[Seattle-editorial] changing our codebase

[jonathan lawson]

This is great news.  (thanks Micah!)

As some remember, the editorial collective long ago approved a whole series 
of modifications to the code and later, once several new codebases were 
available, decided that the best idea would be to simply change over. At 
the time (spring 2002) there was an editorial consensus around SF-Active, 
and several global tech folk had expressed interest in helping us makde the 
switch, though nothing came of that at the time.

Now there are several choices which we had a chance to review a few months 
ago--I think Stephanie and Brandon F. set up several dud front pages in 
SF-Active, Mir, DadaImc etc.

I think that SF-Active is best suited for us. It has a broad install base, 
is graphically similar to Active, and other sites (including our closest 
neighbor Vancouver) have successfully made the conversion already. The 
search and upload functions are far superior, and it offers neat additional 
features such as topical feature pages... there are more reasons I think 
SF-Active is a better choice than Dada (the second best choice, I think), 
which we could discuss at a meeting convened for the purpose.

The main problem for conversion I think will be the story archive--there is 
no easy way to track down all the internal cross-links and 
images/soundfiles whose address has changed over the years--our archives 
are pretty important and need to remain accessible.

Re. new design schemes: I think we should definitely move to a 
white-background model; SF-Active is based on style sheets and allows users 
to choose alternate color schemes. There are probably by now several sets 
of meeting notes containing good thoughts about changes to the site design. 
We should make some effort to compile those before moving forward anew.

BTW, Here are rough drafts for a proposed new banner style based on 
Hiroshige watercolors:
http://deepmedia.org/imc/imc-new-sidebar.gif
http://www.deepmedia.org/imc/newseattlebanner-rough1.gif

Jonathan

At 07:13 PM 8/9/2003 -0700, anarch3m wrote:
>This means us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!We should vote what code to 
>adopt.  We should do so pronto, before we hold the process up.
>
>Media people, look at various sites and send some input about features 
>that we as media makers want.
>
>We can take up the graphics redesign which stalled 18 months ago.
>
>walt
>***************************************************
>Date:   Fri, 8 Aug 2003 15:01:28 -0400
>From:   Micah Anderson <micah at indymedia.org> [add to address book] 
>[protect or block sender]
>Subject:   [IMC-Tech] draft letter to active sites on stallman
>To:   imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org
>
>
>We've been mulling this over informally in person at times, and at the
>most recent meeting we decided to write a letter to all the IMCs on
>stallman that are running active, urging them to switch to a different
>code base, and offering them help to do so. We only want to contact
>about 5 sites at a time, so that we don't get swamped and so that we
>can do things in a managed way, streamlining processes as we go along.
>Anyways, here is a draft letter, any changes?
>
>Dear $IMC contact,
>
>IMC-tech is contacting you because you have a site on the shared
>server called stallman that is running very old IMC code, called
>"Active". We are writing to you because we would like you to consider
>switching to a more modern codebase.
>
>The reasons why we would like you to switch are the following:
>
>         . we cannot support Active code, nobody knows how to, and nobody
>           wants to
>
>         . the active code is not supported or being developed any more
>
>     . we consider active to be a waste of resources (human, database,
>           disk)
>
>         . the currently hosted sites on stallman all are various different
>           revisions of the Active code, unknown versions, half upgraded, etc.
>           which makes dealing with these sites a major pain
>
>     . most people think the other more modern code options are more
>           visually appealing from the outset
>
>         . the more modern code options make administrative and technical 
> tasks
>           far more easier and obvious: customizing the look and feel, dealing
>           with newswire spam, etc.
>
>         . the newer code has many more delightful features, such as 
> categories,
>           templating, multilingual support, calendaring, searching,
>           syndication, most importat, they are being currently worked on
>           and supported!
>
>There are many other options to consider as alternatives to active,
>please have a look at the following page to see the various options
>
>available: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/WebHome, also you can
>see people's opinions and experiences with the different code bases
>
>here: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/OpinonsExperiences.
>
>Your site is hosted on stallman, and if you choose to remain there,
>the code bases that you should consider are Mir, SF-active, or Dada,
>these are the only ones that we have talked about supporting. We will
>work with you to transfer your existing content to the new code, and
>help you get everything up to how it was before without causing you
>any significant down-time in the process. If you are interested in
>moving off of stallman, there are some other options available that
>can host sf-active, mir or dada.
>
>Please consider the options, discuss it with your local tech people
>and your IMC and get back to us as soon as possible. Rest assured, we
>*will* move all IMCs hosted on stallman off of old Active, so if
>nobody from your IMC ever responds, at some point we will make a
>choice for you. We cannot continue to have active sites on this
>machine and continue to provide a service to people.
>
>Thanks!
>IMC-tech
>
>
>
>
>
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