Site Integration
Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 5:24 pm
One of the primary conditions about this site has been low maintenance because this is a personal project for all of us, done in our spare time when we're not making living. Low maintenance has meant using stock software for easy and timely updates to maintain currency and security. As it happens, some security issues have meant abandoning host upgrade scripts for manual upgrades because of some minimal customization, but it hasn't been a big deal.
The price of doing things this way is the appearance of a disjointed or patchwork website. Only the home page has links to all the resources available here on OpenURU.org. And because of the frustrating issues with rampant spam, those links point to the forums instead of the resources directly to keep spammer web crawlers away. The forums then have real links out to the resources, but they are in the form of link forums - not exactly the best solution, but it works. I've held function over form; we're using well-supported, useful, easily maintained, and popular open source software for all our resources except JIRA, our issue tracker, because I've found nothing fundamentally better available in open source on LAMP servers. The Mantis tracker, which is open source, also remains installed and was our first choice in its class, but its quality remains disappointing.
I would also like to take the next logical step in supporting open source projects such as a'moaca's Wireshark Plugin and rarified's Continuous Integration tools (Foundry).
I am therefore setting this goal for the new year:
1. Drop-down menu header that floats above all resource mastheads (phpBB, MediaWiki, Wordpess, etc)
2. CMS, whether home-grown or fully-fledged open source CMS, to support projects which want a subdomain on OpenURU.org.
3. Integrated repository.
As am example, look at jFusion's site (http://www.jfusion.org/). The repo (Develop/Repository) itself doesn't integrate the drop-down menu, but the site and its navigation is very well integrated.
I am fully aware that the drop-down menu header will involve customizing the code on each resource and that it will introduce more effort during upgrades. But I believe it can be done right so that only very minimal changes are necessary to hook and use the menus. I still do not want to theme any of the resources around each other. That's way too much work. I think using each resource's familiar or default look is fine. I only want the persistent menu. The reward is a website that is easily navigated and more attractive to newcomers.
All help appreciated. Good luck to us.
The price of doing things this way is the appearance of a disjointed or patchwork website. Only the home page has links to all the resources available here on OpenURU.org. And because of the frustrating issues with rampant spam, those links point to the forums instead of the resources directly to keep spammer web crawlers away. The forums then have real links out to the resources, but they are in the form of link forums - not exactly the best solution, but it works. I've held function over form; we're using well-supported, useful, easily maintained, and popular open source software for all our resources except JIRA, our issue tracker, because I've found nothing fundamentally better available in open source on LAMP servers. The Mantis tracker, which is open source, also remains installed and was our first choice in its class, but its quality remains disappointing.
I would also like to take the next logical step in supporting open source projects such as a'moaca's Wireshark Plugin and rarified's Continuous Integration tools (Foundry).
I am therefore setting this goal for the new year:
1. Drop-down menu header that floats above all resource mastheads (phpBB, MediaWiki, Wordpess, etc)
2. CMS, whether home-grown or fully-fledged open source CMS, to support projects which want a subdomain on OpenURU.org.
3. Integrated repository.
As am example, look at jFusion's site (http://www.jfusion.org/). The repo (Develop/Repository) itself doesn't integrate the drop-down menu, but the site and its navigation is very well integrated.
I am fully aware that the drop-down menu header will involve customizing the code on each resource and that it will introduce more effort during upgrades. But I believe it can be done right so that only very minimal changes are necessary to hook and use the menus. I still do not want to theme any of the resources around each other. That's way too much work. I think using each resource's familiar or default look is fine. I only want the persistent menu. The reward is a website that is easily navigated and more attractive to newcomers.
All help appreciated. Good luck to us.