[Seattle-editorial] Re: [Seasc] changing our codebase

Sun Aug 10 14:01:54 PDT 2003

hi everyone,

here's something from evan who as some of you know is one of the key people in global tech, works tireless on global features, is helping with making computers to the south be a reality on an ongoing basis, and probably knows more about the various codebases than most people in the network.  i asked him what he thought about our best choice for changing our codebase.  here's what he had to say:

Regarding code, i think sfactive is in a bad way right now. I would not 
recommend folks use it unless they've got their own servers and 
techies. The site hosting most of hte latin american imc's has been 
down at least %50 for the last week. The support from the SF geeks has 
been terrible. People are very pissed off.

If you have your own techies and server then i think you are fine. The 
documentation that blicero has written up for sfactive is very good.

I think Mir is the best code base, it's most stable, and flexible. You 
can change the interface, setup templates for subsections and the like.

The way i see things goes like this:
Dada is the least technical solution. It has some nice features, but is 
butt ugly and even barcelona's stellar designers end up with a dada 
site which looks pretty similar to every other dada site. Which would 
be fine if it weren't ugly and clunky. Apparently spud gives good tech 
support to non-techies (he doesn't play well with techies and is 
anti-free software on principle). Dada is free, but it's my 
understanding that some critical libraries (parts) which spud also 
wrote are not free. Dada has some features other code bases don't which 
are nice and i think it's generally the most accessible if you are 
non-techie and are fine with english only. It's international support 
is sold as great, but it's really actually kinda half assed.

SF active is the middle, a mix between the non-technical and ugly dada 
and the powerful and stable mir. The servers that linefeed (sf tech 
collective) provides for other sites are ok but over the last month 
they have been very poorly maintained. Part of the problem is some 
fundamentally bad decisions in terms of the code and design of the 
system. SFActive's biggest selling point is that it looks nice. If you 
don't have good designers, and seattle clearly hasn't done amazing 
things with it's webdesign, then sfactive gives you an attractive 
indymedia site. Both Dada and Mir have integrated systems for moving 
articles from the open publishing to the center column but sfactive 
keeps them separate so you have to copy and paste html.

Mir is the most powerful and stable of the indymedia code bases. If an 
imc asks me what code base to use i recommend Mir. It's development 
has, in my opinion the brightest future. It is written by people who 
know how to program and who have experience maintaining professional 
commercial websites which need to be stable and function. Because of 
this, mir supports things which the sfactive and dada folks find weird, 
such as strong abstraction between code, the database, and the 
templates. This lets sites like portland use mir, but still support the 
exact look they want as created by their designers who do not know how 
to program. It also supports generation of html which means in high 
load situations the site does not crash. It also means that mir can be 
mirrored much more easily than the other code bases. Mir's admin 
interface is more complicated than sfactive or dada, but it's also 
translated in to spanish, arabic, german, dutch, portuguese, and 
chinese. (meaning folks can write in two bit character sets and right 
to left or top to bottom. not important for seattle, but important for 
the indyemdia network)

Portland setup their servers by creating a network of hosts at dsl  
connections around the city. This kind of setup is impossible with the 
other code bases and allows them to meet traffic demands with out 
spending money on or finding donations of bandwidth. Sites which are 
using Mir near Seattle: Portland, Rouge (southern oregon), and San 
Diego.

Perhaps the biggest point of favor for Mir is that there are php 
scripts so that none of the links break. All the old articles get 
converted and are still accessible in their old active urls in the new 
Mir site. I don't know if sfactive supports this today, but when 
argentina did their conversion they lost all links (meaning folks 
couldn't find the articles) and beyond that many where actually 
deleted. With Uruguay we have had problems of sometimes days or weeks 
of articles disappear from the site. Sometimes we get them back, 
sometimes we don't.

i hope that answers some questions,
evan

>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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