Projects to revitalize Grex.

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?

response 2 of 109:

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.

response 4 of 109:

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. 

response 6 of 109:

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.

response 8 of 109:

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

response 10 of 109:

Jul 21 05:14 UTC 2008

The grexergallery site is  gone . so probablythat link can be removed 
Great job on the website !

response 12 of 109:

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.

response 14 of 109:

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.