phpwebsite-developers

[Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap

[Mike w. <wi...@ce...>]

Hi,
Just want to confirm a few things. Since the release of the roadmap, has the
rewrite begun?  I see Adam has a start, is that the beginning?  I've been
asked and the question has been asked on Sourceforge, "Are you really doing
a rewrite?".  I would like to answer some of these people but I'm unsure
about whether this is supposed to be kept quiet or what?  What is the
projected release of the final phpWebSite 0.8.0?
I'm not trying to hurry anyone, I just want to keep those looking for info
informed.

Thanks,
winzor

Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap [long]

[Todd O. <to...@da...>]

Yes there will be a rewrite, and no it has not begun yet (at least any
coding).  This mailing list is the official forum to discuss details of the
rewrite.  Over the past several weeks you can see our discussions, which
have dealt mainly with changes to the architecture.  phpWS was built from a
phpNuke core; phpWS(II) will be conceptually different.

The next step for phpWS(II) is to submit a very detailed architectural plan
for everyone to review.  Once the rev2 Roadmap is "approved" by the
developers, then we'll split into teams to begin coding.  The final section
of Brian's Roadmap "Development Team Organization/Management" details this
process well.

I am preparing a software engineering plan for review, but I'm stuck on two
issues.  One of my design goals is to allow a single phpWS installation to
support multiple organizations (500 organizational units [OUs] lets say)
without separate database tables sets.  My original design was a very
structured tree with a branch for each OU; this worked great until I added
the goal of allowing (even encouraging) members of the different OUs to
collaborate on common projects.  Now leaves farther down in the tree
structure (members) have a relationship with leaves in adjacent branches.
Now we don't have a tree, but a mesh!  How do you provide authentication and
control ownership and permissions in this situation?  (I'm working on this
now)

Secondly, how do I allow multiple databases (lets say with 500 OUs each) to
talk with one another for collaboration across database boundries?  I
believe spending the design time to create a distributed scheme will pay off
immeasurably as the project scales.

Many of you may think this is overkill for what you want phpWS to do.  If
you only want to host a single OU, then you don't need this extra
architecture--granted.  The point is that many developers want this
flexibility, which is not available in ANY content management system that I
know about.  I believe this feature will attract many additional developers
in the future, which will improve ALL areas of phpWS.

Right now I don't want to start coding phpWS(II) without thoroughly
considering these design goals.  The code for these "scalability" features
may be written after the rest of the phpWS core, but we don't want to
redesign the core again to add them.  *_It's the difference between a web
SITE and a web application development enviroment._*  Contrary to what many
may be thinking now, I do not believe these design goals will add much
complexity to the project (possibly an additional abstraction layer).

Some perspective:
Last May I met the two high school students that wrote Squirrelmail at the
International Conference on Computing and Missions (iccm.org).  We joked
about how it came to be named after a squirrel, etc.  They wrote the
software for a small missions agency to give a web based alternative to
POP3.  They GPL'd the code and even entered it in ICCM's "Best practices for
missions technologies" where they placed fifth out of five.  If anyone would
have told them or me in May 2000 that Squirrelmail would ever be the number
one PHP web mail product, we would have laughed.  Now Squirrelmail is being
integrated into almost every php portal project around, like phpGroupWare.
They're getting press coverage in many web journals and have an incredible
developer community.

My point is that phpWebSite will be even more successful than Squirrelmail,
if we work hard to produce a project with good architecture and solid code.
In contrast to the constant hacks on phpNuke to add and change
functionality.

Enough pep talk for now.  I'm sure none of you can tell how excited I am
about phpWebSite's ongoing development ;-)

--Todd Owen

RE: [Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap [long]

[Alain F. <al...@va...>]

Hello Todd,

I have deleted your quote and I'll get straight to the point :).

1. I am unsure about the idea to have more OU's from a single database.
Having a single database for many different OU's will not make tasks like
backups and restores easier! Also, what is wrong with the idea to provide
some kind of interface between the various databases that would allow you to
exchange information easily between the various OU's? Although I can
understand your idea about the single database for many OU's, practise shows
that this is very often combined with administrative nightmares (backups,
optimization, relocation to a new machine, etc).

