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cross
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Projects to revitalize Grex.
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Jul 20 15:13 UTC 2008 |
I started looking at Grex's web pages the other day.
Wow.
You really get a sense of how neglected the system has become when you
starting look at the web site. There are all sorts of crazy references
to things that had happened in the mid-90's like they were yesterday,
and many things have not been updated in a very, very long time. The
HTML is old and non-conforming to current standards. Content is
scattered all over the place and mixed with presentation in an awkward
way.
A couple of years ago, we had a contest to create a new web site with
updated content and presentation. The prize was a one-year membership.
Exactly one user submitted an entry, and won, but I don't recall
whether we ever added him as a user. We certainly didn't use his final
product. As far as I can tell, he no longer has an account, either.
But I had saved his work, and spent some time yesterday massaging it
into Grex's setup. The result can be seen by pointing your web browser
at http://www.grex.org or http://www.cyberspace.org. About a week or
so ago, I also bought an SSL certificate for Grex from GoDaddy.com, so that
that annoying `This certificate is not valid... blah blah blah' error message
no longer appears when you try to navigate to an https link on Grex. (You all
*do* use SSL when you type your password into backtalk, right?)
I also started making a stab at updating our "Staff Notes" pages to
reflect what Grex is now (our web site still says that Grex is running
on a Sun! This hasn't been true for years now).
However, I am but one person, and I also am, shall we say, "graphic arts
challenged." I need some help. Naturally, I'd try and enlist our
webmasters, but they seem to have disappeared. It looks like we need
new webmasters.
Can you help? Yes, you. No, really, you reading this right now.
I can do a lot of the grunt work of converting old HTML to XHTML,
putting in some style-sheet files and the like, but I need help updating
content and making things look pretty.
This is but one of several projects I think we need to embark upon to
revitalize Grex. Aside from the one broken window of the website, there
are a number of other things we really need to do. Among them:
1. Replace Picospan with something open source. No, really; we need
to do a system upgrade, for instance, and it's going to be
challenging to get an updated Picospan since we don't have source.
If we are going to keep using it, we need to get the source code
from somewhere (I personally doubt anyone would care if we started
passing it around), but I think that's really unlikely to happen.
Thus, we need to replace it: either by fixing up fronttalk and
removing the major remaining bugs, or by writing a new replacement.
2. Consolidate much of the administrative scripts and where
they get their data from, and make sure these reflect reality.
3. Put a new face on the website (already mentioned).
4. A lot of general cleanup of old data that's floating around the
system.
5. Mail. Ugh. Yeah.
6. More work on sandboxing new users.
7. Web server *configuration* changes: I really think we need to move
to a model where we sandbox personal web sites like we do email,
to prevent phishing sites, and we also need to start allowing images
for users.
8. Some administrative tools making it easier to move users between
"classes."
9. Really, we just need people to do the work....
Those are the big ones I can think of right now.
Can you help, or do you know someone who can?
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| 109 responses total. |
lar
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response 1 of 109:
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Jul 20 15:28 UTC 2008 |
Man, the new site is definitely a step up. Even the hardware and
software page has been updated. Kudos to the person responsible for the
design and kudos to you as well, cross.
good job
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cross
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response 2 of 109:
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Jul 20 15:33 UTC 2008 |
Thanks! But no need to thank me; this should have happened long ago.
Some more things we need to do: upgrade OpenBSD. We're about a year or
so out of date, and there will be some issues coming up in early August
that we've got to deal with that would be mitigated (to a large extent)
by a system update.
I'll start looking into it.
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cross
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response 3 of 109:
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Jul 20 15:41 UTC 2008 |
Here's another: Here's an idea for what I think Grex should be:
Grex should be a container for a set of communities. It occurred to me
the other day that, really, there's nothing preventing something like
Grex and something like M-Net running on the exact same machine. Except
the limitations of the software that we have built. That is, there's
exactly one BBS instance, exactly one party instance, etc. However, we
can generalize the software so that we have multiple of both,
effectively leading to multiple communities.
Think about it: we already do something similar. The vast, vast
majority of users who login to grex never use BBS or party or anything
similar. They are, in effect, in another community; we just don't
formalize this because they don't use the tools that the Grex founders
intended them to use. But why *not* formalize it? Why *not* provide
them tools to create new, totally separate communities? Technically,
this isn't that hard, when you get down to it.
Basically, I'd think that the big challenges would be simply to separate
instances of party, the BBS, backtalk, etc, and make them selectable
based on the user's preferences. This shouldn't be that hard, really.
