Experts Round Table Network

http://www.expertsrt.net/main

Some of you may have noticed a post off in one of the soapbox threads (http://www.expertsrt.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=872#8294) regarding some proposed improvements to the ERT.net site. I'd be interested to hear thoughts from the entire community. If there is support for it, I propose we switch to the "new" ERT.net in the next day or so. During the switch, the site should be unavailable for approximately 20 minutes. All forum data and user membership can be automatically transferred.

Personally, I can see no reason not to do this. However, with the additional features and new interface, there will be more responsibilities to fill, and we will need commitments from more people to make it work. Many of these jobs will not be overly technical in nature, so lots of people can potentially do them. This will be an interesting way to see if we can still make the community work here at ERT.

Please share whatever thoughts you have here.

-Matt

PS: I had a couple questions from people, so let me clarify.

1) the positions of forum admin and site manager will not change, and the people who hold them now will hold them after the switch to "ERT.net 1.5"

2) The new positions will include:
Journal Admin -- basically like the forum admin, but this person will manage the journal and the comments therein.

Editor/Content Managers -- some people have already been doing this here, but we can use more people, and organize the workflow better with the new CMS

ArticleWiki admin -- manage the article wiki, like the forum admin and jorunal admin

Development and Security -- we'll have a lot more software to maintain. Nick will head the security pen testing and update side of things. Anyone else interested in security and development should talk to me. Obviously the PHP team is all welcome to contribute to both software and security issues.

Aside from Dev and Security, these positions will be elected...which brings me to...

3) I mentioned this before, but the software to run GC elections is ready. My thinking is to do the switch, make an announcement to the entire membership, hold campaigns, and run the elections within a couple weeks of the switch.

-Matt

Yes we need to get a GC as an anchor fo rthe community, and to chart a course so we don't start going in circles again.

I think on eof the first things they have to do is decide what they think is important enough to make it part of their mandate.

Not the biggest fan of Mambo/Joomla .. but if you need volunteers, count me in!

Added Later
I don't mind doing the dirty tech side of jobs. I think I'm not suited to be the admin/content editor of this or that.  :scratch:  :-$

<listening>

 =D>

OK, thanks to the few of you who've contacted me either here or  elsewhere to express support.

Sri, we need all kinds of help, and not everyone can offer it on the technical side, so I'm actually happy to hear you're willing to assist there. It means we get good development support, and it leaves a space for another person who may not have contributed yet...and as a coder myself I can appreciate the preference for sticking to that :wink:

I'm going to make the switch sometime in the next couple days. The site will be down for a short time, and I'll announce it at least a few hours in advance. There are likely to be lots of small bugs in the beginning. Nick has already found some and we have a list. It may be a little bumpy at first, but it'll be fun. Worst case, the whole thing explodes in our faces and we just have to come back here  :glasses7:

:sign5:

When you are ready to go just put up a notice on COM and we will know what is going on.

test

pong

I'm not sure I'm pleased with the new look of ERT ; it's pretty confusing. Moreover, Mamboo/Joomla is crap and a high security risk (like phpBB...).

I'm so lost in here that I don't spend any more time answering questions. I don't find very easily new topics in my areas (the ones where I'm supposed to be editor and such) and I don't find them very readable. The journal and wiki seem empty and useless to me.

It's a bit too much for me. Too bad, isn't it?

I suppose I'm the only one complaining about the new forum look & feel, so : so be it.

I agree, I liked only the SMF part. Joomla, me not the biggest fan of.

I had typed a somewhat longer reply, but lost it when my computer froze a minute ago. I'm not in the mood to type it again, so here is a summary:

Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, SMF, WordPress, phpBB, and practically every other open-source application suck in terms of accessibility and security. However, I didn' have time to write all this stuff when I started working on ERT 1.5. Right now, I am done working -- I have too much else to do. What we have here is a set of applications playing somewhat nicely together, and that have been moderately well secured compared to the way they ship. Since the software was changed, signups have been steadily coming in for the first time (it's a correlation, I have no idea how much it is the cause).  Right now, I'm fairly happy with it, and I don't think the wiki and journal are useless, only empty due to lack of contributions (the wiki, by the way is where Nick has started to write his first article, so personally I think it's already a success. The journal seems perfect for coral to put his '2nd hand bytes'). Frankly, I'm not wiling to work on changing it much -- I have too much to do, and it would bring me little pleasure.

