Re: GNOME.org update

[Andy Thornton <andy thornton gmail com>]

I think it's a case of evaluating the right tool for the job. Wordpress is an amazing platform, but putting that aside it's very much designed from the ground up as a blog platform. It can work nicely as a simple CMS system, but anything outside of a basic setup requires some extensive modding / coding to achieve the functionality you would need for building an enterprise class website.

I have worked on a number of migration projects where the initial choice of architecture was built around a tool similar to  Wordpress / Typepad / _expression_ Engine / Joomla and found it can only take you so far in achieving what you need from a CMS system. 

For CNN I built a proof of concept site to migrate away from _expression_ engine to Drupal. The site was eminently more scalable and a lot of the "shoe horned" functionality from the blog platform, had native hooks in Drupal which made it easier to add extensive functionality without a heavy development footprint. Drupal was designed for that specific purpose and Wordpress for another.

I think it all comes down to comfort level, I am comfortable to with both platforms, but for a website of the complexity and scale of gnome.org I would recommend Drupal, the multisite features alone would work well with all the different websites that make up the Gnome brand.

Apologies if my email is intruding on the conversation, I am new to the group and love every aspect of the Gnome project.

Cheers Guys

Andy Thornton
mobile: 404.932.7858

www.bohemianpixel.com | @bohemianpixel

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Jonathan Wilde <jonathan speedbreeze com> wrote:

I'm concerned about the lack of information here about this new
WordPress implementation.  I don't know if a demo site will offer
enough information to make an informed decision.  Is there a public
source control repository somewhere where we could review the code?

I also have concerns regarding the long-term flexibility of WordPress
for GNOME.  I've worked with WordPress for years and have been
continually pleased about how WordPress makes it very easy to get a
site up.  However, I've found that it is often rather difficult to
make significant design/architectural changes to large WordPress sites
after-the-fact without essentially re-writing the custom components.
And judging by the stops-and-starts we've had here, a theme rewrite,
regardless of which platform we choose to build on, will be difficult.
 Being a very active and vibrant organization, I think that we can
expect that GNOME will have changing needs over time.

As with anything else, it's important to choose the right tool for the
job.  Would you build server software with Actionscript?  No.  Even
though Actionscript might be an easy-to-learn solution, you'd be
better off in the long-run using Erlang or Scala because they tend to
scale better in concurrent environments.

Similarly, WordPress is an easy solution that is great for smaller
sites with relatively static needs.  But will it be flexible enough
and scale to GNOME's needs in the long run?  I'm not so sure.  On top
of this, data migration is difficult.  It will probably be difficult
to move over to another solution in the future.

As for issues with the existing Plone instance:

Paul Cutler wrote:

> > Our largest blocker has always been localization support and the demo
> > did include basic localization support

I've seen some tweets [1] regarding issues with LinguaPlone, but
haven't been able to find what the specific issues are.  Is there an
IRC transcript that you could direct me to that might contain further
information regarding that?  The current blocking issues might be easy
to mitigate.

> I think we need to be honest with ourselves about the progress the Plone site has (or
> has not) made over the last year or two

I agree.  I'll be more than happy to help get the Plone theming work
completed.

I've had trouble finding an up-to-date task list for what needs to be
completed on the Plone work.  Bugzilla's issues seem to apply to the
old-2008 wgo refresh and not the latest refresh.  If you could direct
me to that, I'll be happy to help you finish the Plone work.

Hope I can help,
Jonathan (aka speedbreeze)

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=linguaplone&hl=en&prmdo=1&tbs=mbl:1&filter=0



On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-08-04 at 21:04 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
>> On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 11:54 +0200, Paul Cutler wrote:
>> >
>> > There has been some discussion about switching away from Plone at
>> > GUADEC
>> > and a demo of the new site running in Wordpress was shown this week.
>> > Our largest blocker has always been localization support and the demo
>> > did include basic localization support.

>>
>> Hang on. This is rather brief. Does it just allow translated text to be
>> entered, or can it show when, and where, translations need to be updated
>> when the original text changes? Does it show how much of the site is
>> translated for a language already? If it can't do this (and if it never
>> will) then I don't see how it can be good enough for the long term.
>>

>
> That's why we'll get a demo site up and compare and review.  Even basic
> localization support that doesn't address your concerns above is better
> than what we have today on gnome.org (which is none) and I think we need
> to be honest with ourselves about the progress the Plone site has (or
> has not) made over the last year or two.
>
> Paul

>
>
>
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