folks who want to be able to program php/perl/python the
backend and really customize the site.  I'm not sure what I think about
that.  Certainly there are good reasons to be able to do some of this (the
aircraft download page was mentioned as one example.)  We could have
this available, but maybe under a subdirectory so these pages would be
outside the scope of the main system if it didn't support this kind of
programming ... (?)

5. The aircraft download page is a big can o' worms!  If we want to discuss
that page we should start a separate thread!!!  This could probably end up
with it's own dedicated server if added all the features that everyone has
suggested. :-)

Regards,

Curt.



On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Hal V. Engel wrote:

> On Sunday, October 10, 2010 03:06:33 am Gijs de Rooy wrote:
> > + Download page: since the wiki already contains quite some information
> per
> > aircraft, it could be used to auto- generate a more detailed aircraft
> > download page. Each aircraft on that page can link to the aircraft's
> > "private" page (if existing)
>
> I guess that the private page is the one linked to from the page that
> contains
> the screen shots?
>
> If that is correct then this is a good idea.  It will give the aircraft
> devs a
> place to add details for prospective down loaders.
>
> > and thus provide manuals, status info etc.
> > immediately to the user, even before downloading the aircraft.
>
> I have a PDF copy of the original pilots manual for the aircraft I am
> working
> on.  But it is large (about 50 meg) and I have not included it as part of
> the
> model because of this.  I think the private page is a good place to provide
> links for things like pilots manuals, test reports and other technical
> information.   I like the idea of having a link from the download page to
> the
> aircraft private page.
>
> > As we've
> > had quite some complaints from people that are disappointed after
> > dowloading. The wiki can provde various screenshots per aircraft (eg.
> > interior, exterior), so users can see-what-they-get.
>
> There have been number of threads on the forum about this.  The main issue
> seems to be that the current download page does not give down loaders much
> information on the actual development status of the aircraft.  There are
> many
> aircraft that have nice looking 3D models but that have a poor/generic/no
> FDM
> and/or a cockpit that has few or no instruments.  In addition, I did some
> checking and found that about 1/2 of all *-set.xml files in fgdata GIT do
> not
> have a  tag.  For the most resent forum thread on this
> subject see
>
>
> http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9680&sid=99395f48984aa9968144cd170c7ee011
>
> for a lengthly discussion of this (there was a little friction in this
> thread
> between two of the posters - please ignore this as most of the thread is on
> topic).
>
> If the web site is going to go through a major change then how the download
> stuff works should be carefully designed to try to reduce or eliminate
> these
> issues.
>
> I think the following would be useful:
>
> 1. Screen shots of the outside and interior are a good idea but are not a
> requirement IMO.  But it looks like the private pages could hand

Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Gene Buckle]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010, Torsten Dreyer wrote:

>
> From time to time, I notices some abuse by inserted spam into our wiki pages. 
> Great care must be taken, our home page is locked for the "everybody" group.
>
If you're using the Wikimedia engine, you can install a plug-in that will 
require accounts to be validated before posting access can be granted. 
Part of the sign-up process requires the user enter a biographical 
description that can require a specific number of words before they can 
submit the request.  This would go a long way towards discouraging 
spammers and would give the admin something to help decide whether or not 
to enable the account.

g.



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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Martin Spott]

Hi Gijs,

Gijs de Rooy wrote:

> Question is: are there really (that many) features that we cannot
> install easily on a wiki/CMS?

The most prominent item that comes into my mind is what is probably
well-decribed as "dynamic content" (choose a better term, if you like).
Being the technical maintainer of another Wiki instance, the item which
I'd consider to be most-needed is the ability just to drop some P*
script programming language code into the page and let this program
code render whatever fits my needs.

Just as one among other obvious examples: Most of us certainly know,
that editing tables in *Wiki is a "major PITA" (TM). I'd like to drop
some P* code into the page which is capable of operating on top of a
database handle and does the formatting of the DB query result
(obviously accompagnied by some caching mechanism).

