Re: [Adonthell-general] Getting contributors (was Re: Kudos on [Adonthell-Devel])

[James Nash]

On 19 Jan 2008, at 13:12, Kai Sterker wrote:

> > However, it has been broken
> > for a long time (IIRC Linuxgames disabled the server-side includes)
> > so things like the screenshots and art gallery are not accessible.
>
> SSI are still available. Perl/CGI is disabled, however. PHP would  
> work, though.

Ah, that's good. Any idea what version of PHP it is?


> > I know, that much of the new discussions now take place on the Wiki
> > but it is has a totally different look and feel and, coming from the
> > main Adonthell site, is a bit bard to find (it's not on the home page
> > or amongst the navbar links).
>
> Since it is supposed to replace the development section (and the
> library and documentation), it should be linked directly from the

Agreed.

> navbar. Customizing it to have a look & feel that matches the main
> website would be nice, but a fairly low priority.

Fair enough.

> > Furthermore, we seem to be a project on both Savannah and BerliOS and
> > it's not immediately clear what info / docs / code reside on which
> > location or if one is supposed to supersede the other.
>
> That's a bit unfortunate, I know. BerliOS has the Wiki, Savannah  
> all the rest.

That's not too bad then. As long as there's a clear distinction  
between the two we're OK I think.


> > My suggestion would be that we spend some time overhauling our
> > websites to do the following:
>
> [...]
>
> I would all be for a redesign, following the principle that less is
> more :-). A lean site would be easier to keep up-to-date, easier to
> navigate and generally give a more lifely impression than all the
> stuff that accumulated over the years.

Yep, I think a refresh would be good.
I'll try to come up with a few ideas on paper and share them with you  
guys for discussion.

It might be nice to have a generic logo/icon for Adonthell. We could  
use it across the site / wiki / docs etc. as a common identifier.  
Could eventually serve as an app icon too.


> > I'm pretty good with PHP / XHTML / CSS so perhaps this is something I
> > could help with.
>
> Maybe it would make sense to use some sort of CMS instead of custom
> code. I know that I am far more likely to update stuff if all I have
> to do is log on and fill out a form on the web. Making changes
> locally, then transferring them to the server is awkward at best. It
> also leaves me with most of the work, whereas with a CMS, others could
> get editing privileges too.
>
> I believe we can get access to mysql and PHP at Linuxgames.com, so we
> should be fine.

Perhaps something like Drupal? I haven't used it myself but checked  
it out once and it looked quite good.
I do have a little experience with WordPress but I'm not sure if  
that's a good solution for Adonthell.

Kai, do you know if we have access to .htaccess files to set up  
things like HTTP redirects and mod_rewrite voodoo? Whatever CMS we  
use there's a good chance old URLs would break so stuff like that  
would be useful to not break external links to our pages. Also having  
mod_rewrite let's us have nice, tidy URLs.

        - James
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