2. About the permissions problem you were referring to (one or two 'r' here?
I can have it wrong, I'm a Luxembourger). I really like the Windows NT/2000
platform :). And what I most like about it, is the very powerful and
flexible permissions system. Can't we somehow do something along those lines
for phpWebSite? That would mean to have users, groups that users can belong
to, and "user and group roles". For instance: in order to post a news item,
you need to have the "news editor role". If the user alain either has the
"news editor role", or is member of a group having the "news editor role",
he can post a piece of news. That wouold be very flexible actually.

Thanks for reading !

RE: [Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap [long]

[Jason C. <cam...@xp...>]

I like this idea too.  I thought this was how we were going to do the 
administrative engine but I could be wrong.

As for one database having multiple sites in it, I'm all for that for the 
people that want it.  I just don't see why a big ISP would want say 40 
customer sites in one database.  I know I won't be doing that for my 
customers.  Everyone is having a separate database because I think its 
safer that way in the long run.  What happens if someone corrupts their 
database for some reason?  That could corrupt all the tables for all the 
sites in some way.  Also, having them all have their own login/pw for each 
table of theirs in the database is a pain to have to do compared to just 
assigning a login/pw to a database.  I'm just not on the "go" side for 
having multiple sites in the same database as you can tell :)  Someone make 
me a believer of this concept because I see no point in it.  If I had a 
customer that wanted to run two phpWebSite installations then I'd give them 
another database /w login/pw for that site as well.  I wouldn't include the 
first and second site in the same database.  Anyways, thats my thoughts on 
it.....


> 2. About the permissions problem you were referring to (one or two 'r'
> here? I can have it wrong, I'm a Luxembourger). I really like the
> Windows NT/2000 platform :). And what I most like about it, is the very
> powerful and flexible permissions system. Can't we somehow do something
> along those lines for phpWebSite? That would mean to have users, groups
> that users can belong to, and "user and group roles". For instance: in
> order to post a news item, you need to have the "news editor role". If
> the user alain either has the "news editor role", or is member of a
> group having the "news editor role", he can post a piece of news. That
> wouold be very flexible actually.
> 
> Thanks for reading !
> 
Jason Campbell
Xplozive Media Technologies
www.xplozivemedia.com
phpWebSite Developer

Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap [long]

[clayton c. <cc...@ca...>]

Alain,


> That would mean to have users, groups that users can belong
> to, and "user and group roles". For instance: in order to post a news
item,
> you need to have the "news editor role". If the user alain either has the
> "news editor role", or is member of a group having the "news editor role",
> he can post a piece of news. That wouold be very flexible actually.
>
the code i ported from ACS (currently at Todd's website) will allow us to do
this.

[Phpwebsite-developers] Another project for Review

[clayton c. <cc...@ca...>]

I dont know if someone else has made the suggestion, but have a look at the
R2 specs for BinaryCloud

http://www.binarycloud.com/documentation/

Some good ideas are being discussed, and im anxious to see how they are
implemented. At the very least, their archictectural model can serve as an
example we can borrow from. i especially like the idea of "managers".

clayton

Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] New version and Roadmap

[Jeremy A. <ja...@tu...>]

> Hi,
> Just want to confirm a few things. Since the release of the roadmap,
> has the rewrite begun?  I see Adam has a start, is that the beginning?

Just to answer the question about Adam in CVS.  This is just a proof of 
concept for templates.  It is not the rewrite.

> I've been asked and the question has been asked on Sourceforge, "Are
> you really doing a rewrite?".  I would like to answer some of these
> people but I'm unsure about whether this is supposed to be kept quiet
> or what?  What is the projected release of the final phpWebSite 0.8.0?
> I'm not trying to hurry anyone, I just want to keep those looking for
> info informed.
>
> Thanks,
> winzor
>
>
>
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