Xubuntu Website Software (was: Re: UDS Karmic Goals)

Cody A.W. Somerville cody-somerville at ubuntu.com
Wed May 27 21:41:50 UTC 2009


On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:02 PM, Pasi Lallinaho <open at knome.fi> wrote:

> Hello again xubuntu-devels (CC: newZ :),
>
> My comments are inline. I hope it isn't *too* complicated to read
> the thread already.
>
> 2009/5/27 Matthew Nuzum <matthew.nuzum at canonical.com>
>
>> Wordpress is a great blogging platform. There are few tools as easy to
>> use for publishing blog or news related information. If your content
>> largely falls into this format it's an excellent choice. You can use
>> wordpress to create standard web pages (i.e. not blog pages) but once
>> you start getting too much away from a blog-like site you quickly
>> outgrow WP.
>
>
> I see your point here, but being watched the Xubuntu website in the last,
> what, 9 months, I definitely feel that it's not going to overgrow WP with
> this amount of activity.
>

You have a valid point here but I think our website can do more. For
example, its always been my intention to investigate the possibility of
reusing the drupal module that I suspect powers the download section on the
Ubuntu website. Furthermore, I'm also interested in using the launchpad
integration modules created for Drupal.

Matthew: Do you know if it would be possible for us to use the download
stuff from Ubuntu's website? Open sourcing it would not necessarily be a
requirement.


>
>> Drupal is not as much a CMS as it is a web development framework with
>> a simplistic CMS application built in. If you want to describe and
>> publish all kinds of information or build simple dynamic content
>> applications Drupal is an excellent option. Another thing it excels at
>> is themeing. It has a very simple to use themeing system and doesn't
>> in the least sacrifice flexibility. It is unfortunately much more
>> challenging to configure and use.
>
>
> I have to say that my personal opinion somewhat differs here. I've also
> developed on Drupal (and WP), and I must say that the theming system of WP
> is way more logical in my hands than Drupals. I see that Drupal (theming)
> doesn't sacrifice flexibility at all, but the question to be asked is that
> do we really need that much *complexity*?
>

The toughest part is creating the actual styling and html which is why I
have tons of respect for folks like you and Matthew. As for converting that
into a "theme" for Drupal or WP, that can easily be done with folks who have
the necessary experience working with the targetted software.


>
>>
>> As you know, I've banked on Drupal for ubuntu.com. I've spent several
>> years now creating a base environment and core set of modules so that
>> I can do what I want to with minimal fuss. This lets me deploy
>> blog-like sites, including the ability to aggregate content from
>> multiple sources, or advanced multi-user content rich websites with
>> complex manager-sign-off workflows. Drupal has plenty of warts but if
>> you want flexibility it is hard to beat. To illustrate this further,
>> I'll soon be migrating the Ubuntu Jobs page from a custom django app I
>> built to Drupal using the views and cck modules. I'll be able to do
>> this without writing any code at all (except for theme code). I didn't
>> think I'd ever be bragging about building web apps by simply pointing
>> and clicking but here I am. :-)
>
>
> Yes, the point where you are now is built over several years. Even if I
> think that's wonderful for you, I don't think that is something *we* should
> try to achieve by all means. Xubuntu barely needs the basic elements of
> Drupal (and not even all of that) so we definitely don't need complex
> modules/plugins.
>

I think what Matthew was trying to point out here is Drupal has some very
powerful modules that can be pieced together to provide flexible
solutions/functionality without needing to touch any code.


> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 2:43 AM, Pasi Lallinaho <open at knome.fi> wrote:
>
>> >>
>> >> > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Pasi Lallinaho <open at knome.fi>
>> >> > <mailto:open at knome.fi>> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >     Cody A.W. Somerville wrote:
>> >> >     >
>> >> >     >
>> >> >     > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Pasi Lallinaho <open at knome.fi
>> >
>> >> >     <mailto:open at knome.fi> wrote:
>> >> >     >
>>
>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> If we decide to set up a team blog which has no aggregated posts from
>> >> the authors own blogs, we are growing our workload quite a lot. We have
>> >> been very lazy in updating our website, the wiki etc. etc., but most of
>> >> us have written our personal blogs quite conscientious. Gathering a
>> >> Xubuntu Planet would in this light make some sense. The content would
>> be
>> >> quite easily updated, even if the post quality and appropriateness
>> would
>> >> not be as great as it would be with blog with no aggregated posts.
>> >
>> > I don't buy this. A team blog would be a communication vehicle to share
>> news
>> > and stories about Xubuntu in a professional yet informal matter. Content
>> > would be planned and intentional, be peer reviewed before publication,
>> and
>> > have a clear objective/purpose. Aggregating personal personal blog
>> content
>> > would be counter-intuitive to achieving that.
>>
>
> What ever the goal was, we are in the situation that *we need a blog*.
> That's what WP is good at.
>

I don't disagree.


