[CUWiN-Dev] Tentative drum roll... New CUWiN site mock-up now online:

Wed Mar 23 09:15:10 CST 2005

The only thing I would like to add as I have worked a bit with drupal in
the past.

This is my own personal opinion and as being a new subscriber/member
willing to put in my two cents.

In regards to layout it is quite good but slightly unbalanced, if you note
on most information rich sites, they have both a left and a right column
with the content scrolling down the middle.

I fell that this is a more balanced approached as you do not have to pack
all the extra features you want only the right side bit can give the site
a balanced look with out giving it a heavy feeling.

Drupal does give you the option to place all the ________(blank, cannot
remeber what drupal calls them right now) to either hanging them on the
left or right side or even not using them at all.

So to make a long story longer ----  TEXT ----

Regards,

> Hi all,
>
> I've been working with Steven on a new website for the CUWiN project.
> The latest mockup (this is about the 4th iteration and the first we felt
> was complete enough to get everyone's feedback on).  Please post any
> feedback to the forum topic http://cuwin.stevesgallery.com/forum/4
> specifically for this purpose.  Keep in mind that this is a ful content
> management system -- so there are different roles which allow access to
> different features.
>
> Steve has also (thoughtfully) documented the process for porting
> information from Webeasel to Drupal.  He's also preserved much of the look
> and feel of the old website ("to minimize shellshock") but is also willing
> to develop an entirely new theme if we wish.
>
> --Sascha
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 01:09:08 -0500
> From: Steven Mansour <steven.mansour at gmail.com>
> To: Sascha Meinrath <sascha at ucimc.org>
> Subject: Tentative drum roll...
>
> Howdy!
>
> http://cuwin.stevesgallery.com/
>
> I think you could pass it around a bit now. I've made some changes based
> on what I think I would like to have for my community wireless website.
>
> Here are some preliminary things you should note:
>
> 1 - There are 4 user roles:
>
> - Anonymous users can view all the content, but can't post anything
> - Authenticated users (people who have registered) can post and reply
> to forum topics, and comment on news and nodes.
> - Developers can do that, plus create glossary items ("dictionary" for
> technical terms), create and maintain pages and user manuals, access
> site statistics, moderate the forums, and upload files.
> - Editors can do all that, create news / blog entry items, administer
> news feeds, moderate comments and nodes, maintain and post events.
> - "Benevolent dictators" [which should be restricted to you and me for
> now] wield supreme power, which they can use for either good or evil.
> In other words, don't break anything.
>
> 2 - I've created a few categories for each node type: forum categories,
> news categories, etc. You'll want to customize these later under "admin ->
> categories". By the way, "news" = "blog". Only blog entries, and events
> get promoted to the front page, and that's why only editors can create
> them.
>
> 3 - Ideally, one developer should be a "mini-moderator" for each forum
> category. That basically means that he/she should go into their account
> settings, subscribe/notify to a category, so that as soon as a user posts
> a forum topic, they're alerted and can reply promptly to the user, and, as
> the case may be, file a bug report. This really isn't much work for them
> and should be considered a tool to ease external users reporting bugs.
> It'll make their job easier in the long run.
>
> 4 - After long deliberation between both sides of my brain, I've decided
> against using the project module for your software. You do already use CVS
> / (subversion) for development, and it's not realistic to ask your devs to
> deal with a propietary bug reporting system that they'll probably have to
> replace eventually. Instead, the forums will do a better job of isolating
> and squashing bugs reported by users.
>
> 5 - The event module is great to plan meetings and such, and I integrated
> it with the calendar to give a nice little view:
>
> http://cuwin.stevesgallery.com/event/2005/04/01
>
> 6 - There is still some content missing. I'll eventually try to copy all
> of it over, but in case I miss anything, here's the general procedure you
> (editor or benevolent dictator) should follow to port it over:
>
> - Look at the page name on the old site (oldpage.html), then view the
> source on that webeasel page.
> - Look at where the content text body begins (usually a weird,
> super-long line of text with a capital "<P>"), and ends ("</P>").
> - Create a page on the new site, titled "newpagename", and paste the
> source you copied from the old site.
> - Preview it, make sure the text formatting is alright and that all
> tags (<b>, <p>....) are properly closed. If you can't get it to look
> right, you should remove all tags (especially <p> and <div>). This is
> best done with a good text processor, copied and pasted back and
> forth.
>
> 7 - All downloadable files should go into the /files folder.
>
> 8 - I tried to keep the layout and theme close to the old one, for the
> sake of minimizing shell-shock among everyone else. If you give me
> some creative license, I'd like to come up with a new theme and layout
> eventually (maybe after the site goes live).
>
> 9 - Because I'm the one who transfered most of the old content, "steven"
> appears as the author for the news items. I'll change my account name to
> "CUWIN" or "sascha" before we go live and it'll change on all the entries
> as well.
>
> 10 - We'll need to configure a scheduled backup of both the database and
> files, every night if possible. A simple script called via cron is fine, I
> can make one and send you the instructions.
>
> 11 - The sooner you give me feedback on issues, the faster I can resolve
> them. Instead of emailing them to me though, I'd like you to post them as
> forum topics here: http://cuwin.stevesgallery.com/forum/4 . Figure we
> might as well use it a bit to start. :)
>
> Keep me posted.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve
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