Re: [Firebird-website] [Firebird-general] Re: Fb Website

[Pavel C. <pc...@ib...>]

tjelvar eriksson napsal(a):
> Hi all,
> 
>> 1. Site search could be actually faster from flat files than from
>> database if there isn't any full-text that could work with Firebird.
> 
> a) I'm not a drupal evangelist, but it does have fulltext-search in  
> the framework,
> others may have too - don't know about BW.
> 
> b) Home of firebird - powered by flatfiles. True irony...

Technology should serve US, not by other way around. For content and
services that we want on the Project's website it's best to be served as
static pages, as there is almost NO dynamic content. For practical
purposes, the pages are divided into snippets (header/footer, menu bar,
sidebar, main page content) that are stored separately and assembled by
page glue code. Except few information areas that are repeating patterns
(list of web resources, news, sub-projects and members information)
nothing really calls for a database. Database would be an overkill for
this, period. These few info bits that *could* be served from database
are few, so having them in "data text files" is cheaper and quicker.

We DO use Firebird as backend on our TRACKER. We even adapted JIRA to
work with Firebird as it wasn't originally supported database. But that
was justified because tracker software needs a database backend if it
should scale and work efficiently. Our website does not. I would agree
to use a database if we would implement some forum facility on it or
something that would have a lot of dynamic content with few data
patterns, but it's NOT this case.

> I do respect your opinion, and this is where the discussion should  
> start.
> What to put in and what it should be.
> My original post, which started of this discussion as i belive, was  
> based
> on a reflection that A.W Harrison wrote that the interest for firebird  
> at
> last conference where null.
> Your reflections around "definitly not a community site" should be  
> given a second thought.

As far as I remember, nobody ever expressed any problems with general
concept, content and target audience for Firebird Project website. All
objections were always targeted to site *structure* and *design*.

For the record, the Firebird website served also as community portal
(with CMS and db backend) many many years ago, when both project and
community were young and relatively small. But these days are over. Even
if we would like to add blogs, extensive news, forum etc. to our site,
we would be just late to the party as all this is already covered by
many thriving sites. There is no point to compete with them, as *our*
duty is to work on Firebird and related sub-projects, and to help users
to get and learn our products, not to operate the community portal.

>> 3. As wiki goes, it doesn't necessarily needs a database as backend,  
>> and
>> we could probably use already existing one or use one provided by
>> SourceForge anyway, and soft-embed it into our site.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean with soft-embed but it sounds as dependent
> patch, and with a mysql-prefix. Hands down here.

It means that it would work on its separate site, but we'll link to it
as an integral part of the site (the design could be even united).

>> 4. Using a database would force us to work with site content over the
>> web (or other) interface, which is unnecessary and in fact
>> counter-productive in our case.
> 
> Pavel, please explain. I'm not sure which work you're refeering to,
> (doucment translation)?

No, to provide content, generally. That's what we do.

> What's the benefits of the current setup? Those could/should be  
> respected.

I explained it earlier, it's dead simple for those who work with the
content although we all use various OSes and favour different tools, and
it's literally zero-maintenance for administrators and almost
zero-configuration (you can get your own local copy up and running in
few minutes). We like it that way.

> Any web-interface could be coupled to dav or svn it that's the subject.

Yes, it could, but why, when the current one is much simpler and works
perfectly?

> 
>> Database is a database, it doesn't matter which one. We use Firebird  
>> at
>> our tracker, and as painless it is, it's still just a necessary evil
>> (JIRA doesn't work without a database) that adds to administrator's
>> responsibilities.
> 
> I'm dizzy. Pavel, I may misundersand you, but you sound counter  
> database,
> and counter web. 

Nope, I'm just practical. I do QA in Firebird, that's my primary
objective. I and Helen work as webmasters because somebody has to. We do
it from the beginning, and over the last nine years nobody ever
expressed any real interest to join us (but we heard plenty of advices
how we should do it). I take care of PHP code and low level plumbing
(except the Foundation sub-site which is fully under Helen's control),
Helen looks after the general content and last years also after the
visual design. Few others (including me) work with the content in their
areas of interest / parts of our site (sub-projects). We have other
duties, but we also do some web publishing, and we want it dead simple
for us. That's it. Maybe Helen could appreciate a full-blown CMS for the
occasional news and download pages that represents the main portion of
what she does frequently, but I doubt that.

> Thing are compex. Yes...
> Efforts have been made. Yes.... ..but any progress?

Things are not complex, they're dead simple. The problem is that we have
many talkers but few workers that are already overloaded. No wonder that
progress in certain not-so-vital areas is slow (or do you prefer fancy
website instead new stable FB delivered on schedule?).

> But if firebird is an true open source project, the community should  
> be heard
> and invited.

Community is always invited and heard, but universe likes to grant
wishes to those that contribute for real to make them a reality. Talk is
cheap and candy grows on trees only in fairy-tales. Unfortunately, many
people (even grown-ups) tend to live in fairy-tales. Just walk through
the archives, and you'll see. If Firebird Project would be fueled by
good advices given from the distance, then we would have enough in bank
to pay our developers for rest of the century.

best regards
Pavel Cisar