Re: [exim-dev] New web site...

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Author: Nigel Metheringham
Date:  
To: exim-dev
Subject: Re: [exim-dev] New web site...
On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 01:44 -0500, Sam Michaels wrote:
> I disagree. A site like php.net or mysql.com with user comments is
> more appropriate and less prone to vandalism. I sent a suggestion and
> made an offer to Nigel about 2 years ago but never heard back :(


OK, if I managed to mislay or overlook an offer you have my sincere
apologies (this should be partially overcome by moving to a BTS - my
exim mailbox gets tons of junk and I can overlook the occaisional gem.

> Another big issue I see are the mirrors. They're all over the place
> as it is...and now you have to deal with getting them the database.


Someone has been working on this. We have a good mirror monitoring
setup (which includes documenting them) on his site. We will be moving
it to the exim.org machines this week or so.

How we handle the web site primarily depends on the mirrors.  If we have
a requirement for web site mirrors then that limits what we can do with
the site.  Specifically if we are going to mirror the site then the site
is limited to:-
      * Pure (X)HTML/CSS
      * No server side scripting (PHP or otherwise)
      * No database or similar


Our mirroring is done by rsync and cannot assume anything other than
basic web server functionality.

There is a question of whether we need the mirrors.  Personally I think
that mirroring the documentation is useful, but the basic website
probably does not need to be mirrored.  However in practical terms what
I think might be easier to attain would be a 3 section website:-
      * Front page (ie www.exim.org/index.html) - static (but maybe
        regenerated from dynamic state daily), mirrored.  The front page
        actually could be different on mirrors and the master site - on
        the mirrors it would be a jump off point.
      * Documentation - static, mirrored
      * Main site.


I could be convinced to go the wiki route for everything, or a CMS, as
long as the documentation can be mirrored.

Spam protection for wikis is not too bad now - as long as you have
proper rollback and some anti-spam features. The one on the exim site
has a (mainly) URL based blacklist that is mirrored from the main Moin
site. That works pretty well - its had a couple of defacements, but in
each case those normally last a very short time.

    Nigel.
-- 
[ Nigel Metheringham           Nigel.Metheringham@??? ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]