Some other potential projects:
1. A new backtalk interface with key bindings and more AJAX'y type stuff
that allows for a swifter user experience. Wouldn't something like the
GMail interface for BBS be pretty cool?
2. A client/server version of the venerable party, with channels for
supporting different pools of users. Maybe we could just use IRC....
3. More services on the web. Wouldn't it be cool to have an AJAX
interface to party?
What do others think?
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slynne
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response 4 of 109:
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Jul 20 16:47 UTC 2008 |
I am not sure exactly what you mean by allowing users to make their own
communities but it sounds like a nice idea.
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cross
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response 5 of 109:
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Jul 20 16:59 UTC 2008 |
Basically, providing some mechanism whereby a user can create a
community; this community has its own BBS, its own party, etc. Then
oter users on the system can join said community.
Think of it as another level of abstraction on top of what we currently
have; Grex as we know it would become one community, but there would be
others on the system as well.
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nharmon
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response 6 of 109:
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Jul 21 01:42 UTC 2008 |
What about replacing the party system with IRC? Like, a local ircd
server that everyone can access? That would allow for multiple
communities.
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lar
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response 7 of 109:
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Jul 21 01:53 UTC 2008 |
There were system resource issues related to preventing this before but
they are no longer the case.
IRC
EGGDROP
Let's open this baby up
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saeger
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response 8 of 109:
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Jul 21 03:09 UTC 2008 |
The best way to "revitalize" GREX is of course to attract new users. This is
by far the best "old style" BBS out there. I love that I can dial in on my
286 and impress everyone with its "interneting" ability!
There is a list of dial-in BBS's still in operation, and GREX is nowhere to
be found on said list. I would suggest that whoever is in charge shoot him
an E-mail and ask to be added, as it would attract a lot of new members.
The address of the website is www.dmine.com/dialbbs/dialbbs.html
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cross
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response 9 of 109:
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Jul 21 04:24 UTC 2008 |
resp:6 I've thought about it, and think that could work. There was some
resistance to it years ago, but maybe now would be different; it's
unclear.
resp:8 I looked at that website, but it appears that they want dial-in
*only* BBS's on that list. However, they have a link to a "telnet" list
that I submitted Grex to. We'll see; it would be nice if it would drum
up some new users.
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sholmes
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response 10 of 109:
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Jul 21 05:14 UTC 2008 |
The grexergallery site is gone . so probablythat link can be removed
Great job on the website !
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mcnally
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response 11 of 109:
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Jul 21 07:32 UTC 2008 |
If it's still active, perhaps put a link to the Grex Flickr group in place
of the grexergallery link.
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jep
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response 12 of 109:
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Jul 21 14:59 UTC 2008 |
I wouldn't be too excited about getting rid of Picospan or
Backtalk/Fronttalk as it is what has attracted most of us here. If new
interfaces can be made which let the existing users continue to use the
system as we're accustomed to using it, that would be interesting.
I kind of like the idea of separate communities. It has been possible
for a long time to have multiple Picospan type BBSes on the same
computer. A couple of users, including Jared Mauch, installed their own
copy of YAPP on M-Net back in the 1990s. We discouraged it then because
of space limitations but it was possible. I expect it should still be
possible now for Backtalk/Fronttalk though it would take a root some
manual work to set it up. There'd be no technical problem with other
software packages pointing to different communities as far as I know.
I too like the new WWW interface.
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rcurl
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response 13 of 109:
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Jul 21 15:58 UTC 2008 |
I got a "The page cannot be found" for www.dmine.com/dialbbs/dialbbs.html
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remmers
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response 14 of 109:
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Jul 21 18:29 UTC 2008 |
I approve of modernizing the website to use current standards. In
particular, I'm happy to see that the homepage Dan set up uses CSS and
is "real" XHTML (i.e. MIME type "application/xhtml+xml"). I'm not all
that fond of the appearance (tiny fonts, dull colors, Grex logo missing)
but those are things that are easy enough to tweak. For comparison
purposes, the old homepage can be viewed at
http://grex.org/index.html.no-wnu . I actually think the old one wins
on readability and attractiveness; YMMV.
Whatever website design we decide that we like, we'd want it to be
consistent throughout the site. I'm thinking that a good move would be
to use a full-blown content management system (CMS). Of course, we'd
want one that's free, open-source, and facilitates easy modification of
content as well as tailoring the appearance to what we want (i.e.
something with a "Grexish" look, whatever that is). I've not worked
with any CMSs, so I'm not familiar with what's available, or with the
advantages and disadvantages of different products. Drupal seems to be
getting a lot of buzz nowadays; maybe that would meet our needs. Once a
CMS is in place, folks could go to work bringing the content up-to-date.