The only promise I've made and not delivered on is that we would elect a GC. I plan to do that before I go back to school in two weeks (at which point you won't see much of me around here anymore). Beyond that, I'll continue to keep my promise that if you have ideas to make ERT better, you'll be given the resources to bring those ideas to fruition, and no one will get in your way. If you want to make ERT 1.6, be my guest -- in fact I'd love that. I'm not particularly interested in hearing criticism without concrete solutions and commitments to implement them.

I think Matt was too polite in his response.

for over 10 months we have been building ERT. Only a very small handful of people have actually contributed.  All off the shelf software is crap.  You do the best you can with it until you can develop the kind of custom solutions that you want.  That takes participation. 

I dropped the forum because it was taking all my time dealing with petty problems and responding to "I don't like this" and "you should add this".  Matt took it on and made major improvments. Between us we are moving the sites to become a unique place on the Internet.

Anyone with the technical expertise to point out valid improvments that need to be done, also has the expertise to prototype it and present positive advances instead of just the negative crap.  ERT is about doing and learning; not whining and complaining.  Spectators are requested to stay the hell out of the way of the contruction teams; or put on a hard hat and start helping to fix whatever you think is wrong.

BTW, In July ERT content side had over 44,000 page views from 32,000+ visits, and daily our level of returning visitors has risen to over 30%, so I guess something is being done right. The rise in signups is a result of the improvements in the forum interface and more vistors from the content side being exposed to it.

I am really tired of the "ME ME ME I I I" crap where criticism is based on personal preference or taste instead be presented as valid technical analysis and an alternative solution.

Maybe I was too polite...oh well, lol.

BTW, one thing I forgot to mention is that, if you don't like all the new features, you can use just the forum here:

http://www.expertsrt.net/smf

Bah.. <-- my response to Cd&'s "not so polite" post.

Can matt or cd& briefly describe the required custom solution? I'ld be more than happy to throw out a small prototype that fits the bill.

I have and will continue to contribute positively.. :-\

Well, what were you complaining about? What do you want changed and/or added? That should be what determines what you'd like to contribute....

I'm not totally sure what ERT should be. At the present, I guess it would be some small project like:

---
A collaborative environment in which to create new content, seamlessly integrated with a workflow/publishing software and discussion area ("forum") in which each thread may be automatically linked to any piece of content. All of this must be programmed securely using optimized OOP, must be SEF, and controlled by a single user management system with multiple access levels. It must also be 100% accessible, and skinnable, offering a variety of perfectly attractve skins that the users may choose from...oh, and don't forget the customizable, 100% reliable email notifs and RSS feeds for all content. It also needs a dash of "je ne sais quoi" just to top things off.
---

Now, in regard to Roy's "not so polite post." He was absolutely right -- if "Bah" is all anyone has to say in response, that just proves the point. I could not have made it clearer that people would have the freedom to make contributions of their choice on .net. The comments you and VGR made above were useless -- they identified no specific problem, and offered no solution or assistance. Both of you have passwords to the server (VGR at root level) and know where to go if you need resources to try out changes.  I appreciated your contribution to the Drupal Journal, but it sits there unfinished because I could not figure out how to make it do what we needed, and you did not follow through after the initial setup. I am not going to hound people to do stuff on here -- the motivation has to come from you. If the reason you didn't  finish that is because you couldn't, you didn't have time, or you worried that it would be a ton of work that the community wouldn't embrace in the end....join the club -- I've lost track of the number of mods and scripts I've written for ERT that are now sitting in the trash heap. That's just part of the game...

This is really just a matter of common sense. If someone is building something, and you walk by and say "Man, that sucks" and keep walking, he's likely going to feel like throwing his hammer at you, and rightly so. If your intention was to help, you would have done better to just keep quiet. If you expected him to say "oh really? How may I change it for you?" or "Oh really? Would you like to show me how to change it?" you need to get out a little more. If on the other hand, you say, "I have a suggestion -- it might be better if you did it this way, let me help" the guy is likely to hand you the hammer, and buy you a beer after work.

Read the rest of my post.......... :-/

I did read all your posts, and I appreciate your offer to help if you follow through on it. Cd& was not responding to that post, however, he was responding to this one:


(and VGR's similar one) which as I said above, is useless. Everyone here can agree that all avalable CMSs suck on one level or another. That doesn't get us any closer to a solution.

My description of what is needed, minus a couple small features, describes what we already have here. Whether you'd like to work on an updated, improved version of that, or try something completely different, I'll give you whatever you need to do it. I'd much rather make progress than bicker.

