[www-tech] plan of attack

[john duda]

so based off of conversations with a few of the www-features folks
this weekend at the indyconference, here's a list of the stuff that
should get done in the near future on global.

1) implement a feature suggestion posting form (involves extending mir
with a little bit of java code)
 
2) move the syndication(and possibly the op wire) from the /sun servlet
to /earth, so that 

 a)  local features can be promoted to the center column if desired
 b)  www-features folks can take a more active role in clerking the newswires

3) update the syndication code to work off the contact db(this is
currently implemented very nicely on imc-us, just a matter of bringing
it over) at the same time, it would be nice to modify the contact db
feed such that we get geo:lat and geo:long attributes that can then be
added to the feeds of local articles(see 7).

4) fix the weird hostname redirection problems by installing mod_jk if
possible

5) make the v2 templates (xhtml+css), so we can leave the 20th century
and work towards a skinnable site.

6) change the templates to use an iframe for newswire switching,
rather than a separate page, as is done on:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/index2.shtml

7) possibly develop http://manifestor.org/john/worldkit into something
neat using the rss feeds of articles....the developer of worldkit who
has been doing some fantastic geocoding stuff got in touch with me and
offered to help on this.....

8) get the contact db to start including all the imc collectives.
right now, people will say "indymedia has 150 autonomous collectives",
because that's what shows up on the cities list.  but many
collectives(uk, brasil, italy)are actually larger federations of local
subcollectives.  these sub collectives should be on the cities list,
so we can say 200 rather than 150 :)

the stuff i figure i will be concentrating on are 1(feature
suggestion),2(simplifying mir setup), and 3(updated syndication code).
when hell freezes over and i have lots of free time i will work on
7(gratuitous geography experiments).

if anyone is looking for an excuse to play around with extending mir
via some simple java code, 1(feature suggestion) is a very, very easy
project, and I'd be totally up for working with someone to do this.

i am tempted to wait to do 4(mod_jk) until i get a chance to move
imc-philly to mir, as we will be doing some major apache/sysadmin
updates on vox at that time.  this should be in the next month or two.

8(cities list) is probably something to refer to the contact db folks.

ideally, 5(v2 templates) and 6(newswire switcher) would be some things
that someone else would be willing to take on.....


john


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