Using a popular CMS project might also encourage new folks familiar
with the product to get involved in maintaining the website. Hence I
suggest the following
PROJECT: Make Grex's website CMS-based.
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cross
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response 15 of 109:
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Jul 21 21:38 UTC 2008 |
resp:11; Huh. That could work. Or maybe we could just host the
grexergallery on Grex itself. Personally, I'm getting to the point
where I think we need to change the access structure so that only our
"community validated" users can
resp:12 Well, the idea isn't to do away with conferencing as we know it,
but rather to replace the picospan program itself with something compatible and
open source. If YAPP were open source, that would be the obvious choice, but
it is not and it doesn't appear that the Thaler's are going to open it up any
time soon (though if someone asked them, that'd be nice).
There are certainly no plans to replace the backtalk/fronttalk combination
any time soon, though it may be feasible to replace picospan with fronttalk.
resp:14 I'm sorry you don't like the color scheme; actually, I didn't
change it at all from the submitted website. I confess I rather like it, but
then, asthetic tastes vary. Well, maybe "like" is too strong of a word. I do
think that it looks nice, though.
I am not, in principle, opposed to using a CMS, though I do not want to
become hamstrung in by waiting on the "right" technical solution when what
we need *right now* is a major update. I think this is a potentially
useful long-term project, but right now, let's focus on getting what we
have into the 21st century and reflecting reality.
Btw: John, does this mean that you are volunteering to work on the website?
:-)
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cross
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response 16 of 109:
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Jul 21 21:57 UTC 2008 |
resp:15 (First paragraph; neglectfully unfinished....) ...only our
"community validated" users can create web sites. Concurrently, we
should just allow images.
We have always feared we would be either a) overutilized in terms of
disk, bandwidth, etc if we allowed images, or b) be overrun with phishing
and porn sites. I don't think we have any evidence to assume either is
true, though.
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remmers
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response 17 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:02 UTC 2008 |
Re resp:15 - I was aware that the color choices were not yours. I
wasn't all that fond of them the first time I saw them either. In any
case, they're easy to change.
I'm thinking that installing a CMS like Drupal might represent a day's
work for somebody, and then everything would be in place for people to
start contributing content through a well-defined process that would not
require extensive technical skills and that would ensure everything
would have a uniform appearance. Not having worked with CMSs, I can't
say for certain that it would be that simple, though. Developing
standard "Grexian" CSS and then requiring that all pages use it might be
a simpler way to get to the 21st century. Maybe somebody who's reading
this and has had CMS experience could provide useful input regarding
what a CMS would buy us and how much work would be involved in setting
it up.
No, I'm not volunteering to work on the website.
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slynne
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response 18 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:04 UTC 2008 |
I dont mind working on the website but my web skills are somewhat
lacking.
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slynne
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response 19 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:05 UTC 2008 |
What I am getting good at though is testing things. I do a lot of the
quality control for the web designers at work
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cyklone
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response 20 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:08 UTC 2008 |
What's that involve? Viewing the same page with five different browsers?
Proofreading for typos?
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slynne
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response 21 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:11 UTC 2008 |
In Grex's case, since it is pretty simple, that is pretty much what it
entails. That and checking every link. At work, it is somewhat more
complex because we have massive databases feeding data to the site and
all kinds of weird filters and stuff.
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cross
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response 22 of 109:
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Jul 21 23:18 UTC 2008 |
resp:17 Cool. If we can find someone to do the work, we can make it
happen. It does sound interesting. While you have said that you haven't worked
with the software yourself, do you know of anyone close to Grex who has a proof
of concept site running?
resp:21 The big things I think we need to work on right now are content
(and frankly, anyone can do that) and utilizing current web standards. The
latter isn't so hard; we can use tools like HTML tidy to automate most of it.
The former is where we need people who are sufficiently familiar with Grex that
they can describe it reasonably well and, more importantly, good at writing and
with something of an eye for design. Actually, we only need one person who's
decently good at design to do the CSS part, and then the rest of the pages more
or less inherit that, so mostly we need people who are good at word-smithing
and working on the content part.
And we also need people to advertise and cheerlead for Grex.
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hera
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response 23 of 109:
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Jul 22 03:57 UTC 2008 |
Not until my name is on the front page.
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saeger
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response 24 of 109:
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Jul 22 05:11 UTC 2008 |
RE:13
Oops, I mistyped the URL its www.dmine.com/dialbbs/dialbbs.htm not html sorry
for the screw up
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