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

Wed Mar 23 09:26:07 CST 2005

Thanks for the feedback Francesco (outside feedback is _much_ 
appreciated).  I'm going to have Steven draft up a 3-column theme -- 
should help with the business and with the info-architecture (since it's 
what folks are used to).

--Sascha

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Francesco Zanella wrote:

> 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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>>
>
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-- 
Sascha Meinrath
President                 *   Project Coordinator   *   Policy Analyst
Acorn Worker Collective  ***  CU Wireless Network  ***  Free Press
www.acorncollective.com   *   www.cuwireless.net    *   www.freepress.net