Re: Let's get GNOME-Journal published

[Paul Cutler <pcutler foresightlinux org>]

After going back through the mailing list archives and an impromptu
meeting in #gnome-journal on Gimpnet IRC (Come join us, we won't
bite!), I believe we have the content to publish a new edition of GJ!
I think we have 2 major to-dos around content and infrastructure.

Current Content:

* GNOME Asia Summit Recap
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-journal-list/2008-November/msg00000.html)
- Need an editor to volunteer

* Interview with Stormy Peters by Jayson Rowe
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-journal-list/2008-December/msg00002.html)
- Need an editor to volunteer

* Gconf Configuration Editor
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-journal-list/2007-December/msg00016.html)
This one is slightly older, and needs to be checked for accuracy and
edited.  Volunteer?

* Sri is also working on an application review

Infrastructure:

It appears that our test instance of GJ running on Wordpress is on our
server at http://test.gnomejournal.org.  I believe there was some talk
about moving it to the GNOME infrastructure, and that has not happened
yet.  One earlier email late last year was sent to Jeff Waugh by
Jayson Rowe, but Jayson never heard back from him.  Does anyone have a
suggestion on who we can contact or the process to make this happen?

According to Lucas in an email last August, the work that needs to be
done to finish porting GJ from our current CMS to Wordpress:
(http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-journal-list/2008-August/msg00018.html)

* Polish the CSS - there are still some small problems
* Find a Wordpress plugin or template for the archives which makes the
new page look like the current one (Archives on Wordpress:
http://test.gnomejournal.org/archives/ / Current Archives:
http://www.gnomejournal.org/archives/ )
* Make the article URLs backwards compatible. We could just manually
add redirects for all current article URLs to the new ones. For
example: http://gnomejournal.org/article/60/an-interview-with-daniel-g-siegel
would redirect to something like
http://www.gnomejournal.org/blog/2007/03/an-interview-with-daniel-g-siegel
in WP.
* Migrate the images to the new system.  Might be as easy as making
sure the images are in the same directory in Wordpress.
* After everything is ready, import all GJ data from TXP CMS to
Wordpress through RSS.  Lucas did that for testing purposes last year,
and it seemed to work fine with some minor tweaking to the RSS before
importing.


With all that said, next steps are:

* Edit current articles (Need volunteers)
* Find a contact in GNOME to help with next steps in getting GJ on the
GNOME servers / Wordpress platform (blogs.gnome.org?)
* Find volunteers to help with finalizing moving to Wordpress,
including CSS experience and WP plugin experience

In talking in IRC today, and in the spirit of moving forward
aggressively, I would like to suggest a brief meeting in IRC this
week, either Wed or Thursday, at 10 p.m. EST / 2:00 a.m. GMT.  I
understand that might be a bit early for those in Western Europe, but
I'm not where everyone is, and I understand that similar times have
worked in the past.

A rough agenda would be to discuss the content and infrastructure next
steps recapped above, a potential publication date, and future
planning.

Please let me know what day would work better.  I will volunteer to
keep notes and publish a recap after the meeting for those who can't
be there.

We need your help - we need editors, CSS hackers, and Wordpress
hackers for this next edition.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

Paul


On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Jim Hodapp <james hodapp gmail com> wrote:
> Paul,
>
>    Thanks for taking the initiative to write this email. I agree completely
> with everything that you wrote, including the time frame (we might be able
> to make the time frame even a bit more aggressive). Of course I can write an
> article and will do the editing of any articles, afterall, editing is my
> main role in GJ. GJ has been suffering from a lack of momentum, and I
> believe if we can just get enough energy to get moving and put a quality
> release out there, GJ will be back and have enough momentum to attract some
> new volunteers and become better than ever!
>
> As far as infrastructure goes, I believe that the Wordpress version was
> basically ready minus a few things. I forget who the person was who was
> making that migration for us. We should get it up and onto a staging
> subdirectory on the official GNOME server to test it out, get familiar with
> using it for our release process, etc. Paul, would you like to spearhead
> this effort or would you rather like to be in charge of getting certain
> people to write a few articles? That's usually the part that falls flat. I
> think we would do well to have a weekly IRC meeting, or even every other
> week to keep people coordinated. All of us used to be very active in
> #gnome-journal on IRC and that was a great way of keeping momentum going.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>
> On Mar 30, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Paul Cutler wrote:
>
>> Over the last year, there has been some discussion about getting a new
>> edition of GNOME Journal out, including mailing list threads in Feb
>> 2008 and Aug 2008.  There has not been a release of GNOME Journal
>> since December 2007.
>>
>> I think there are three things that need to be done:
>>
>> 1. Agree on timing
>> 2. Find Content
>> 3. Infrastructure
>>
>> Timing:  I'd like to be aggressive and push a release no later than
>> the end of June.  That gives us April to find content, May to have the
>> writers write it, and June to proof and publish it.
>>
>> Content:  We have an interview that Jayson Rowe conducted with Stormy.
>> That's one!  I'd like to get two more.  Anyone out there have an itch
>> to write an article or have a stub that they'd like help with?  I've
>> recently been blogging my experiences on getting involved in writing
>> GNOME Documentation, and I may be able to turn that into an article of
>> some kind. (Though I'd rather see an article on using Shaun McCance's
>> Pulse for docs, but that's probably a ways off). What about an article
>> on Friends of GNOME?  Covering the launch, GNOME on social networks,
>> benefits (it's like an infomercial!)
>>
>> I would love to hear other ideas or help any volunteers out there.  (I
>> have lots of ideas brainstormed about other idea articles, maybe I
>> should start a separate thread).
>>
>> Infrastructure:  I don't remember the details, but Lucas reminded me
>> in IRC this morning that there had been some talk previously about
>> migrating to GNOME-Journal to the Wordpress-MU installation GNOME
>> Blogs uses.  Does anyone have an update on this?  Was this talked
>> about with any members of the GNOME infrastructure team?  What
>> Wordpress plugins did we need?
>>
>> I would like to suggest that if we can't successfully migrate GJ in
>> the next 6 to 8 weeks, we go ahead publish a new edition on the
>> existing platform, unless there is a reason not to that I am not aware
>> of.
>>
>> In summary, it's been over a year since we published GNOME-Journal,
>> and it's time to get some articles out there.  I'll be posting to the
>> mailing list to follow up fairly frequently, and want to help get this
>> done.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Paul
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gnome-journal-list mailing list
>> Gnome-journal-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-journal-list
>
>