An Idea for the Maison

Posted on 2004/06/08 14:52:11 (June 2004) by rob.

Perhaps it's time to have a change or two. Just bouncing around ideas...

We're a funny community, really. There's lots of us and we all do quite similar things - just separately. Recently, the amount of stuff going on has been a bit low and I was trying to think of ways of rejuvinating it for all our benefits. Here's some ideas I'd like to throw into the mix.

John, Travis and I all write blogs on our own respective parts of the site. On top of that, we have a number of essays (this bit you're reading now). On John's blog, you can comment, on mine and T-Boy's you can't. Why not combine them all into one system that has sections. A 'John' section, a 'Rob','T-Boy', 'Essay' and so on. The front page could then show the latest post from everyone and then selecting a category will allow the viewer to see out individual logs.

This suggests that the whole shebang should be put into a nice database with generic admin type stuff for us to use.

Also, a files section, art, photos and all the other stuff. Essentially have a single starting point for all of us.

If we used PHP and mySQL, we could glean the benefits of having user sessions which would allow functions like showing who is looking at the page.

The message board would be a must and the top 5 messages could be built into the front page. This is all data driven and could be low on graphics.

Given that the data and the style is not tied up together, we could have skins so that users could choose how they view the site.

What's more, a more admin driven system would allow us to attract friends of ours that would not normally be bothered to write anything up.

Much of this is not difficult, I have been knocking together stuff for Chom Isis 3

One issue would be either moving the location of the site or having a mySQL/PHP addition to the account. I say mySQL+PHP because PHP is very much like Perl (which we are familiar with) and mySQL interfaces very easily with PHP.

What do you think?

That's exactly how my site runs. I use drupal (http://www.drupal.org).

Posted by tom at 2004/06/09 09:45:51.

Ah, yes. Indeed. Just like that. Just like a thousand other online communities. I'd like to feel a bit more integrated with everyone else, you see.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2004/06/09 13:34:19.

Hmmm.... I don't know... In principle I agree, something that could make the site a bit more active would be good. However, I do have a long list of very boring reservations about any kind of change.

1) Money. At the moment the hosting we have does cost money (of which I owe Jon Ellis a lot, admittedly), but these are costs which are pretty much non-negotiable quantities. That is to say, given the other sites hosted on our package, of which there are many now, I personally am pretty much committed to keeping that package. While we are still paying for that package, the 'Maison is in a sense free - in that to host it anywhere else would cost money in addition to the money we have to pay anyway. Additionally, to add an SQL server would cost money...

2) Time. For me at least, I have a means of writing blog entries that is up and running and working now. Installing a new system would mean at the very least taking time for the installation, possibly it sounds like you're considering us writing a new system, which would take a significant amount of time, plus on top of that the amount of time we'd have to allow for familiarising ourselves with a new system.

3) Existing Content. I'm very fond of some of our old articles and if we were to consider changing to a new system it would have to be one that could import our existing content. This may be a lot less straightforward than it sounds - although the articles are plain text essentially, there are implicit rules about formatting which Greymatter uses that may not be understood by another publishing system. I for one certainly wouldn't want to go through and reformat 150+ articles by hand!

4) Individuality. I'm not sure how everyone else feels about this, but I think the diverse nature of the 'Maison is one of its strengths. We all have our own little areas and we are all completely at liberty to do what we want with them. The design, content and technology are completely up to us. I think it may be a shame to lose that a bit.

5) Robustness. Greymatter has the pleasing feature that it creates static html pages. If the scripts stop working for some reason, people can still read the articles as they stand. When something like drupal breaks, you suddenly find you have no content any more.

So I don't want to say I'm not interested as such, but just that for any potential change we would have to weigh up the benefits against the above drawbacks. I'm not convinced that currently the benefits of having, say, something like drupal to outweigh the downsides as I've highlighted them.

Besides, in my opinion, the lack of activity on the site is far more a cultural or circumstantial thing than it is to do with technology. I don't think, necessarily, installing a different blogging engine would suddenly give the site a buzz if, fundamentally, people didn't want to (or didn't have the time to) author content for it.

Posted by John at 2004/06/10 10:59:41.

The Maison-De-Stuff is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman - no what I mean is - The Maison-De-Stuff is a lot like the Crystal Maze.

Lots of different zones. All diverse. Looking at the age of content in the dsp section, mine is clearly the Medievil-Zone.

