(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

A news site for Puppy Linux is now up at http://puppylinux.org/news.

The site uses sNews (a fantastic CMS ! ) running only two PHP files and a MySQL backend.

Why a news site?
- News about Puppy is much-needed by the rest of the world, so it will be good to have an official news site where our writers can contribute.

Why not keep using the Drupal CMS?
- The current Drupal installation has become too complex for maintenance by a volunteer.

Are we moving to multiple sites again, like a news site being separate from a wiki?
- To some extent, yes, but in the future, those sites will be:
* /home - static pages containing links to Puppy Linux resources in the Web and archived pages.
* /news - multi-user news publishing for current news (not older than a year) - this is the subject of this thread.
* /wiki - This is open for discussion. If manuals (in different languages) can be collected (through the news pages) and kept updated by the authors*, then the manuals and the Murga forum can provide answers to users. If many members will want to continue using a wiki, then a new WikkaWiki can be installed and the still relevant content of the current wiki be transferred to it.

Shall manual writers be given some access to the website?
- My proposal is for manual writers and translators to be given FTP space at puppylinux.org, say a 20 MB space for every language. The current writers and translators will be the initial list for this purpose.

These are my thoughts for now. Your suggestions are welcome.

Thanks Raffy for the info

I would like a twitter feed too

Being a totally careless cructacean I enabled javascript
in wikkawiki for Tmxxine - it lasted about 6 months (did it two or three times) However the Puppy wikka wiki has proven robust and simple
- the reason I enabled javascript was to play youtube vids - not required for Puppy and was never enabled

So would recommend updating to latest wikkawiki and transferring files
and updating
http://pupweb.org/

We have a media wiki here too
http://linux.wikia.com/wiki/Puppy_Linux

This is my opinion/suggestion for .org.

- Give a static front end or a simple dynamic front end that allows only few folks who will be administering the website to modify. No registrations allowed.

- Create a simple dynamic backend that can allow anyone to post puplets, comments, reviews etc. No registrations required. Just a captcha would do. Anything posted here should go to the admins for approval. If not approved within a certain no. of days (say 5), these can be automatically deleted.

- Add weekly crons to clean up older data. Anything in the dynamic part that is older than a certain time frame (few months) can be deleted off the main db or moved to an archive location.

- The static/simple dynamic front end can take feeds from the dynamic backend and have it in appropriate places so that the overall website looks and acts dynamic.

- For manual/Wiki, we can have a separate backend (even Wikkawiki) or use some existing work that folks are already doing in different places or have done in Drupal. If using Drupal data, we will need to get this out of Drupal db into something else.

Our current Drupal website has nearly 10,000 registered users out of which most have registered for adding spam. There is no point in having registration if the spammers are registering manually and adding their stuff.

Advantages of doing this:
- The performance will definitely be much higher than the current setup
- We might be able to continue on the current hosting without ads

P.S. I was testing sNews and already found an error. Maybe I spent 5 minutes total on it. The article I posted disappeared.

The page is there, prit, you just have to tick "Publish" below the editing box. There are other additional page info that you can fill in by clicking on the item.

Thanks for your comments. Am hoping that sNews at /news and static pages at /home can implement your suggestions about the simple frontend (registration at /news can be disabled anytime). Will appreciate suggestions about the pages at /home with feeds, such as from the forum, Barry's blog and /news.

For the dynamic backend, we will appreciate more help. Of course, Prit has been helping in transfering and maintaining the site at Hostgator. Thanks for being there.

I stopped using
http://pupweb.org/
the original wiki
to give the Drupal website a chance to establish

I will now continue the use of the wikkawiki
those wishing to update and help
http://pupweb.org/wikka/UsingThisWiki

@raffy: Looks really good Registered, already.

Okay, this is now getting complicated, although - if it means that the news will all be in one place - simple as well.
Will it be harder to maintain the new news page than just like adding to a blog?
Would you like me to be on the list of editors?

Steve (terrier on puppylinux.org)

This page shows a sample of something that can be done. It shows feeds from various Puppy sources.
http://puppylinux.asia/news/

Likewise, we can have the dynamic feeds inside the front end.

prit1 wrote:This page shows a sample of something that can be done. It shows feeds from various Puppy sources.
http://puppylinux.asia/news/

That looks great Prit. Quite a powerful news engine.

Steve

@Steve: Just register at sNews and I will upgrade you to editor.

@Prit: Thanks for the "feeds" page. The moving cursor is a bit scary at first. Maybe a 100-character intro/pop-up when hovering over the feed URL will be a great feature.