Or, as a FG-related example, think of the aircraft download page:
Wouldn't it be nice just to let some programming code hook onto
whichever repository you like and have the download page generated on
the fly (caching applies here as well).

In general, with a 'sophisticated' website I'd like to have the ability
to drop some scripting code into whichever place on a website I like to
do whatever I like. According to my knowledge this is not going to work
with *Wiki. I _guess_ it's possible with systems of the Drupal-league,
certainly with Django and comparable (or bigger) systems.
The latter ones, on the other hand, require more programming to get
even the core setup running    ;-)


Nevertheless I agree with the forementioned opinion that the biggest
obstacle on the way to a "better" (TM) website might not be a technical
one.

Best regards,
Martin.
-- 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Gijs de Rooy]

Hey!

> Torsten wrote:
>
> From time to time, I notices some abuse by inserted spam into our wiki pages. 
> Great care must be taken, our 
> home page is locked for the "everybody" group.

Of course. Additionally I will look for some more anti-spam measures that we 
could install at the wiki.

> The layout/design is editable and with some knowledge, the skin may be 
> replaced (you did this before, did you?)

There are quite some skins available on the web (also GNU GPL ones), that we 
can choose from. Just like I did with 
the forum, it is possible to addapt an pre-existing skin slightly (or less 
slightly) and add our own logo/images to the
header for example.

Then, of course it is also important that the content looks nice. The main page 
as it is know exists of some very simple
(colored) tables. We could easily replace the tablecolors with some rounder 
bars for example. That will be similar to the
difference between the English and Dutch Wikipedia.
 

> Heiko wrote:
>
> The only thing I fear is: that it will be another useless discussion, without 
> any resultat

If we don't start the discussion we won't have any result at all. And given the 
fact that we were able to go through quite
some "updates" the past year(s) (move to Gitorious, moving wiki and forum over 
to a new server, slightly updated forum
layout and a different structure), I am hopefull. :)

> Scott wrote:
>
> I'd like to throw in WordPress as perhaps a better website content system 
> than Wiki.

It is good to look at alternatives. However, I don't really see the advantage 
of WordPress over the wiki. In the end, only 
a couple of pages will be "static". Most of the content at our current website 
is documentation(-related) anyway...
I might be wrong, so I'm open to other's opinions ;)

> Martin wrote:
> 
>> Gijs wrote:
> 
> > - Less open system: for example, it will be harder to implement
> > additional features (gallery's, search engines) etc. However, the
> > alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much opener...
> 
> I'm uncertain about how to read this final conclusion.

I agree that I didn't explain it very well. What I meant is that with an 
ordinary HTML website, you have quick,
full control over everything. Adding certain things is usually just a matter of 
uploading some files and adding 
some code. With CMS/Wiki, this involves installing addons. There are no addons 
for everything; and additionally
certain thing can easily interfer with eachother. Therefore, it might be hard 
to add those features easily...
Question is: are there really (that many) features that we cannot install 
easily on a wiki/CMS?

I have requested the wiki admin to install a couple of addons. When that's 
done, I will set some example pages
up, so we can see how it looks and feels.

Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts so far!

Cheers,
Gijs 
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Martin Spott]

Gijs de Rooy wrote:

> - Less open system: for example, it will be harder to implement
> additional features (gallery's, search engines) etc. However, the
> alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much opener...

I'm uncertain about how to read this final conclusion.

Cheers,
Martin.
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Scott Hamilton]

Yes I think there has been quite some discussion on a move to a more
dynamic, with delegated administration style of website.
I'd like to throw in WordPress as perhaps a better website content
system than Wiki.  

Several open source projects have in the past used Wiki as a basis for a
web content system, to be honest it was confusing navigating between
pages.
Ofcourse modifying the layout maybe able to assist here, and I'm sure it
can be done with Wiki, but this is something WordPress does for free. 
To modify wiki layouts is going to take quite some effort I'd imagine,
we may find the layout we want is available from some WordPress
community site.
Since WordPress is primarily a blogging tool, and secondary a content
management tool, it already allows you to create pages, and change the
layout of those pages fairly easily.