It would be very feasible to implement the kind of stuff you want to do using ASP and MDBs without having to change package. But I'm guessing you want to 'leverage' your existing PHP/MySQL skills.

(bonus points for spotting the deliberate management buzz word)

As an interesting aside, how would I author articles. Do I need a username/password and secret URL?

Posted by dsp at 2004/06/10 13:40:58.

Ooo, just remembered via our reseller package you can have Linux/PHP and MySQL stuff, I think the MySQL database is something like 25 notes/year.

Rob: Do your bullet mates host your MySQL stuff like Chom?

Posted by dsp at 2004/06/10 13:42:20.

Tim: where you're asking about how to author articles there, is that in the current system (Greymatter) or Rob's proposed new system...?

You are of course more than welcome (and always have been) to post articles using the current setup... If you are interested, I can send you the details (probably best by email)...

Posted by John at 2004/06/10 13:47:07.

Yes Tim, as you say, our package can do Linux based domains (and that makes the SQL server cheaper, as you point out), but if we are talking about moving the 'Maison to a Linux platform, that would mean deleting this domain and starting a new one... I think we have to handle downloading and then re-uploading all the files ourselves...

That would be hellish!

Perhaps, therefore, if there is a lot of enthusiasm for this, a better plan might be to create a completely new and distinct "community" website for us all, and have the 'Maison revert to just being effectively the place I keep all my pictures...?

Posted by John at 2004/06/10 13:53:05.

...furthermore the "John's Pictures" bit is very important to me, and I don't want that to move or change at all really.

Many old friends I don't see or even keep in touch with very often tell me they regularly check the page (some, amazingly, on an almost weekly basis). Similarly many members of mine and Chie's families use this to keep up to date with our goings on...

There is also a lot of clever bespoke technology going on behind the scenes there, which some off the shelf, Johnny come lately web publishing package would definitely not be able to do.

Posted by John at 2004/06/10 14:10:16.

Hi John: I was proposing a hybrid Maison, we could create Rob a php.maison-de-stuff.net and he could flip in and out of it. I understand the not wanting an all encompasing thing. You can never please everyone. For instance, I don't know PHP, but am proficient in ASP.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

PS. Can I have a username/password for the maison. Thanks. I can be emailed at tjh *ahem* at *ahem* *ahem* nonhostile *ahem* dot com *ahem* *ahem*

Posted by dsp at 2004/06/10 16:40:26.

Rob and John: Is there a new maison-de-stuff page template? With a Photoshop file or something that contains the Maison's blue header in layer format. If I want to add a page that's 'in keeping' I cannot at the minute because I'd have to make my own title header. After Rob's post, I've become conscious that "one of these kids is doing his own thing"

Posted by dsp at 2004/06/11 11:40:50.

Hmmm, no I don't have a copy of the original image that makes the title banner. Rob made it of course, so he might have a copy...?

As for the HTML side of things, anything in done greymatter automatically uses the templates I've defined within greymatter.... but other than that though, for any other pages I think it's just a case of copying and pasting from wherever you feel is most appropriate!

Posted by John at 2004/06/11 14:43:57.

Was just having a think about blogs etc, and it occurred to me one really neat feature would be as follows... Let's say a few of us got into the habit of writing daily (or weekly) blog entries, a bit like mine... Wouldn't it be nice to have something that could view a day from each of three or four of them side by side? Would be particularly interesting if, say, two or three of us had all done the same thing one day... Just a thought really.

Posted by John at 2004/06/14 09:00:56.

Cool! Yeah... RSS?!

Posted by tom at 2004/06/14 16:40:34.

RSS might be up to the job, but we'd probably have to add in a tag or two of our own to do the tying up - each entry would need some kind of time slot identifier that related it to a day, or week, or whatever.

Before you say it, yes I know RSS entries have times/dates usually, but this isn't quite enough - you might well write an entry for a particular day or week several days after that actual day/week, and you might, as I do, write entries for several days all in one go...

Maybe a weekly version would work better. It clearly has the advantage of not having to write as much! Perhaps there could still be separate sections for each day, but they could all be filled out by default with "not much happened" or "don't remember" or words to that effect...

Posted by John at 2004/06/14 18:35:14.

That pretty much kicks that in the head then. Worth a look.

dsp, I have the image still as a PSD layer format (I keep everything I do). I'll dig it out and send it to you on your *ahem* mail.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2004/06/15 24:55:28.

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