Re: [Webmacro-devel] Some WM PR stuff

[Lane S. <la...@op...>]

marc,

ebr has been a terrific asset to wm but wm is a jewel to which many, 
many have added countless hours and to which others continue to add the 
fruits of their knowledge.

now.... as to your offer below. I, for one, think it would be marvelous 
if you would produce a slick pdf press release. I think you should add 
photos of the main contributors as well as their locations on the bottom 
in the section "for contact information". This would give the press 
release some pizazz and substance. Put real people behind the wm 
community. Also, I think it would be a good idea to develop on our wiki 
site, a list of contacts for pr purposes. I will add some names from my 
file.

as to the web project, my thinking follows along these lines which I 
think are close to yours.

a) a general purpose plug-in servlet which has some lifecyle methods 
specific to webMacro and good servlet design:
installWMPlugins(); //on init, read the plugin property list (in 
dependency order!), initialize
getUser(); // adapter method to get user object making request
authenticate(); // adapter method to authenticate user for this request, 
if required
authorize(); // adapter method to authorize user for this request, if 
required
refreshWMPlugins(); // a call back to the servlet to refresh the 
services installed
addWMPlugin(); // allow a plugin to be added dynamically
removeWMPlugin(); // allow a plugin to be removed dynamically
dispatchRequest(); // dispatch the request object returning a template
evaluateTemplate(); // evaluate the template and return a completed page 
for sending.

Instead of loading plugins and objects from a properties file, I 
strongly urge the use of a webmacro template file so as to benefit from 
caching and the ability to create a list, not a map of plugins to 
initialize. To your thinking, how is a plugin different from a context tool?

b) plug-in contributions. Each of us could contribute some plugins from 
our APIs. I can add some physical-independent storage for authentication 
and authorization.

-Lane




Marc Palmer wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>Seeing as Eric has done all the hard work for us lazy people in producing 
>a WM 1.1 release, we should do our most to promote it!
>
>Nobody seems to be "in charge" of issuing WM press releases. It is vital 
>that we issue press releases to let people know WM is around, maturing, 
>and used by some very BIG people (i.e. AltaVista). The more exposure, the 
>more users we will have.
>
>I am willing to write and send out this press release. I did it recently 
>for one of our own products and had some reasonable success (announcement 
>covered by people like JavaWorld, ITToolbox, Javable, JavaLobby, jGuru 
>etc.) which generated several thousand hits for us.
>
>Also, I want to ask a related question  because I don't have time to 
>check  if WM comes with a default web application yet, that will server 
>up templates and provide context tool classes, the class names of which 
>are loaded from some .properties file?
>
>If not, I will write this. I have been planning it myself as I need it, 
>and this could completely change the market for WM.
>
>Instead of WM just being for web-app/Java developers, it would suddenly 
>become a tool that any webmaster can download and install, to get 
>world-class templating of site pages with configurable "plugins" that 
>they can write in Java or download.
>
>As such, a repository of general-purpose Java classes that work well in 
>templates would also be very useful to such people.
>
>With this I think we can turn WM's user-base from 100s into 1000s.
>
>So, if someone can fill me in on the above / supply comments, I would be 
>grateful. I'm thinking of a single servlet in .WAR with WM in WEB-INF/lib 
>and a way to pass a list of context tool classnames to it, probably via 
>WebMacro.properties. These would be instantiated at servlet startup, and 
>put into every page. It would just be a case of using URIs like:
>
> www.mysite.com/WebMacro?template=mytemplate.wm
>
>...which is obviously something any webdesigner can understand, and means 
>they can get the basic advantages of running WM with absolutely NO 
>programming at all.
>
>I will run a 1.1 press release by you guys in the next couple of days 
>(unless somebody else feels they are more qualified for this). I'm no 
>expert on this stuff, but I've done it before which is something.
>
>I want to give something back to WM... for me WM has been the gift that 
>keeps on giving!
>
>Best wishes,
>Marc
>
>
>
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-- 
Lane Sharman
http://opendoors.com Conga, GoodTimes and Application Hosting Services
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