[Imc-tech] Dada upgrade

[Clint Popetz]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 10:09:48PM -0500, Clint Popetz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> If no one has any objections, I'll implement the previously-discussed (*) 
> plan to upgrade ucimc.org to the newest dada code tomorrow evening.

Ok, it's done.  I didn't end up having to do the database piecemeal,
because I found a workaround to mysql's braindead index-updating
algorithm.(*)

So, 

  www.ucimc.org is /var/www/ucimc with database ucimc, version .98.1
  old.ucimc.org is /var/www/old-ucimc with database ucimc-dada, version .94

I have made no modifications to the site code, and I discourage it
immensely, given my experience updating the site this time.  The
newest code has a pretty sophisticated stylesheet structure, and if
you can't do what you want with that, then you need to do diffs and
submit them to dada's maintainer, IMHO.

Things to note:

(1) You no longer have a separate admin/editor/user logon; it's
unified, with different permission levels representing the different
logons.

(2) When logged on as someone with editor privileges, each article has
an "edit this article" link while you are viewing it on the site.
That's handier than finding it in the /editor/articles list.

(3) When you are logged on as an editor, you will see hidden articles
in the newswire as if they weren't hidden.  So don't freak (like I
did) and think the hiding mechanism is broken.  You can always logoff
to see what the site looks like to other people.

(4) You can clone/upload/modify stylesheets to your hearts content.
The default will be "default.css" for users that haven't created a
logon and chosen a different default stylesheet.  To make a stylesheet
available for editors to play with but not for users to see, "delete"
it from the list, but don't purge it from the database.  That's a
kludge, but it works.  I think proposed changes to "default.css"
should live in a separate stylesheet that people on this list can look
and give feedback on, and only after an email consensus is reached
would that stylesheet become default.css.  That's only a proposal
though.

(5) The caching structure no longer exists.  It was broken anyway, so
that's a good thing.

(6) You can create features directly as an editor, instead of creating
an article and promoting it.  You can also create features without
bodies (a la active, i.e. no "Read more..." link.)

I'll write more as I think of it, and as I run into things.

				-Clint



(*) The trick was to delete the non-primary indices on the articles
table before letting the various update.php scripts do their UPDATE
statements, and then recreate them afterwards.  Otherwise MYSQL
updates EACH INDEX after EACH ROW.  Ugh.  And there is no way (in our
version of mysql) to turn this off, AFAICT.  It's so bad that even
"delete from X where Y" will be O(N^2).