Re: www.gnome.org redesign status

["Jens W. Klein" <jens bluedynamics com>]

Am Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:42:40 -0500 schrieb Paul Cutler:

> Hi all, I've been thinking about Murray and Vincent's recent emails
[...] 
> In a perfect world, if we had the people and resources, I would propose
> having a new wgo by the time GNOME 3.0 launches a year from now.  I know
> that goal is not very realistic, especially based on where we've been
> over the last couple of years, but I wanted to throw it out there.
>
>
> Murray said at the beginning of this month in his email update regarding
> the wgo redesign
> (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-web-list/2009-April/
msg00002.html):
> "There are still people working on a Plone site, though there hasn't
> been much activity recently. I don't believe they will succeed, because
> this has failed so often, but nobody should stop them from trying as
> long as we don't have something else."  (Murray also mentions that a
> large part of the work has been done as well).
>
> Vincent later in the email thread added some comments, including "plone
> is not the best choice for GNOME because we have nobody active who will
> be able to take care of it." though he did go on to add he didn't want
> to have a discussion of what CMS we should use without a concrete plan
> to address it.
>
> What's interesting to me about Vincent's comment specifically, is the
> lgo page that discusses the choice of CMS back in 2006
> (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/CmsRequirements):
>
> "The reasons for choosing Plone rely more on people than code, since
> both tools could reach all the requirements with hacking and good will.
> "
>
> I think this statement is even more true today.

There are at least five people (including me) in the Plone Community 
willing to help to get the technical part done. Where we cant help is in 
writing or organizing content and visuals. One person/company would also 
host gnome wgo for free (as i understand while development and if needed 
also later after go-live).
 
> I'd like to propose that we follow up on Vincent's comments and form a
> small team to investigate if any other solutions might be a better fit. 
> It's possible in the last 2 1/2 years the technology and the members in
> the community might have changed enough that we might want to think
> about choosing a new CMS, based on the original requirements at
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/CmsRequirements.  My first instinct would
> be to evaluate Plone, Midgard (as it came in #2 last time ) and Drupal
> (as it seems to have grown greatly in its use over the last couple of
> years, and the major reason it wasn't chosen was i18n which may have
> changed in this time).

I'am sure Plone is still perfect (sure that I'am sure) and its much more 
perfect than it was 2 1/2 years ago. 

But anyway, another evaluation dont make wgo-site go live. It just binds 
resources to the task of evaluation. But otoh it would be interesting for 
us to see how Plone compares again.
 
> If it's possible to put a small working team together to evaluate these
> choices over the next 6-8 weeks and report back to the community, it may
> help to reinforce the current decision, or it may encourage new
> volunteers to come forward to work on a new solution.  I may not have
> the technical skills to evaluate the different solutions, but I would
> like to volunteer to help organize activities around this, including
> finding volunteers (with help from the community), scheduling meetings,
> and sharing progress and status updates with the GNOME community.

> From what I see the major problem is missing interest in building the 
website at gnome project. As I understand it would need a team of people 
to get it done. Plone Community offers technical help here. Teams Gnome 
people dont need to be IT-experts but experts for web-marketing and 
content. Also it needs a little dose of project management. 

> I don't mean to take anything away from everyone who has been working on
> the wgo revamp.  But with GNOME 3.0 a year away, we have a unique
> opportunity to build on the GNOME brand through marketing activities,
> including the website, and I wanted to at least ask the question.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Paul
[...]

best regards 
-- 
Jens W. Klein - Klein & Partner KEG - BlueDynamics Alliance