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| Author |
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| 25 new of 109 responses total. |
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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bellstar
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response 25 of 109:
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Jul 22 09:11 UTC 2008 |
I generally am not very relevant in this discussion but I'm posting this
anyway.
CMSs are "certainly" not the way for Grex to go. Their functions only slightly
overlap with those of Grex's and despite what remmers says they are far from
being "easy to maintain." They are almost invitations for disaster because
they're too complex, often involve many "moving parts," and mostly hinge on
"shiny new technology" instead of "proven old ways."
A simple CMS package will need heavy server-side (e.g. PHP, Perl) and
client-side scripting, some sort of database (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL), and
"mods" for the web server (e.g. mod_php for Apache). These are obvious
performance drains and security threats. Grex is known (and loved for) being
simple and "old-skool." Some Grex users delibrately use very minimal setups and
view these same pages through lynx (or through bbs), with those "frills"
they'll be deterred. I like it when pagefuls of good talk is loaded over my
dial-up connection in under 15 seconds.
On the functional aspect, Grex offers a bundle: shell access, email,
webhosting, "and" community interaction. CMSs are focused only on collaborative
content creation which is not the sort of community interaction Grexers are
involved in. Grex isn't hosting some sort of "project" that needs
"collaboration," i.e. modification of the "same" content. Its community
interaction paradigm is very well described by the title it already has: bbs.
The refurbishment it needs in that respect is probably some new "light"
bulletin board software but I'd be skeptic to even deploy phpBB and the like
because all of them, like CMSs, depend on server-side scripting and DBMSs.
As for "standards compliance," as far as I know most "recent versions" of
standards have been specifically designed to be supersets of their previous
versions. So Grex is not non-standard if it still presents content in old HTML
instead of some blasted XHTML/DTHML 4.1-bloody-transitional. In fact, one has
to be proud to present a functional Grex using the smallest possible subset of
the pertinent standards. That's good minimalism.
I believe on a "frills-mostly-with-a-bit-of-content" Internet a good ol'
system's mission should be to keep up the good ol' ways. In case of Grex, that
could be accomplished by enriching the shell/remote access experience (for me
that boils down to port forwarding and running httptunnel ;-), expanding (or
total abandoning) of email services (to include IMAP, for example), relaxing
webhosting practice so that people can make diverse websites within reason (I
don't think people should be able to put up sites written in PHP on Grex,
though), and a more capable but still "text-oriented" bbs (a "multi-level
forum" structure instead of conferences, and a proper linkable archive).
Good luck to [put the hero's name here] who will revive Grex. Seriously though,
I'll be happy to help if there's something I can do for Grex over some
thousands of kilometers and a dial-up connection.
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keesan
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response 26 of 109:
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Jul 22 13:35 UTC 2008 |
Perhaps fronttalk could be changed so that you can click on a link posted in
bbs, and use lynx or links to view it (no graphics).
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remmers
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response 27 of 109:
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Jul 23 15:01 UTC 2008 |
Re resp:25 - Hmm. I'll need to educate myself better on CMS's before I
can agree or disagree with what you say. As far as the underlying
plumbing is concerned - Perl and MySQL we already have, and intelligent
use of CSS and PHP could substantially improve the website. I've found
that adding some light-weight CSS and PHP to my personal website has
significantly simplified maintenance tasks. I'm in favor of reasonable
minimalism and avoiding technological overkill, but not to the point of
rejecting technologies that could be useful and make our jobs easier.
Re resp:26 - Adding mouse support to a tty interface is an interesting
concept, but probably not feasible (although xterm has limited support
for it, I think). On the other hand, implementing a web interface that
looks and acts substantially like the tty interface, but also supports
"clicking", might have some appeal to the old guard. Not that I'm
seriously suggesting that it be done.
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keesan
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response 28 of 109:
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Jul 23 15:29 UTC 2008 |
You don't need a mouse to click on a link. Pine lets you go to URLs already
(Enter key). Why not fronttalk also letting you invoke lynx or links or even
w3m?
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remmers
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response 29 of 109:
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Jul 23 15:35 UTC 2008 |
Ah, gotcha - "selecting" might be a less confusing term than "clicking",
which suggested to me that you meant a real point-and-click device
(mouse). Well, it's definitely feasible technically; stumbling block
would be, as usual, persuading someone with the necessary programming
skills to implement it.
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keesan
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response 30 of 109:
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Jul 23 16:02 UTC 2008 |
My Enter key clicks.
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cross
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response 31 of 109:
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Jul 23 16:20 UTC 2008 |
resp:28 I'm not sure what the point would be.... Grex already has
fronttalk that works with a TTY interface. One of the ideas is to
make the web interface more TTY like, but that's a separate issue.
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remmers
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response 32 of 109:
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Jul 23 17:32 UTC 2008 |
The point would be to make it easier in Fronttalk to follow web links
that people post, similar to a mechanism that already exists in Pine.
That would actually be a nice facility to add, if somebody gets inspired
to do it, and underscores why Grex really needs to be running open
source conferencing software.
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tod
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response 33 of 109:
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Jul 23 17:35 UTC 2008 |
I wouldn't mind a web interface to BBS which supports cellphone users.
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cross
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response 34 of 109:
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Jul 23 17:50 UTC 2008 |
resp:32 Aha. Okay. It strikes me that both picospan and fronttalk
pipe conference data (read: responses) through an external pager
program; I wonder if less or most of any of those can be made to
recognize URLs and do something similar to what pine does. If that
were the case, we could just set the pager and get the same
functionality for free.
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katie
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response 35 of 109:
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Jul 24 01:54 UTC 2008 |
The new page looks nice. A couple of typos: "frequently" needs an "l."
"Our home, Ann Arbor" needs a space.
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cross
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response 36 of 109:
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Jul 24 02:34 UTC 2008 |
Thank you! I corrected both typos; please let us know if you see any more!
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bellstar
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response 37 of 109:
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Jul 24 04:37 UTC 2008 |
Re #27:
I'm rather bewildered to hear Grex runs a SQL server. Are there any Grex
applications depdendent on it? Has it ever been load tested? Or is it just
"educational?"
As for Perl, mere availability of the interpreter is not enough. PerlCGI
modules must be added to both Perl and Apache (assuming Grex is served on
Apache) to provide the required CGI hooks. These hooks and the "possibility" of
remotely running malicious code through a misconfigured or buggy CGI interface
will make Grex vulnerable to a host of attacks. On the other hand, cgi-bin is
already there so perhaps there won't be much added vulnerability.
I've heard computer security experts have a saying that goes, "usability is
inversely proportional to security." I wonder if Grex isn't already "useful"
enough?.
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