[sword-devel] CrossWire lacks a Content Management System

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Sure I agree our website needs updating, but a CMS doesn't magically
update and bring accord to our website.

We have had a long and notorious history of complaint about our website.
 Someone goes off and reorganizes it the way they think it should be
(about once every 5 years or so) and then we still get complaints.

How our website does it's job to easily direct any number of our
disparate visitors (end users, module makers, API programmers, frontend
programmers, publisher-- all with various purposes on various platforms)
to their appropriate destination is a highly complex task with very
opinionated approaches (check the logs).

A CMS will not solve this problem for us.

Project maintainers have access to update their webpages.  Whether they
do or not is a different matter and one that a CMS will not fix.

Having said this, it's been at least a couple years since the last
frustrated volunteer took a shot at reorganizing our website.

Remember, crosswire.org is meant to be a basic outward facing front to
what we do.  If people want to dig in, then they'll need to get to our
wiki or api documentation, sword-devel, etc.

Troy



On 11/08/2010 10:07 AM, Chris Burrell wrote:
> All,
> 
> My first impression, albeit a few years ago, was the same thing. I found
> it particularly hard to find my way around things. By chance I managed
> to stumble across the Jira instance, but then lost it again when I was
> wanting to see how much activity was happening. So whether a CMS or some
> other solution is the best answer, I don't know. What would be good though 
> 
> Just one example, try and find the page for JSword from  the home page.
> I have just tried and haven't really been that successful. Also, the
> "Developers"
> page http://crosswire.org/sword/develop/index.jsp encourages you to
> click on a link, which takes you nowhere (i.e. to the same page). As a
> result, you start wondering where the information is, or whether the
> link is a broken link.
> 
> I'm not sure we want to ditch the whole lot, as there are a lot of good
> things there, but it might make sense to revist the nagivation a bit and
> maybe introduce a site map?
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> On 8 November 2010 09:17, Caleb Maclennan <caleb at alerque.com
> <mailto:caleb at alerque.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Troy and Chris et all,
> 
>     I cannot speak for what David felt as the exact problem, but I can
>     tell you why I jumped in with a comment. Troy it's hard to come up
>     with a specific example because the problem might be best described as
>     general discombobulation. The main crosswire site and the sword sub
>     site are both navigational catastrophes. This happens over time as
>     people come and go and projects eb and flow. I know how it is. The top
>     level layout has lost focus and usefulness to newcomers and content
>     has stagnated.
> 
>     Chris you mention the issue of balancing devel news / nightly snapshot
>     type updates and releases that the public aught to be informed about.
>     I realize this is an issue, but it was pointed out just last week on
>     this list that the information for diatake on the site is some ten
>     years old and there is no indication that it has actually been
>     maintained to this day. Surely that's erring on the side of not enough
>     up to date information.
> 
>     Also it was pointed on on another thread that there is a crosswire
>     wiki. Even new module developers seem to miss that this exists. I
>     looked and didn't see any reference to it on the crosswire home page.
>     Furthermore a quick glace at each area shows massive duplication of
>     content between the main site and the wiki, usually with the scales
>     tipping to the wiki for being up to date. A little more poking shows
>     even further duplication and even older content on the sword specific
>     sub-site.
> 
>     Troy you mention the word involved in "committing to the maintenance
>     of another framework". From the outside it looks like there are
>     already at least a trio if not half a dozen frameworks that don't
>     interact and are in various states of disrepair. I chimmed in on this
>     thread because it sounded like David was suggesting getting all of the
>     above under one heading so there is only one framework that actually
>     CAN be reasonably maintained.
> 
>     Further thoughts?
> 
>     Caleb
> 
>     On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 14:49, Troy A. Griffitts
>     <scribe at crosswire.org <mailto:scribe at crosswire.org>> wrote:
>     > I agree with Chris on this issue.  CMS has been a debated topic in
>     the past.
>     >
>     > From my conservative position, you must give a specific, real world
>     > problem we currently have which is not easily solved with our current
>     > infrastructure, or a real world benefit we are currently lacking
>     because
>     > we do not have something labeled a "CMS", for us to even consider
>     > committing to the maintenance of another framework.
>     >
>     > Troy
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On 11/06/2010 12:22 PM, Chris Little wrote:
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> On 11/6/2010 3:49 AM, David Haslam wrote:
>     >>> We have an ftpmirror that does not keep track of updates to
>     scripts and
>     >>> other software tools that we host.
>     >>
>     >> What you're referring to here (linking directly to the SVN
>     versions of
>     >> perl scripts that we maintain) would be akin to replacing every
>     single
>     >> binary we provide with nightly builds. We don't need to be
>     publishing an
>     >> SVN commit that I made just over 12 hours ago when it hasn't even
>     >> undergone testing beyond one or two USFM docs. The perl scripts
>     change
>     >> seldom and slowly, and they are used and tested by very few people.
>     >>
>     >> --Chris
>     >>
>     >> _______________________________________________
>     >> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>     <mailto:sword-devel at crosswire.org>
>     >> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>     >> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>     >
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>     <mailto:sword-devel at crosswire.org>
>     > http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>     > Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>     >
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>     <mailto:sword-devel at crosswire.org>
>     http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>     Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page