[IMC-Video] video.indymedia.org - a warning: beware of complex systems!

[TJ]

Hi,

> One, the current site has upload disabled, and none of the current
> site admins has responded to the hosting offers you mention.

uhmm, there were some very nice offers, I think it would be important
to at least answer them! If there is currently nobody having time for
communication via email, a quick call could do it also. I could
connect with the "swiss guys", as my native language is german and
swiss people usually speak german (kind of ;).

> We had come to agreement that we would set up test installs of these
> two CMS customized for video. We're gonna play with these for a bit,
> then decide which to go with for next gen video.indy.

VERY good to read "we will test" and not "we will use"...

I checked out both, drupal and plone, a while ago on a local machine,
I know drupal better than plumi, and I have a rough understanding for
what plone and zope are - both are interesting solutions with
advantages and disadvantages.

But, of course, NONE of the two qualify for a high-traffic site as
there is repetitive execution of code for things that could easily be
done with static content.

Plone is really heavy-weight and brings mucho very sophisticated
groupware basics and is in fact a very well designed software, a
master piece, that comes at a prize - performance. there are some
standard tuning procedures with plone - I am no expert with this - but
at least it is still very demanding for ressources.

Drupal is a hack, no question about that, but an interesting hack
("Everything is a node - well, user profiles ar not..."). It can be
quite fast, but for a high traffic site you would like to spend some
time optimizing it´s database access - e.g. the URL ALIAS solution
does so many unneccessary sql queries on every request, it will hurt
server performance very hard when there is a real demand for the site.
Also if you put some modules into it to gain at least a little bit of
"group working together" features and to get a little bit into the
direction of what comes with plumi out of the box, like the OG
Modules, sql gets even wilder and putting together several modules can
lead to serious research activity. With not optimized code, PHP5 (not
4 )and MYSQL5 (not 4 or 3), it alltogether can take as much ressources
as plumi.

I am not at the end of testing, of course both systems can be heavily
tuned and optimized, there are several caching solutions for both of
them.

BUT: Why do you need a CMS for a video download hub?

I am still a friend of POH (Plain old HTML) for really high traffic
sites. I ask people, who want a cms: "Why do you need a cms? Which
part of your site is that dynamic, that you need to regenerate it on
every request?"

If you want easy content creation, there are several ways to achieve
that. If you need users to login and do something, that not everybody
can do, there are several ways to do it. A combination of a CMS as a
frontend for content creators that will generate static content and
push this on a download server might be a good compromise.

So what is the demand for video.indymedia.org? Easy of use? latest
web-2.0 features? AJAX? Or maximum speed with minimal ressources?

Also very important, often forgotten: static content is easy to handle
- no database to backup across several servers, no inconsistency on a
fallback situation, no problems with different server environments
(php version, modules, missing python stuff, plone 2.5 stuff not
working with 3.0 and so on) - you just need a cheapo ftp login, rsync
and that´s it. Even better: you get "high availabilty" with some
simple additional DNS A records ("round robin") and can use new
servers around the world very fast.

it is very important to keep a "maximum simplicity" paradigm if you do
not have unlimited ressources of php or python programmers at hands
for a project. It can take months to understand a complex CMS even if
you know the underlying programming environment - with static content
and simple tools like ftp every child is able to maintain a site and
perform important tasks like "backup and restore" and the team can
focus on more important things like fundraising, organizing more
webspace and traffic and producing content.

"No CMS" does not mean that it is not possible to help people put up
information easy - there can be a simple form to describe an ftp
upload. Also, what is bad with the traditional method of using a
simple file "descrition.txt" within an FTP upload folder? That file
can be read out easily by a script and turned into html for each
video. It will be more easy than uploading through a web-frontend -
did you ever try to upload 500 Files through a web frontend? And right
now, how many people are able to write a mass import script for
drupal or plumi?

Do not misunderstand me - plumi and drupal and many, many other cms
solutions are great, a lot of work has been put into these, I do not
want to make them bad. They may be great solutions for a local group
with high demands for organizing themselves via internet and a need
for groupware-like functionality for a limited number of users.

But I think it will be a terrible design error putting one of these as
a bottleneck in front of "THE" world central video hub for alternative
media. Do not do it!!!

I could not find the specs for the video site (where are these?), but
if you urgently need some user login functionality and want people to
comment (why? to spend yout valuable time fighting spammers?), a P2P
enabled board-system might be another alternative to evaluate - there
is some good board-soft out there and "high-speed" is a design goal
for this kind of software since ever! (I like onebigtorrent.org)

Anyway, as I understand (I might be wrong here) the central, most
important task of video.indymedia.org is to distribute videos - we
do not need a CMS for that.

[Searching? Google will do! or use swish-e to serach the static
content? categorization? tags? menus? A script can generate that on
uploaded description files, after review of course.]

One more important point: security. NOTHING can beat static content in
that field. No explanation needed here.

My 2 cents on your CMS evaluation process. I hope, you will take your
time to check out every detail and rethink every aspect twice. I might
be able to help with whatever solution you come up with, but will not
try to convince anybody - this was my one and only comment on the
issue (nobody asked for ;)

> TJ, would you like to set up a Plumi (Plone) sandbox?

As I understand engagemedia.org itself IS the plumi sandbox. I setup
one on a local machine - I found no way of mass importing videos and
bittorrent support is still quite experimental. I have one debian
vserver "laying around" and I can try to install it there - AFTER the
video site is up again.

> Meanwhile, there is also an effort to create a list of all working
> video feeds from IMCs, to use to create a custom Miro player
> (formerly Democracy Player). Maybe anna is coordinating that?

Ummm, so they are really so many programmers around that indymedia can
afford working on a custom miro player - while video.indymedia.org is
down??? Why are you forking the miro player? Are you aware what
megaload of work you are putting on you??? Or is there a brilliant
genius-programmer who can do it in in one day? What happens, if that
guy disappears? Will you have another very long downtime AND a not
working player then?

Wouldn´t it be more important to get the video site up again ASAP???

Please don´t get me wrong - I am offering my help because I got the
impression, that there is a serious lack in human ressources right now
at indymedia - I am NOT a guy who has too many time, no son of
millionaire or sort of, and it will be a personal "sacrifice" of time
as I will have to cut other activities to help out here - that´s why I
am a little bit concerned about WHAT exactly I am doing ;)

ATM I would like to help to get the video.indymedia.org site online
again. Tell me, what is needed, to get the site online - I am sure,
this can be done right NOW WITHOUT plumi or drupal. It was running
before - so if it is "only" a webspace and traffic bottleneck, that
keeps the site down right now, I would like to focus on a solution for
exactly THAT right now - testing drupal and plumi can take MONTHS and
you do not want to keep the site down for several months, will you?

Will a 500GB dreamhost account do? That could be done TODAY, as a fast
help good enough - meanwhile I could start talking to the swiss guys
and ask other contacts to help out. FTP ACCESS is all I need right
now, who is responsible for adding or changing DNS records after
setting up some webspace? Some additional A records may be totally
sufficient for a quick solution ("round robin") to get the site up
again NOW.

Thanks for your attention.

Have a nice day,
Tomas Juriga
Elektronische Produktion
Tel: +49-211-6008150