[imc-cms] fwd: Re: [bitweaver-core] Indymedia.org CMS Developers Survey - please read!

[ryan]

----- Forwarded message from Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> -----

Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:14:46 +0000
From: Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070111 SeaMonkey/1.1
To: ryan at linefeed.org
Subject: Re: [bitweaver-core] Indymedia.org CMS Developers Survey - please
 read!

ryan - I had sent this to the list address supplied - but it has been 
bounced because I'm not a member :)
Had a quick scout, but can't see an alternative - please can you forward it.
I'm sure other people are going to have the same problem?

ryan wrote:
>Dear Bitweaver development group,

>---------- (survey begins) ----------
>
>INDYMEDIA CMS DEVELOPERS SURVEY
>Please fill in as many questions as you can. When you are completed,
>you should email your responses to imc-cms at lists.indymedia.org
> 
>1) Survey Part 1 - Personal Details
>   a) Your name?
Lester Caine
>   b) Your geographic location?
United Kingdom
>   c) How long have you worked with Bitweaver and what work do you do
>      with the project?
3 years - in the various builds
>   d) Do you work on any other CMS projects?
Not now - standardised on bw

>2) Survey Part 2 - CMS Basics
>   a) What programming language is Bitweaver written in?
PHP
>   b) What is the backend database used by Bitweaver?
See my SIG ;)
A range of databases are supported - including Firebird
>   c) Are there other servers required (application server, Tomcat,
>      etc)?
It can use a number of PHP add-ons, and the Lucene search, but des not
need them
>   d) How do you describe the overall software design of Bitweaver?
Main reason I became involved.
Software is nicely modular unlike Tikiwiki which was becoming a
nightmare and so a clean framework was required.
>   e) Can you give details about real-world scaleability
>      considerations for Bitweaver?
Nothing practical.
Firebird can run on a separate structure to PHP and so spread the load (
that is how I use it ) and either can be distributed to load share and
improve reliability.

>3) Survey Part 3 - CMS Functionality
>   a) A core feature of our software is the ability for anonymous
>      users to post media to appear on the site. Is this easily
>      added to a site using Bitweaver?
No problem - just give them the right. A couple of protection packages
exist, I designed one that allows sections of the site to be hidden from
different groups of users. An example of the flexibility of the design.

>   b) Can you describe the site search functionality available?
Lightweight using main database or heavyweight using lucene - which
again can be offloaded to a different server. Personally I'm looking at
a full text search capability via Firebird which would be available as a
bitweaver service.

>   c) How is RSS/XML/RDF support included?
RSS is available, but since I don't use it I can answer

>   d) We would like to have one server per site which allows many
>      instances of actual websites, each with different admin logins
>      and different websites altogether. Is this easy to set up with
>      Bitweaver?
Multisite package - but probably needs some thought.

>   e) Can you describe the multimedia support in the software? We
>      allow users to upload and manipulate online all types of media -
>      mpeg, mp3, ogg, jpg, pdf, etc. 
Fisheye and Treasury but additional media support would be nice.

>   f) Internationalization is very important to us. Many of our sites
>      support 2-3 or more languages. Can you describe how this is
>      accomplished in Bitweaver?
Multi-lingual interfacing is standard. There is a design for fully
managed translated content but this still needs some further work.

>   g) What types of anti-abuse or anti-spam measures are in the code?
All identified PHP weaknesses are covered and there are various options
for user identification/authentication.

>   h) Is there a calendar included in the codebase? 
The current calendar package provides a selectable display of content
history - There is an events package but everybody seems to expect
different things so what do you mean by 'Is there a calendar' ;)

>   i) How do you describe how a user would edit a given piece of content
>      on the website, or briefly describe the model used in this part
>      of the functionality?
This is selectable. Various on-line editors are supported, and content
can be wiki or html - a mix is also possible, but this can become
difficult to manage. All content uses the same editor structure, and all
is versioned via history.

>   j) How do you describe any type of user moderation system that
>      is built into Bitweaver?
I don't use it, but stars and the various protection systems allow a
number of options

>   k) What types of integration is there with P2P networks?
Pass - I presume you mean access to other content such as Lulu and
PBase? Other storage modules can be added as required.

>   l) Another important feature for us is networking between the
>      websites. If we want users from one website to have rights on
>      another website in the network, how could we do this?
Common user database via LDAP?
I don't see this as a particular problem, it's just a matter of deciding
WHERE your main user database is located? I allow users access to
particular groups, and they can only see content from groups they are
members off, but I don't actually create different web sites.

>   m) We are concerned with the ability to easily rsync pages from a
>      website to other servers and setup a type of mirroring scheme.
>      How would this be accomplished with Bitweaver?