Re: [GMOD-devel] [Gmod-tripal] Migrating gmod.org advice/RFC

[Dave C. <cle...@ga...>]

Hi Nathan,

I was only vaguely aware of Jekyll and thanks for the extra information.  I
know a lot of projects use Jekyll in combination with GitHub so that is
certainly well-trod territory.

But I would like to, um emphasize that moving from MediaWiki is very
different from moving from MoinMoin.  MoinMoin does not support inline HTML
and this greatly reduced the number of instances where we had to deal with
what are corner cases for GFM.  GMOD.org is chock full of inline HTML and I
think the translation effort would collapse under the diversity of hacks.

My (discounted!) 2¢,

Dave C

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Nathan Dunn <nat...@lb...> wrote:

>
> Dave,
>
> I wasn’t advocating using only GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), all of
> which I agree with your points on.
>
> GH Pages (https://pages.github.com/) can either use straight HTML or use
> Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/ it is basically metalsmith.io on Ruby ),
> which can use either GFM or HTML, which provides a pretty rich UI and
> multiple integrations (http://www.jekyll-plugins.com/) and still allows
> direct editing of content within GitHub.
>
>
>
> Any who, I agree that the easiest option is to grab an AWS instance off of
> the Amazon Market Place to save yourself some time and the cost should be <
> $1K year, as I think you’ll likely lose several days on doing any sort of
> conversion.
>
> https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B0078U8W14
>
> Nathan
>
> On Sep 1, 2016, at 10:24 AM, Dave Clements <cle...@ga...>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Scott,
>
> We are in the process of migrating the Galaxy Wiki from MoinMoin to a
> GitHub hosted pseudo-wiki (still looking for a good term). The content will
> be in GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) plus YAML for metadata and structured
> content.  We'll then use MetalSmith (http://www.metalsmith.io/) to
> generate the actual web site, and it's MetalSmith that will process the
> YAML.
>
> Editors will be able to edit local copies of the doc and generate the
> website locally, as well as edit doc directly in GitHub.  This model will
> fully leverage the power of GitHub.
>
> Moving GMOD.org <http://gmod.org> to straight github would also leverage
> that power and community involvement.
>
> *However, I think this would be tremendously difficult,* and the
> advantages of moving from MediaWiki to GitHub are far less than moving from
> MoinMoin to GitHub.
>
> 1) MediaWiki supports a ton of extensions such as Templates, Categories,
> and Extensions.  GFM does not support any of that.  A lot of content on
> GMOD.org <http://gmod.org> would have to be disentangled.
>
> 2) GFM is deliberately crippled.  The theory (I think) is that you should
> be using CSS for formatting instead of markup.  I like that goal, but the
> current GMOD.org <http://gmod.org> is chock full of MediaWiki / HTML
> hacks to achieve formatting (I put a lot of it there). Translating that to
> pure GFM / CSS would be a nightmare.
>
> GFM does support directly using HTML, but it does not support mixing the
> two in many circumstances.  For example, tables are all GFM or all HTML.
> And GFM tables are painfully limited. Only the simplest tables can be
> translated to GFM.  If you want row headers, or colspans or rowspans, or
> right or center alignment in a cell, or ... you have to translate the whole
> table to HTML.  And that defeats the whole purpose of having a wiki.
>
> *So, my vote is stick with MediaWiki.*  I don't think there is any hope
> of migrating to GFM without seriously mangling 90%+ of the pages.
>
> I've CC'd Dannon Baker who is also working the Galaxy Wiki move. He's not
> familiar with the current GMOD.org <http://gmod.org> implementation, but
> he knows about migrating wikis to GitHub.  He may have more to add (and
> might even contradict me :-).
>
> And, we've been running our wiki on AWS for years.  We've been very happy
> with it.
>
> My 98¢
>
> Dave C
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 8:58 AM, Nathan Dunn <nat...@lb...> wrote:
>
>>
>> Scott,
>>
>> I would advocate moving to GH pages just for the long-term ease of use,
>> permission management, and cost.   There is no server to setup, but you’ll
>> have to configure a Jekyll theme (http://jekyllthemes.org/) and add the
>> content, which is a PITA unless you create a single-page app (which I don’t
>> advocate).
>>
>> My guess is that actually converting the content will be easier (and I’m
>> sure folks in the community will be glad to help).
>>
>> https://github.com/philipashlock/mediawiki-to-markdown
>>
>>
>> Nathan
>>
>> On Sep 1, 2016, at 8:46 AM, Scott Cain <sc...@sc...> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm addressing this to a few of the more heavily trafficked GMOD mailing
>> lists in hopes of getting some good advice.  The server that runs
>> gmod.org is being retired at the end of the month, so I have to find it
>> a new home.  One option includes leaving it at OICR on a new virtual
>> machine, but it will require me to port the existing MediaWiki instance,
>> which I already know won't be fun.
>>
>> There are other alternatives though--it was suggested recently that the
>> content in gmod.org could be migrated to GitHub pages, which sounds
>> appealing but I have no idea how much work would be involved.  I've also
>> considered migrating to AWS, which I think will be a similar amount of work
>> as the internal migration at OICR but would likely be cheaper in the long
>> run.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any insights!
>> Scott
>>
>>
>> --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Scott Cain, Ph. D.                                   scott at scottcain
>> dot net
>> GMOD Coordinator (http://gmod.org/)                     216-392-3087
>> Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------------
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>>
>
>
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>
>


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