I've just attempted to add a news item and there are a few puzzles.
I entered the text using the authoring tools on the screen
(assuming it would behave better than if I did it my own way)
and it only showed a small part of what I'd done. Here's what I entered: And all it shows is the image and "Yet another alpha! Get it from here"

???

Also, I created a new category for alphas, but I couldn't work out how to add a new entry there.

Something else I was thinking about was in relation to the http://puppylinux.asia/news/ page:
It shows an overview of several sources, And I was thinking that as many people might continue
to go to the old news page (/home/news) maybe we could set it up so that the new snews page gets
it from there and from other places. That way myself and othere could just continue with our old
pages and let snews show them on the new page.

The [break] also had me confused at first. It is not a hard HTML break [BR] but a separator for what shows on the front page and what can be read as full article.

So to separate your paragraphs, just use the [P] tag.

There are editing options available under the editor box where you can (see the enclosed image):
- Preview the page (works fast!)
- Set Customizations
- Update the Date

I hope you don't mind if I changed the "Alphas" to "Testing" so that even Betas can be placed under it.

For manual/Wiki, we can have a separate backend (even Wikkawiki) or use some existing work that folks are already doing in different places or have done in Drupal. If using Drupal data, we will need to get this out of Drupal db into something else.

There are two wikis
http://pupweb.org/wikka/

and the Drupal wiki which (mainly) Coolpup has been updating
and is based on the previous wiki

I am going back to the previous wiki
and would like the software updated (thanks Raffy - hope you have time to do this as mentioned in my email)
AND the ability for people to register themselves again
(it is much easier to remove spam registers on the newer wikka software)

It is quite possible to direct people to updated Drupal pages
from the original wiki and vice versa
For example many of the links at the bottom of this page
http://pupweb.org/wikka/ go to Drupal

The same should be done for the language links at the top
Sadly they no longer have flags - but they could be reintroduced

Hope we can work something out

Thanks for the reminder, Lobster. It's good that sNews is looking to be a useful News CMS for Puppy Linux. Now we can focus on the wiki. I've installed the latest wikka at puppylinux.org/wikka. The old wikka at pupweb.org is several versions away from the current one so updating will be a pain.

EDIT: To comment on the new wikka, please go to Lobster's announcement.

To integrate these sections, and following the suggestions above, we have to install a system of page feeds/links to such areas as

- News (sNews will be used for this, as we are retiring Drupal)
- Wiki (the new wikka, as we are retiring Drupal wiki)
- other dynamic areas of the site which Prit may introduce (see Prit's notes above).

I hope that technosaurus will be available to help in this integrative page. FYI, technosaurus has been silently experimenting on the Puppy Linux desktop at pupweb.org/desktop/.

Lobster wrote:

For manual/Wiki, we can have a separate backend (even Wikkawiki) or use some existing work that folks are already doing in different places or have done in Drupal. If using Drupal data, we will need to get this out of Drupal db into something else.

There are two wikis
http://pupweb.org/wikka/

and the Drupal wiki which (mainly) Coolpup has been updating
and is based on the previous wiki

I am going back to the previous wiki
and would like the software updated (thanks Raffy - hope you have time to do this as mentioned in my email)
AND the ability for people to register themselves again
(it is much easier to remove spam registers on the newer wikka software)

It is quite possible to direct people to updated Drupal pages
from the original wiki and vice versa
For example many of the links at the bottom of this page
http://pupweb.org/wikka/ go to Drupal

The same should be done for the language links at the top
Sadly they no longer have flags - but they could be reintroduced

Hope we can work something out

There is also WikiBooks which has plenty of bandwidth and is already multilingual and has more users, and content is GFDL (possibly moving to CC). Content can even be turned into a printed book with PediaPress! I would urge this to be adopted as the only wiki to use. I hope my suggestions here will be considered in the transition to the new more lightweight CMS (which seems like a good idea).

Also going back to the table of Puplets would be a good idea I think.

Nice, Darrelljon
A good alphabetic list, easy to search/see what you want (even if outdated)
[Though I note that going back to the
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Puppy_Linux
page.... where .pets is number 8, the other numbered items,
e.g. 3:Installation, need some updating, as it still refers to puppy 1/2!]

My request is for the Petstore
As above, alphabetic list, please

Can a note be added that people who upload .pets state which series/versions their .pets will run with, please

Has anyone done a series/versions/kernels list/what software runs in your puppy?
Is this the same as a dependency list?
We still confuse many established users, let alone noobies, IMHO
Me included!

Aitch