Hi FSFE Web Team,
I've talked with Matthias and Cristian regarding some of the web campaigns we have planned with the Göteborg Fellowship. We would like some server space for these, and it seems like that won't be a problem.
While we initially thought of using Drupal for the campaigns, Matthias persuaded me (quite easily) to use the amazing static web page generator instead.
The first campaign that we wish to get going is a site that makes it easy to report dissatisfaction with the "windows tax". We will tailor it for Swedish usage initially, but it should be easy to adapt it to other countries as well.
What we wish to do is * Present some text. * Create an online petition (People should be able to enter name, city and email address into a form, with checkboxes for whether they'd like to automatically send an email to the authorities, and whether to receive updates themselves. They should also have to confirm their address.) * As soon as an email address is confirmed, a mail should be sent (with the users address as Sender) to the consumer authorities agency.
Is there a good document that explains how we get started with using the generator, and how we can extend it with database functionality (such as the petition)?
all the best, Stian
Hi, Stian!
Am Donnerstag, den 15.04.2010, 14:41 +0200 schrieb Stian Rødven Eide:
Is there a good document that explains how we get started with using the generator,
No. The generator was originally intended and created to be used for FSFE's web pages on www.fsfe.org and nothing else. The idea that it could be used for other web pages came up only very recently. Hugo (IIRC) is working on transferring it to documentfreedom.org as we speak, and both your and Hugos experiences will be valuable input for further development of the generator.
However, you are lucky: the original author of the generator is Jonas Öberg, to whom you probably have very good contact ;-)
In any case: our plan should be to bring the generator to a state where it's usable in the "general case", not to create different forks of the script for different purposes.
Please note that the main features of the script are: * Translation management * Generation of HTML pages from various independent XML sources (e.g. generation of a single news page where each news entry is in its own XML file) * Passing of the pages through a global XSLT script which add menu, header, footer etc.
Depending on what you need, the build script might actually be overkill. If you don't need translations and there's no dynamic overview pages, you can achieve the same with a trivial 10 line Makefile.
and how we can extend it with database functionality (such as the petition)?
The generator actually does not much more than to create HTML files by sticking together fragments from different sources. If you want database functionality, you have to program the CGI yourself. If you want highly dynamic web pages, the generator isn't the right tool.
Thanks, Reinhard
tor 2010-04-15 klockan 15:47 +0200 skrev Reinhard Mueller: [...]
Depending on what you need, the build script might actually be overkill. If you don't need translations and there's no dynamic overview pages, you can achieve the same with a trivial 10 line Makefile.
and how we can extend it with database functionality (such as the petition)?
The generator actually does not much more than to create HTML files by sticking together fragments from different sources. If you want database functionality, you have to program the CGI yourself. If you want highly dynamic web pages, the generator isn't the right tool.
Thanks for your comments, Reinhard!
After some discussion we believe that the generator is, as you say, overkill.
Instead, we will make a perl script for the database, and static html around it. I hope the script can be reused within the context of the generator, though.
Also, we'd like to install Etherpad, which is an off-the-shelf application that needs to be updated, but that can be used by all Fellows.
Which server should we use?
Can someone grant root access to that server for the following Fellows: Stefan Kangas (skangas) Patrik Willard (wildcard) Fredrik Wendt (?) Stian Rødven Eide (julipan)
Stefan, Patrik and Fredrik; please send your public ssh keys to fellowship-hackers@fsfeurope.org
all the best, Stian