[WebR] Which existing web software can we use?

Hellfire · Post by **Hellfire** » 02 May 2005 09:03

[WebR]: This thread is a research thread for the website team. Everyone are allowed to comment as long as you stay on topic and motivate you're arguments.

Question: Which existing web software can we use?

Answers: Please stay on topic and motivate your arguments.

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I noticed a lot of discussion about which information our website should show, how it should be displayed, which browsers, which standards, etc.

The main question here is: "Which wheels are you going to reinvent?"

For things like dynamic news, image galleries, forums and content pages, a huge amount of free and commercial solutions have been developed, so why not use them, instead of investing a lot of time into developing software that already exists.

Instead, why not spend all this energy into combining some of those solutions into one consistent looking site that has all the features we need?

So, to get back at the original question: which existing solutions can we use for our website?

(@ Zuu: I hope I'm not offending you by opening a topic concerning your team. I was just wondering this and didn't want to "pollute" some other topic)

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 02 May 2005 11:45

Hellfire + Everyone else: I think that was okay that you opent that topic, as you formated it correct, and this way we we don't go off topic on another thread.

As long as we don't get a situation when everyone opens new topics in fast speed, and we forget to finnish the opened topics it is OK. This is the reason why I haven't created all the topics that are listed on the website tread.

If anyone wants to add a new topic, but don't know if its time to creat it, and or don't know how to format it, post in the website thread about it.

Back on topic:
I think this is a good suggestion, that I haven't thoght about. Are there any drawbacks with using existing software?

Some questions, that might help:
What do we need?
What exist?

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 02 May 2005 12:05

Let me suggest some things we could need and allow the others to reply to it by agreeing or disagreeing on it.

- Forum (for devs only or perhaps for visitors too)
- Guestbook (for visitors)
- General database application

Everyone is free to add to this list too of course.

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 02 May 2005 12:12

What do you mean with "General database application"?

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » 02 May 2005 14:39

Hyronymus wrote:- Forum (for devs only or perhaps for visitors too)

As someone wisely said elsewhere, this is not something that will be necessary in the short term - tt-forums can handle the minimal traffic we'll get in the meantime.

Hyronymus wrote:- Guestbook (for visitors)

What's the point? A forum can serve this purpose wonderfully.

Hyronymus wrote:- General database application

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I do know we will need a news system and an image gallery, which will most likely rely on a database of some sort (is this what you meant?).

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 02 May 2005 15:15

Yes, too but I also thought that we might need a database system to upload minutes etc.

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 02 May 2005 16:36

For news, we can use SF.Nets exelent news system, maybe with a static page that is generated with a cron job every second hour or so, to minimize the wait times.

For minutes, i think we can use the document tool on SF.net, or just upload the files with scp to a specific folder. Remember in both cases the uploader will nead to be a developer at SF.net, but that shouldn't be a problem.

The later will probably be esier to backup, while people that don't know how to use scp/pscp.exe might nead a wikipage that describes how to upload the minutes. In both cases we neead a covention for how to name the files.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 02 May 2005 17:35

If we use SF (which I think is best too) we do get a very shattered website with links to SF and this forums.

Grunt · Post by **Grunt** » 02 May 2005 20:14

zuu wrote:For news, we can use SF.Nets exelent news system...

Can we access news entries made from there on other sites in a readily available fashion? We should not have to link offsite for news entries; they should be viewable in whatever design it is we will end up using.

Edit:

Hyronymus wrote:If we use SF (which I think is best too) we do get a very shattered website with links to SF and this forums.

A shattered website is probably not the best thing - we should at least be able to view news and images in one homogenous environment.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 02 May 2005 21:16

Therein lies the beauty of RSS

PJayTycy · Post by **PJayTycy** » 03 May 2005 19:36

If you want a website which is easy to update, and not much work to create, we should use a CMS (=Content Management System)

http://www.opensourcecms.com/ has a list of almost all such systems (portals , forums, blogs, ...)

They usually require php and a database, which we have on SF.net, but I have never used one myself, so I don't really know how good/usefull they are.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 03 May 2005 20:56

Due to the nature of the project, we have lots of people that won't be coding the actual game, so i'm sure there will be people that can make the website. Therefore, i don't think we need to use a CMS. They are for people without tha ability to make a website themselves.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 03 May 2005 23:13

Steve wrote:Due to the nature of the project, we have lots of people that won't be coding the actual game, so i'm sure there will be people that can make the website. Therefore, i don't think we need to use a CMS. They are for people without tha ability to make a website themselves.

Really? So, all those dogfooding CMS folks don't have the ability to make a website? Wouldn't they need that ability to make their CMS in the first place? A good CMS can be a major timesaver for keeping online content up-to-date. We could use a ready-made one, we could write our own, or we could not use one at all. I would suggest looking to customise existing options rather than creating more code

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 04 May 2005 10:10

I'm not talking about the people that make the CMSs, the people that generally use them.

From experience, the CMSs i have used have been a bit bloated. You get fetaures you don't want, a structure that doesn't quite work, so you have to make it work and maybe something you really don't like and don't know how to change.

I'm simply saying, rather than trying to modify an exisiting CMS to suit our exact needs, it may be the case that we could write our own system easier. And there is a good probability that the second would turn out better.

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[WebR] Which existing web software can we use?

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