I'm no WordPress expert, but I have seen folks do many different things
with it, for example it's quite popular with virtual airline websites.
There is also large community of layout designers and plug-in developers
that we can draw on, and as it is also PHP based, so it could run on the
same webserver as the wiki (depending on capacity naturally) if that was
important.

Some different examples from the http://wordpress.org/  showcase list;

  http://www.slashgear.com/

  http://www.leedscitycollege.ac.uk/

  http://www.santiago.usm.cl/

  http://unblog.fr/

  http://www.h-mag.com/

And as I just got caught myself, there are two sides to WordPress;
  The hosted blogging site http://wordpress.com/ 
  The community self-hosting site for "WordPress" the software
http://wordpress.org/ 

Either way, yes a more dynamic and easily delegated administered site is
a good thing.

S.


On Sun, 2010-10-10 at 12:06 +0200, Gijs de Rooy wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> last week, James dropped the idea of moving our website (partly) over
> to the wiki. So far I have "discussed"
> this with a couple of people, all of which have different opinions.
> Therefore, I would like to ask anyone that 
> cares about our website to reply.
> 
> I think we all agree that our current website cannot continue like it
> does right now. We've had multiple discussions
> in the past, even leading to some test website (like the ones by
> Pete), but none of them led to something.
> 
> I have listed a couple of pro's and con's (IMO, and based on a small
> IRC duscission) below. This list is dynamic, 
> as pro's can become con's and vice versa.
> 
> + Easy to update: wiki articles can be edited by all people, in stead
> of just a single man (Curt :P). As we have
> seen in the past (and even till today), our website is often out of
> date. A "good" example of this is the CVS/Git
> page, which hasn't been updated since May (!), and still does not
> contain any useful info if I want to use Git.
>  Of course we don't want some of our important pages (main page,
> download etc.) to be edited by just anyone
> with a wiki account. Luckily, we can add usergroups at the wiki and
> assign permissions to them. Thus, important
> pages can be locked (on the edit part) for the ordinary users. We've
> been doing this with all Newsletters, which
> can be edited only by wiki-admins after their publicication. We could
> create various groups, and people can be
> within multiple groups at once.
> + Easy to link to detailed documentation: rather than providing an
> external link, we can add internal links to
> each word (okay, that's a little too much). If a text mentions
> $FG_ROOT, we can make that "word" link to the wiki-
> article about it. This will decrease the amount of "useless" questions
> at the forum (which are replied by a link to
> the wiki), which is meant for special, personalised help and
> discussions.
> + Download page: since the wiki already contains quite some
> information per aircraft, it could be used to auto-
> generate a more detailed aircraft download page. Each aircraft on that
> page can link to the aircraft's "private" page
> (if existing) and thus provide manuals, status info etc. immediately
> to the user, even before downloading the aircraft.
> As we've had quite some complaints from people that are disappointed
> after dowloading. The wiki can provde various
> screenshots per aircraft (eg. interior, exterior), so users can
> see-what-they-get.
> + Publicity of the wiki: new FG users will be immediately aware of the
> existence of a wiki, and therefore be 
> stimulated to start developing themselves. This will again decrease
> the "useless" questions at the forum.
> 
> - Less attractive layout: currently the FlightGear wiki doesn't really
> look like a website. This could be solved 
> though by creating/adding a different style/layout.
> - Less open system: for example, it will be harder to implement
> additional features (gallery's, search engines) 
> etc. However, the alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much
> opener...
> - Not much examples: of a complete wiki website about projects like
> ours. This c

Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Heiko Schulz]

Hi,
I like this idea as well!
A good and fantastic simulation project as FlightGear needs a better 
represantion on the web if we want to be as successfull as we are now. 
The only thing I fear is: that it will be another useless discussion, without 
any resultat
CheersHeiko
still in work: http://www.hoerbird.net/galerie.html

But already done: http://www.hoerbird.net/reisen.html

--- Gijs de Rooy  schrieb am So, 10.10.2010:

Von: Gijs de Rooy 
Betreff: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki
An: "FlightGear Development list" 
Datum: Sonntag, 10. Oktober, 2010 12:06 Uhr





 
Hi,

last week, James dropped the idea of moving our website (partly) over to the 
wiki. So far I have "discussed"
this with a couple of people, all of which have different opinions. Therefore, 
I would like to ask anyone that 
cares about our website to reply.

