[imc-cms] indycore

[Dimitris M.]

Hello indymedians!

there has been some discussion in the alternatives & cms lists about
Plone-based software for Indymedia. I'm happy to report that there has
been progress on the development of indycore (previously known as
IndyPlone) which seems to be ready for live deployments. 

Indycore is a software component that plugs on top of the
Python/Zope/Plone/OpenCore stack in order to provide social tools for
open publishing, collaboration & networking

A demo deployment is available at http://dev.indy.gr - feel free to
experiment there by adding content & starting projects.

There is also a live deployment at http://indy.gr that has just been
launched. Indy.gr is a project initiated by former members of the Athens
Indymedia collective and other activists. We will be applying for
Indymedia membership soon.

The most significant new feature of indycore is that it allows
registered members to start projects inside the site's community where
they can invite others and get their wiki, mailing lists with web
interface, ajax chat rooms (using chat.indymedia.org) and optional
visibility inside the site's community.

By being Plone & OpenCore based, indycore inherits many advantages in
terms of being secure, reliable, versatile, user-friendly & fun to work
with. But more importantly it manages to stay relatively thin and
maintanable, able to intergrate the latest developments by the Plone and
OpenCore communities without much effort as well as many other
components from the worlds of Plone, Zope and Python.

The downsides of the Plone world is that it requires modern hardware for
development and deployment, and that it requires some some initial
effort from developers untill they become productive. However, things
are constantly improving and very good resources for new developers
appeared lately: http://plone.org/session-videos

Functionality coming soon on indycore:
* Video uploading/streaming. Built-in flash player, automatic
transcoding. Maybe some tools for photo & video publishing from mobile
phones. The engagemedia techs are working in this direction
* Audio uploading & streaming
* AJAX elements - automatic reloading of the newswire
* blogs for all members / blogwire


Indycore is Free Software, licensed under the GPL. If you have any
Plone/Zope/Python coding experience you are very encouraged to
participate. The source code is available at https://indy.gr/svn/


Feedback is more than welcome

Cheers,
Dimitris