>
>> >
>> >> >
>> >> > With regards to our current site are the RSS Feeds for Xubuntu.org
>> >> > broken?  Is Drupal limited in how well it can configure RSS feeds, or
>> >> > are we just not using it right?  Pasi, it sounds like you are
>> >> > suggesting that we move Xubuntu.org to Worpress MU, correct?
>> >> If you are in any other page than home page, the RSS link in the left
>> is
>> >> not working. It seems like a bug in the HTML creating code, not sure if
>> >> it is my fault.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, I suggest and stand for WPMU.
>> >
>> > This is a bug in the website, yes. I imagine that it does not matter
>> what
>> > software we use, we will run into these. I also imagine that this bug is
>> > entirely resolvable.
>>
>
> I imagine it is just some minutes of hacking with Drupal and the bug is
> fixed by me.
>
> The problem is that it is really hard to test the commits made to the
> website branch as we don't even have a testing server and pushing to
> production needs your absence. And even if you were available, the code
> might still be flawed (this has happened many times - I admit that I'm a
> terrible coder!) and we need to work on the BZR ring again - together. That
> eats your time quite a lot and I don't think it's worth it in many cases.
> However, this is a completely different problem and we might have to think
> for solutions to it.
>

Unfortunately, deploying updates to the website's codebase will always
require my participation for the time being.

As for testing your changes, I'm happy to assist you in setting up a local
development server.


>  >
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> > All things being equal, I would like to stay with Drupal to stay
>> >> > consistent with the other Ubuntu flavors, if possible.  If an upgrade
>> >> > to Drupal, or adding in additional modules, would give us more
>> >> > features (or fix existing features), I think we should look at that
>> >> > before considering moving everything over to Wordpress.
>> >> I don't know how much consistency really matters in this situation.
>> >> There is no place where the sites should be working together or
>> >> exchanging content. And Xubuntu is a community-driven project after
>> all.
>> >
>> > Jim didn't mention exchanging content. What he did mention though are
>> > excellent points and very much do matter. The fact that Xubuntu is a
>> > community-driver project makes them even more so.
>>
>
> Unfortunately I don't see the very excellent points (could you repeat
> them?). I'm not saying that updates to Drupal or adding modules to Drupal
> wouldn't give us more features and fixing the existing. Every software has
> to be updated to be in shape. And as we are talking about Drupal and WP,
> they both have modules/extensions, which can give more features.
>

We're talking about modules, bug fixes, knowledge sharing, etc. with other
members in the Ubuntu community. For example, the launchpad modules.


> Also as we are in the situation where only you can do the updates, fixing
> important bugs will take more time than with a personal site of an active
> developer, for example, or a community site, where the admin really *has*
> the time to work on things all the time. This would of course be the case
> with WP also, but my picture is that Drupal has had more security related
> bugs than WP (also because it has so much bigger codebase) and I've partly
> lost my faith in Drupal not having those bad found-yet-another-security-bug
> weeks. This is my personal opinion, though.
>

IS is gracious enough to ensure that security patches get applied.


>
>> >
>> > I appreciate that you're more familiar with wordpress than drupal but I
>> > don't think thats strong enough motivation to migrate our website to
>> that
>> > software.
>>
>
> I think it is, as I'm the one doing the core maintenance. We might also
> need to ask the opinion of Vincent as he's the web team leader, but if I
> understood correctly, he's more responsible for the content.
>
> The motivation to migrate to WP is locked inside me. It wants to be free!
> ;)
>

The fact that you want to migrate to WP and that you're doing the work for
the website has tremendous weight. Please don't feel otherwise.

Cheers,

-- 
Cody A.W. Somerville
Software Systems Release Engineer
Foundations Team
Custom Engineering Solutions Group
Canonical OEM Services
Phone: +1-781-850-2087
Cell: +1-506-471-8402
Email: cody.somerville at canonical.com
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