Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[raffy]

These are very useful points. Thanks, tom, for starting the discussion. Let me try to add some of my own 2c.

A "wiki" is very easy to place within Puppy's web presence. Most distros have a wiki and forum in addition to the main website. And speaking of being bullet-proof, Puppy's wikkawiki has proved itself to be (quite) one. (Here, am just trying to state the facts - Lobster is the wiki admin, but I help by adding users manually to help beef up security.)

I guess the only missing service of the current wiki is photo uploading.

[nic2109]

This is Really Good Stuff. Well done, and please keep at it. It's easy to get discouraged by negative feedback, and even easier by no feedback!

Ill increment the counter registering those confused by the current setup. Some of it is innocent and caused by outdated links, but some is duplicated such as the Forums (or should that be "Fora"?) - yes there is more than one - and really does need to be sorted.

Don't underestimate the commitment needed to maintain such sites up-to-date. This single statement brings with it a host of spin-off issues:
1. The fewer the admins the easier it is to enforce a common look and feel; stick to policies; keep secure.
2. The fewer the admins the more onerous the task; the more dependent on just a few people (who signed up 'cos they were already fully engaged in the "project" but are busy as it is) and the more likely to get out of date when they are on holiday or get ill or take up a new hobby (or even get a life!).
3. ........and so on.

One paradox is that to keep it secure you'll need fewer admins; and to keep it useful you need more!

There is no solution to this, just a set of compromises which different people judge differently.

I suggest that as active members of the Puppy Community we need a moderated discussion (this thread will do nicely if tombh is willing to continue), a summarised set of proposals (tombh again?) and a preference-indicating mechanism (let's not call it "Voting" 'cos that seems too mechanical, though some sort of ballot might need to be part of the process).

And lastly, all the other sites will need to be re-visited to ensure that they are updated as appropriate and include links to the new main site. This might be quite tricky to accomplish and the owners/admins will all need to be onboard.

A Good and Necessary project in its own right, but not one to be undertaken "lightly, wantonly nor inadvisedly".

PS. Wasn't ttuuxxx looking at doing something similar?

[darrelljon]

How about a shop? You could add FatFreeCart quite easily.

[WhoDo]

This is just a GREAT start, Tom! Well done! Among the various suggestions, all of which have merit, I think the one I'd see as most important would be cross-browser compatibility, especially with IE6-7. Let's make those refugees drool over Puppy from the get-go!

Keep up the great work. I'm getting really excited by the possibilities here. Well done, again!

[klu9]

@TomBH
looks good, but are you implying the forum, manual, Barry's blog etc would still be off on separate sites?

I guess I'm a stick-in-the-mud; I won't be happy until there's "one site to rule them all". One domain, one registration / login, one look, one menu / navigation.

[tombh]

I've set up another thread -- Puppy Website: Looks, Bugs and Wishlists -- and renamed this thread to "Puppy Website: Discussion". Don't worry about choosing the right thread, they definitely overlap I know, but it might just help keep things a bit more organised. To start things off on the other thread I've made a list of the current suggestions and answered a few practical points.

So to give an idea of the kind of things we can discuss on this thread I'll briefly outline the ideal Puppy Website!

The ideal Puppy Website will have a design that is simple, yet professional, unique, yet welcoming. There will only be one official community site, it will include the forum and only require one username. It will have a full-time administrator and be hosted by a professional, secure and helpful hosting solution. It will always be up to date and inspire regular contributions from Puppy enthusiasts.

Now, all that may not be possible! But, what I do know is that we already have here everything that is needed to make, at the very least, one unit of improvement to the current situation -- in the sense that more than one person has come forward to freely offer what they can to the project. But of course we should be able to improve things by more than one unit! So the question is what is a sensible goal to aim for?

My current proto-site is, in a way, my answer to that question, though it makes some assumptions which really need to be tied down to actual people, numbers and resources. I think it would good to, as far as is possible, find out who is willing to contribute something. It doesn't matter what or how much someone can contribute as long as they are able to commit to that. For instance, I know that WhoDo is willing to offer leadership on the project and even though he has not coded any HTML has been of invaluable support to me so far. Also forum member prit1 has been contributing his web programming skills and is learning Drupal.

The other considerations that come to mind are;
*As nic2109 suggested, who and how many are willing/able to take on admin roles and learn a little bit about Drupal?
*Current manual maintainers. I think it is seriously worth thinking about creating a "Manual Editor" role on Drupal that allows a manual to be maintained and updated on-site. Is anyone really willing to do that?
*Is pupplinux.org hosted with the same sorry excuse for a hosting service that Barry uses for his blog? Are they really the best people to invest all our hard work in? What other hosting solutions are there?

[Caneri]

@klu9,
agreed...one site to rule the roost so to speak and be "official" and secure!!..with mirrors for each continent as in one for North America, one for east Asia/Australia,one for South America and one for European countries so users have a somewhat local connection to Puppy with a common interface and common updates.

@Thomas,

I wanted a professional to handle security and the like for months now and have emailed and pm'd to various puppy people..the problem is how to pay a pro and which pro to use. I have delved into this a bit as my intention for puppylinux.ca is along the lines of your design.

My project from the start was to provide space and bandwidth...not a new web page for users. My server will be available for whatever fills the need of the direction this is taking.

My opinion is, this direction is a must have. Well done.

Eric

[tombh]

@Oblivious:

[Caneri]

Hi Thomas,

My host is pretty much full featured with php5,database,Drupal,Joomla,Photogallery software from Coppermine etc etc.

One good thing about my server is it's located in Canada which means there is no country in the world that is banned from access.

I also find the support quite good. I have always had a solution to problems.
Look here
http://www.netfirms.ca/web-hosting/web-hosting-business/

This is my setup...and it's a Linux server which is good. Click on applications on demand for a list of software available.

Eric

[LOF]

Hi guys.

I'm loving this discussion and feel it is a really iportant one to be having for this community. I think that what we really all seem to want is continuity. We want all the various sites to fuse together in one big place so that the brand new user and the experienced community member alike can get what they need. My opinion is that we need a site wide header/menu that would carry across to all apsects of the community.

See below a quick mockup of what I mean:

Wiki Home:


Forums Home:


Case example: Think how the Ubuntu wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/) header/tabs work. You always know how to get everywhere else.

What do people think?

[Caneri]

Hi LOF,

yup...my sentiments exactly.

Eric

[Lobster]

[darrelljon]

Loving it, or should that be LOFing it.

[raffy]

I like it, too.

Using this feature means a page modification for all Puppy sites (wiki, forum, blog), and autohide would require the addition of a session/cookie flag and a Hide/Unhide button. Did I miss the code by LOF?

Added: Maybe "Support" will be better than "Shop", where we list willing Puppians in different continents?

[ttuuxxx]

To tell you the truth I like the Fedora Layout better.
http://fedoraproject.org/
like the little arrows on the left table cell.
ttuuxxx

Plus the nifty language bar. Is really nice for other locales