Well, I have actually been struggling to try and do a representative interface. The real problem is that there will not be a single interface; just a collection of widgets that act as containers for different types of content.  No fixed presetnation scheme; the user defines that.  No fixed sizes; the user will decide sizing and overlays of the widgets based on what they think is most important.  The same goes for position.  The user will have positioning control for just about everything except the title banner across the top and the footer with copyright and legal stuff.

comments = a widget for each or each group, ordered or filtered by the user. 
all comments by xxxx = a widget.
List of related topics = a widget.
list of attachments = a widget.
display area for an attachment = a widget.
White board = a widget.
comment editor = a widget.
external reference list = a widget.
navigation menu = a widget.
search options = a widget.
control panel = a widget.

What the hell is a widget?  A basic CSS rendering box, totally self contained with presentation 100% controlled by CSS through a basic stylesheet that gets overlaid with a user defined stylesheet generated and modified through a form based page.

The page layout is simple:

----------------------------------
|
| banner (static)         
|
|__________________________________
|
| content ( the user owns this area)
|
|
|__________________________________
|
| footer (static)
|
|____________________________________-

The user get total control of how they want the presentation done. The widget list above is by no means all that there is.  Anything that is appropriate for learning training and professional discussion is a valid widget.  The rendering box contains the structural HTML appropriate for the content the widget will hold.  Dynamics will be with scripted functions from libraries.  So development of a widget consists of writing the HTML with an id on everything; some general classes will emerge as we find common features in widgets.  Then if there are dynmaic controls necessary (layout management, AJAX, DHTML) the functions get written and added to the JS libraries after testing.

A widget should be testable on its own.  This is zero ego programming.  The developer gives up all control of presentation, page layout, and what they think is important.  The user owns the page.

So decide what widget you want to do and write it, without any concern about how it must react with the rest of the page.  Must be HTML4.01 strict compliant, light-weight, and flexible. 

I am still working on a sort of default wireframe for the user to start from, and I will posted it once i figure it out, along with some detail on the functionality required for some of the widgets like the whiteboard, that may be a little complex.

That is the front.  On the back everything will be database driven, and dynamically generated.  The db design is just about complete and centers around three primary entity modules:  Person, ContentItem, and Rules.  The processing model is a basic rules engine that processes the rules to generate a page.

The programming is not rocket science, but the method of presentation is radical and revolutionary.  Designers and developers will not like giving up control to the users.  Many users will not have a clue how to layout their page.  The critical piece is for us as developers to learn how build that control panel for the users so they can take control.

Cd&

That makes sense in the abstract....I would personally find a minimal example helpful.

A rough example (assume that variables will be resolved server side during generation:

<div id="commentsByWidget">
   <form id="CBWReadOnlyForm">
   <!-- Repeatable section -->
   <fieldset id="CBWMemberContainer1">
      <legend id="CBWMembername1">$membername</legend>
     <div id="CBWFields1">
       <input type="checkbox" value="$commentid">
      <span id="CBWDetail1">
         Forum: $forumname Related Article: $ContentItemTitle
      </span>
      <textarea rows="$userdefrows" cols="$userdefcols" id="CBWText1"
         value="$commentText"></textarea>
     </div>
   </fieldset>
   <!-- End repeatable area --- add as many iteration as required for all comments
   </form>
   <div id="CBWcontrols">
<!-- here go buttons, icons, or links to fire client side functions to create any number of effects.  Expand, collapse, hide, change cascade stacking order or change sort ordering; and AJAX function change to a different member, show comments for this forum only, show comments related to this article only removed checked comments, remove unchecked comments.  -->

   </div>
<!-- perhaps here a help icon, or an options button, or anything else that relates to the comments by widget -->
</div>

That is the easy part.  Now it needs default styling based on id.  It needs the javascript to implement the client side functions and AJAX interface.   
      
It will also need documentation for user styling options that can be incorporated into the user option screens and added to the rules database...  What CSS properties are available for each of the elements; what values are valid or invalid, and are there cross-browser issues that a user might need to be warned about. 

That leaves the server side scripting...  A CBW object with methods to apply the rules necessary to generate this widget; but before that object gets created and integratd, the widget itself is 100% testable by plugging in static values for the variables.  The AJAX function should be independent of any widget.  The AJAX objects get build and extended as they are required.


An anyone who wants to build a widget can so, test it, integrate it and get really irritated when someone craps on it without giving any kind of suggestion or real feedback except they don't like it.

Cd&