[Imc-tech] release lock.

[Zachary C.Miller]

Alright, this is not nearly complete but I've done a lot of stuff and
learned a _lot_ about the structure of this software. At some point I
should probably give a tutorial to the software so that I'm not the
only expert. 

Here's what I have done:

I cleaned up the /var/www/imc directory. I deleted all the cruft and I
renamed active-new to active.

http://urbana.indymedia.org
http://champaign.indymedia.org

Both of these now go to our site and our site has proper aliases set
up so that you jump right to the main IMC news page like all the other
IMCs.

I merged in the graphics, colors, and styles from Danielle's
example. The only thing I didn't get fixed up is the right hand side
bar with the newswire summaries. I think we need to upgrade our
newswire software to a newer version in order to get the little icons
next to the links and such. I think Danielle's whole style is based on
a newer version of the software, I just hacked it in for the static
bits but for the dynamic bits we should use the official new
software. I will try to track that down. 

This software and its maintenance is the ideal vision of complete
chaos. But it works.

I also configured my mail server to accept stuff at the new domain
names so the following aliases now work and forward to the appropriate
lists.groogroo.com list:

imc at urbana.indymedia.org
imc-tech at urbana.indymedia.org
imc-news at urbana.indymedia.org
imc at chamapaign.indymedia.org
imc-tech at champaign.indymedia.org
imc-news at champaign.indymedia.org

We need to go through all the files in /var/www/imc/active/local and
customize them for local stuff. 

We need to "upgrade" our software to get some of the things that seem
like new features.

We need to go through all the links on the front page (and all other
pages) and note which ones are broken and figure out how to fix
them. Some may be broken just because we have to create a file, some
may be broken because we are missing some piece of software that is in
the new stuff but not in the stuff we have.

The "subscribe to regular news updates" box signs people up for the
global IMC mailing list, we may want to include a way for them to sign
up for one of our mailing lists.

We need to discuss logistical/organizational/presentational things
about how we are going to present archival material, who is going to
be in charge of maintaining the front page "feature stories" which
need to be updated on an ongoing basis, etc. 

We need to find a way to pull the dynamic cities list from the main
indymedia server.

We need to clean up the security of the site. 

We need to remove the test stories and start uploading our real
stories to the database.

We need to define an editorial policy. There is some discussion on the
tech list right now about how to deal with anonymous hate speech
spam. One proposal is that the editorial board reserves the right to
delete anonymous hate speech but will not delete any post with valid
contact information. The idea being that freedom of speech trumps with
those who can be part of a discussion but that people who duck in and
post anonymous hate speech or anonymous provacation stuff and then
leave are really just vandalizing the site. 

We need to install a real media streaming server and perhaps an
icecast server as well and configure the software to work properly
with it.

Probably more but I really have to get back to work. 

Perhaps we should meet this weekend (saturday or sunday)?

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology
Take it easy...but take it. - http://www.greens.org