Fw: [PHP-DEV] Annotated Manual From: Jon Tai (jon <email protected>)
Date: 11/26/00

The ideas on php-dev sound great so far, and the layout Colin put together
looks awesome too.

Is work on the new site restricted to a select core group? I don't know
much about C, but I've used PHP for a few years and I'd like to help out.

- Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Zak Greant" <zak <email protected>>
To: "Colin Viebrock" <colin <email protected>>; <php-mirrors <email protected>>;
<php-dev <email protected>>
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Annotated Manual

I agree that it is time for a rework of the site. I think that the current
design has served very well - I remember how stunned I was when it first
came out. At the time, I even wrote Colin this little starry-eyed note
about it :)

However, as the project has grown and the site has needed to do more and
more, it has gotten be a pain to maintain. I have worked up a rough
content editor for the news, links, sites and projects sections of the
site - it is very much based on what Rasmus had worked up earlier on. The
code can be found at cvs.php.net/qaweb/site_rough/editor.php. However, I
feel that it is too rudimentary to really be used in production. Also,
there is a rough build tracker at http://qa.php.net/build_tracker and a
rough idea that I had for a site design at http://php.nucleus.com/~zak...

Sterling and I have been trying to get started on a redesign of the bug
tracking system (and a few of the support systems needed to make a very
good application). However, I schedules have not really meshed lately. He
just finished his book project and I am right in the middle of one that
eating my brain. I am hoping to spend a good deal of time on it in a month
or so...

I think that one of the important things to do for a rework of the site is
to have a unified user management system (authentication, sessions, signup
forms, user administration forms, permission system) that controls how user
access the various resources and utilities on the site.

I am quite sorry that I really won't have time to help with this for a
while - I have really been looking forward to being able to work on the
site...

 --zak

----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Viebrock" <colin <email protected>>
To: <php-mirrors <email protected>>; <php-dev <email protected>>
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Annotated Manual

> [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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