I think we all agree that our current website cannot continue like it does 
right now. We've had multiple discussions
in the past, even leading to some test website (like the ones by Pete), but 
none of them led to something.

I have listed a couple of pro's and con's (IMO, and based on a small IRC 
duscission) below. This list is dynamic, 
as pro's can become con's and vice versa.

+ Easy to update: wiki articles can be edited by all people, in stead of just a 
single man (Curt :P). As we have
seen in the past (and even till today), our website is often out of date. A 
"good" example of this is the CVS/Git
page, which hasn't been updated since May (!), and still does not contain any 
useful info if I want to use Git.
 Of course we don't want some of our important pages (main page, download 
etc.) to be edited by just anyone
with a wiki account. Luckily, we can add usergroups at the wiki and assign 
permissions to them. Thus, important
pages can be locked (on the edit part) for the ordinary users. We've been doing 
this with all Newsletters, which
can be edited only by wiki-admins after their publicication. We could create 
various groups, and people can be
within multiple groups at once.
+ Easy to link to detailed documentation: rather than providing an external 
link, we can add internal links to
each word (okay, that's a little too much). If a text mentions $FG_ROOT, we can 
make that "word" link to the wiki-
article about it. This will decrease the amount of "useless" questions at the 
forum (which are replied by a link to
the wiki), which is meant for special, personalised help and discussions.
+ Download page: since the wiki already contains quite some information per 
aircraft, it could be used to auto-
generate a more detailed aircraft download page. Each aircraft on that page can 
link to the aircraft's "private" page
(if existing) and thus provide manuals, status info etc. immediately to the 
user, even before downloading the aircraft.
As we've had quite some complaints from people that are disappointed after 
dowloading. The wiki can provde various
screenshots per aircraft (eg. interior, exterior), so users can 
see-what-they-get.
+ Publicity of the wiki: new FG users will be immediately aware of the 
existence of a wiki, and therefore be 
stimulated to start developing themselves. This will again decrease the 
"useless" questions at the forum.

- Less attractive layout: currently the FlightGear wiki doesn't really look 
like a website. This could be solved 
though by creating/adding a different style/layout.
- Less open system: for example, it will be harder to implement additional 
features (gallery's, search engines) 
etc. However, the alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much opener...

- Not much examples: of a complete wiki website about projects like ours. This 
could be a pro as well, as it will
allow us to be "renewed" and "different".

 

Jester (IIRC) mentioned that it is important to check whether pages are cached 
at the wiki, so they won't have
to be pulled from the database each time. If so, we should enable cache. A 
possible other solution is to have a
"static" frontpage, which could be nice in various ways, other than the cache...

I look forward to receiving your ideas/opinions/questions! When the list grow, 
we might benefit from setting up a
wiki article to collect ideas/opinions.



Cheers,
Gijs  

-Integrierter Anhang folgt-

--
Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports
standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1,  ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3.
Spend less time writing and  rewriting code and more time creating great
experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb
-Integrierter Anhang folgt-

___
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Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel


--
B

Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Torsten Dreyer]

 Am 10.10.10 12:06, schrieb Gijs de Rooy:

Hi,

last week, James dropped the idea of moving our website 
 (partly) over to the wiki 
. So far I have "discussed"
this with a couple of people, all of which have different opinions. 
Therefore, I would like to ask anyone that

cares about our website to reply.
This get's my vote! Just make sure, the underlying infrastructure (php, 
database etc.) is able to handle the load. Take good care of separating 
static and dynamic content.


From time to time, I notices some abuse by inserted spam into our wiki 
pages. Great care must be taken, our home page is locked for the 
"everybody" group.


