[Zope] Improved Zope Org Proposal

Andrew Sawyers andrew at sawdog.com
Fri Jun 23 18:15:23 EDT 2006


Sorry for the cross-post; lets but wanted to make sure those on the
zope-web list saw this.  Lets keep this on the zope list going forward.

For sometime, we have tried to coordinate various numbers of people in
the community to get an improved Zope.org up and functional.  Some of
this improvement was through the 'visual' look and feel of the site and
the other was by cleaning up what has been often thought as
unmaintainable code as well as reducing the content scope of Zope.org.
During this time, it was largely agreed that the zope.org site would
highlight ZOPE the technology, Documentation, the products found in the
Zope Code Repository, and highlight the community, to offload features
which people had previously relied on zope.org for in the past.  The
current zope.org site would remain available for some time while a
(tedious) and manual migration of content deemed beneficial would be
placed on the new site.  To the best of my knowledge, this is still
agreed on by all those who over the months participated in countless
#zope-web irc chats and discussions on the mailing lists.

It then came to technology.  Some cared some didn't.  I personally
didn't if the result was something which the community could be proud of
and not make excuses for as they directed people to the site.  This
caused some stalling of the momentum.  We had many ideas, some text
which is in svn at codespeak, and artisitic work being done.  Geoff
Davis contacted me with a proposal which would get this move started and
has offered resources to accomplish this to finally happen.  They
currently have taken the artistic work done by Tom Von Lahndorff and put
it online at http://new.zope.nl for preview.  I'd like to forward
Geoff's proposal to the list, now that the Zope Foundation is setup to
act on this generous offer by members of the community.  I'd like to see
this get blessed so we can move forward and finally get a site which has
a focused scope and is something the community can be proud of.  I have
done some minor editorial changes to reflect discussions back and forth
since the initial offering.

A group of people in the (Plone) community have volunteered
their time and resources to put together an improved,
**interim** zope.org site.  We understand that work is
underway on a longer-term zope.org solution -- the current
initiative is not intended to replace this longer-term work;
rather, the goal is to improve upon the existing zope.org
site until something better is put together.  

I am appending a sketch of the vision and would like very much 
to hear your feedback.

Geoff



Maintenance and Administration
------------------------------
A number of people have expressed concerns about the 
maintenance of zope.org going forward.  We share those
concerns!  A central goal in setting this site up is to 
make maintenance as painless as possible.  Toward that end, 
we envision doing the following:

* The zope.org site will be set up with the same software that runs
plone.org.  The sites will have different skins, of course, and will 
  be configured a bit differently, but the underlying software will be
the same.  

* The products on the site will all be off-the-shelf 
  products that have an active community of developers.  
  The current likely candidates: PlonePAS + LDAP for 
  site management authentication, PloneHelpCenter for documentation, and
  PloneSoftwareCenter for software distribution.  For bug
  tracking, either links to the existing ZC trackers or
  a Trac installation.

* plone.org and zope.org software updates will be done at the
  same time and by the same people.  The more similar the 
  code/products are, the simpler it will be to update them in
  parallel.  

  The Plone community will manage upgrades of the off-the-
  shelf code.  However, if people decide to customize the
  code on the zope.org site, those people will then be 
  responsible for ensuring its continued functionality 
  during upgrades.  This should be discouraged without valid
requirements someone is willing to 'pay' for, either with $ or labor.

* zope.org will have a paid sysadmin.  Bas van der Linden of 
  Amaze has volunteered the services of Wichert Akkerman,
  the very talented sysadmin who currently administers
  plone.org.

* zope.org will be hosted outside of ZC's servers.  I believe
  Bas has lined up a suitable box similar to the one that
  runs plone.org (dual P4-class processors, lots of memory).

Content
-------

* Volunteers from the Zope community will be responsible for the 
  site's content.  The current mock-up uses a skin designed
  by Tom Von Lahndorff.  I imagine that the initial text and
  information architecture will come from the svn repository 
  of content that Andrew Sawyers and others have been working on.
  See http://new.zope.nl for an initial a mock-up.  The existing
  concept of membership for uploading bit-rot content will be retired.

* Existing community content on zope.org will NOT be migrated.
  The content will be made available on ZC's existing server
  via URL rewriting (to keep existing links from breaking) or
  by moving everything to an old.zope.org domain.  The best
  content will be migrated by hand to PloneHelpCenter / 
  PloneSoftwareCenter products.

* The zope.org site should acknowledge contributors in a overt fashion.
"Zope Rock Stars" who have risen up above the call of duty,
contributors, etc should be noted.  The Foundation can determine how to
implement this, but those paying for and providing services should
receive acknowledgment.

Please discuss this and present your views for the Foundation.  Now that
they have a board they can decide how to proceed.  I would like to thank
all the hard work of those who have tried to see this through.

Thanks,

Andrew Sawyers




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