On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 07:37:54PM +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:
> "Branko Collin" <collin@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > Erm, I would be willing to help some with the web site. It would
> > seem a waste not to do what I am best at. Who should I turn to for
> > this?
>
> webmasters@xxxxxxxx
>
> Several people expressed their interest in doing a new gimp.org
> website so far. All we asked from them was to write a proposal of
> what they would like to do and present us a working mockup later.
> Everyone lost interest then, I wonder why...
I volunteered to do it last summer but I kinda dropped it on the
floor... like most people who volunteered to do it. It's not that I
lost interest -- I just got busy with other things (and people :) ).
Ooops, I got a personal life.
However, I *did* get a bunch of work done on the site that I'm working
on this weekend (mainly because those other people were away :) ).
I have placeholder pages for most of the site at:
http://wilber.gimp.org:8192/
At the moment I am working on copying the existing content over to the
new site.
Of course the design can change - it's a placeholder too. The shape of
the pages is a little inflexible but it's very simple to change the
colours/appearance of the whole site.
I'm really sorry that I haven't been more communicative about this.
I'm just not good at that.
> I'd suggest you use this mailing list to discuss the future of
> www.gimp.org so we can all contribute. I'd also suggest you don't
> try to tackle it all by your own but try to find a group of people
> willing to do the work.
This is a very good point. It really should be a group effort - I know
that I would have got a lot more done if I had other people
pushing/helping.
There are a few reasons that this hasn't happened, though. All of the
people that I have talked to about doing the site have different
opinions on what language/architecture/design should be used to do it,
making it very difficult to cooperate on the project. It seems to me
that there is nobody driving this as a _project_. I am most certainly
not a project manager. I am an ok content writer and web designer and
(IMHO) a fairly capable information system architect.
My site template system is pretty simple for content writers and
designers to work with, and the code is pretty clean and fast, and it
is running on wilber already. Another interesting point is that the
titles are generated using the GIMP and cached as static files. So
there's an interesting use of the GIMP involved. You can read a bit
more at:
http://wilber.gimp.org:8192/about/site.html
Those of you with accounts on wilber are more than welcome to look
at everything in:
/gimp00/web-newgimp
I will also be doing a presentation on this system in Manchester soon:
http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2001/prog/abstract-TRathborne-2.shtml
I don't really care if it's my mod_perl system or PHP4 or some other
random thing that ends up being the new GIMP site, but I do agree that
it should be done.
Unfortunately I do not know if there is anyone out there who can speak
authoritatively on all this. If someone steps up and says "we're
using this system, you work on the code, you work on the content", I'm
sure it will be done very soon. We need someone to take charge -- and
that's not me.
I am going to be working on the site as much as I can over the next
little while -- there is a bunch of code that needs to be written and
fixed, and of course lots of content to be rewritten and links to be
fixed.
I would be happy to put my full effort behind the architecture if a
leader appears to keep the project organized - otherwise I'm just
going to keep stumbling along as I am just not good at including
others in my work without a manager above me.
Branko, you feel like being the project manager for the website?
Cheers,
Tom
--
Tom Rathborne tomr@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.aceldama.com/~tomr/ |
I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my | H
complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the | A
greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, and I want to help you. | L