Some thoughts about your mentioned cons:
- The layout/design is editable and with some knowledge, the skin may be 
replaced (you did this before, did you?)

- I can't see any system that is more open than a wiki
- Example: http://www.opensuse.org/ looks very much like a wiki based 
homepage!


Go for it!

Torsten
--
Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports
standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1,  ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3.
Spend less time writing and  rewriting code and more time creating great
experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today.
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Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel

Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

[Vivian Meazza]

Gijs,

 

This sounds like a worthwhile proposal. Why not set up the wiki page etc. so
that we can compare and come up with an informed decision, rather than some
pre-formed opinions. (4 FG Developers -> 5 opinions. One will change their
mind :-))

 

Vivian

 

-Original Message-
From: Gijs de Rooy [mailto:gijsr...@hotmail.com] 
Sent: 10 October 2010 11:07
To: FlightGear Development list
Subject: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear website on wiki

 

Hi,

last week, James dropped the idea of moving our 
website (partly) over to the wiki  . So far I
have "discussed"
this with a couple of people, all of which have different opinions.
Therefore, I would like to ask anyone that 
cares about our website to reply.

I think we all agree that our current website cannot continue like it does
right now. We've had multiple discussions
in the past, even leading to some test website (like the ones by Pete), but
none of them led to something.

I have listed a couple of pro's and con's (IMO, and based on a small IRC
duscission) below. This list is dynamic, 
as pro's can become con's and vice versa.

+ Easy to update: wiki articles can be edited by all people, in stead of
just a single man (Curt :P). As we have
seen in the past (and even till today), our website is often out of date. A
"good" example of this is the CVS/Git  
page, which hasn't been updated since May (!), and still does not contain
any useful info if I want to use Git.
 Of course we don't want some of our important pages (main page,
download etc.) to be edited by just anyone
with a wiki account. Luckily, we can add usergroups at the wiki and assign
permissions to them. Thus, important
pages can be locked (on the edit part) for the ordinary users. We've been
doing this with all Newsletters, which
can be edited only by wiki-admins after their publicication. We could create
various groups, and people can be
within multiple groups at once.
+ Easy to link to detailed documentation: rather than providing an external
link, we can add internal links to
each word (okay, that's a little too much). If a text mentions $FG_ROOT, we
can make that "word" link to the wiki-
 
article about it. This will decrease the amount of "useless" questions at
the forum (which are replied by a link to
the wiki), which is meant for special, personalised help and discussions.
+ Download page: since the wiki already contains quite some information per
aircraft, it could be used to auto-
generate a more detailed aircraft download page. Each aircraft on that page
can link to the aircraft's "private" page
(if existing) and thus provide manuals, status info etc. immediately to the
user, even before downloading the aircraft.
As we've had quite some complaints from people that are disappointed after
dowloading. The wiki can provde various
screenshots per aircraft (eg. interior, exterior), so users can
see-what-they-get.
+ Publicity of the wiki: new FG users will be immediately aware of the
existence of a wiki, and therefore be 
stimulated to start developing themselves. This will again decrease the
"useless" questions at the forum.

- Less attractive layout: currently the FlightGear wiki doesn't really look
like a website. This could be solved 
though by creating/adding a different style/layout.
- Less open system: for example, it will be harder to implement additional
features (gallery's, search engines) 
etc. However, the alternative is a CMS system, which isn't much opener...
- Not much examples: of a complete wiki website about projects like ours.
This could be a pro as well, as it will
allow us to be "renewed" and "different".
 
Jester (IIRC) mentioned that it is important to check whether pages are
cached at the wiki, so they won't have
to be pulled from the database each time. If so, we should enable cache. A
possible other solution is to have a
"static" frontpage, which could be nice in various ways, other than the
cache...

I look forward to receiving your ideas/opinions/questions! When the list
grow, we might benefit from setting up a
wiki article to collect ideas/opinions.

Cheers,
Gijs

--
Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports
standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1,  ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3.
Spend less time writing and  rewriting code and more time creating great
experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb___
Flightgear-devel mailing list
Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel