Re: [PHP-DEV] Annotated Manual From: Colin Viebrock (colin <email protected>)
Date: 11/26/00

[Sun, 26 Nov 2000] Simon Roberts said:

> I agree, (plus get-user-notes could be abused by site users) but didn't want
> to add a few hundred files to CVS without the blessing of whoever really
> maintains the site. Plus, it needs the cron job, but that could be triggered
> remotely for now.

Before too many people do too much work on this, I think it might be wise
to look at the website in general and the mirroring policy in particular
for PHP.NET.

It's been at least 2 years, I think, since designing the current version
of the site, and (while I really like some aspects of it) there are things
that could use some improvements. For example:

 - Load Time/Design: the current site is quite graphic-intensive. Not
only does the site take quite a while to download for people on
dial up, but it's probably quite the bandwidth hog for the popular mirror
sites. Plus, I don't feel like keeping up on the latest DHTML
implementations from Microsoft and Netscape, so I think (cool though they
are), the pop-ups and mouseOvers should probably go.

- Mirrors: I'm not completely sure, but I think a good number of our
mirror sites are either off-line, out-of-date, or not rsyncing enough.
Also, contact info for the mirror site admins is probably out of date.
Also, I think it would be "nice" if all mirror sites followed the
standard naming convention of <country_code>.php.net, with www.php.net
simply being a portal site to redirect people to their closest mirror.

- Manuals: as you've just stated, the annotated manual should be available
on all mirror sites. Ditto for the search function(s).

- Updateability: it's a pain in the ass to manually edit HTML to add
news items, new links, projects, or sites. This should be databased, then
generated into the PHP files that get rsynced.

- Advertising: love it or hate it, the possibility exists for PHP to make
some money off of it's popularity.

There are probably other issues that need to be addressed. I've done a
bit of quick work coming up with a new, leaner-cleaner looking framework
for the site, which you can see at http://newsite.php.net. Only a mock up
of the main page is there now (so don't bother clicking on the links).

I don't have as much spare time to commit to a redesign (and I mean
the programming) as I'd like, so I would like to propose forming a small
sub-list of people who are willing to work on fixing up the site. I know
Rasmus has some preliminary work on a management interface for
letting users and staff add and maintain sites/projects/links/news
items. I think Zak has done some work on this too. And I know the
documentation people are always hard at work on translations and such.

I guess I'd like to suss out how receptive people are to some of these
ideas, and who's able to do what to make it happen. So I welcome your
comments.

- Colin 

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