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A Time to Grow and Change: PostNuke Software Foundation Formed   (News)

German PostNuke Foundation, currently represented by Andreas Krapohl, Drak of HostNuke, and Vanessa Haakenson. (see short bios below)

The functions of the founding members serve a managerial and strategic function, ensuring the project goals and directions remain constant and true to the open source philosophy, quality coding, collaboration, and open standards. It's important to stress you are not required to be member of the foundation (there is currently no membership option) to contribute to the project.

As a result of our combined experiences over the last four years the founding members agree the best way to move the project forward is to have a PN Steering Committee* (see details below) consisting of members of the various teams chosen from well-known, long term active community members and developers.

The job of the steering committee will be to handle the day-to-day running of the project and will be chosen by the founding members. The announcement of the appointments will be made within the next 10 days.

In closing, in the coming days look for an announcement regarding the PN Steering Committee and over the coming weeks look for announcements about a new look/feel for main PN site, a formal site for the foundation (read current bylaws here: http://www.postnuke.com/foundation/) and an updated project road map.

We have set up a forum for further discussions regarding the foundation here.

Viva la PN!

Sincerely,

Board of Directors
PostNuke Software Foundation, Inc
Harry Zink through Fizbin, LLC
Mark West, Lead Developer
German Postnuke Foundation, currently represented by Andreas Krapohl
Drak through HostNuke
Vanessa Haakenson

_________________________________________________________
PNSF Facts & Information
PostNuke Software Foundation
Non-profit registered in the State of Delaware
PostNuke Steering Committee
Advisory body made up of members of the various teams and responsibilities include:

Community management & resourcing
Determine software project priorities
PostNuke software development and direction
Provide policy recommendations
Approval of development plans

Goals/Objectives:
The Corporation is a non-profit organization organized and operated exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. No part of the earnings of the Corporation shall ever inure to the benefit of or be distributed to any member or individual having a personal or private interest in the activities of the Corporation.

Board of Directors
The Board of Directors serve a managerial and strategic function, ensuring PostNuke remains constant and true to the open source philosophy, quality coding, collaboration, and open standards. The following people/organizations serve as initial members of the corporation:
Fizbin, LLC (Harry Zink)
One of the original founders of the project, Harry has been a constant, continued project supporter. He works as a systems administrator for a large entertainment corporation and lives in Los Angeles, California. He has a Ph.D. in psychology and loves to travel to Thailand for the food.
Vanessa Haakenson
Is co-founder of Distance-Educator.com and has been an active participant in PostNuke since July 2001 consulting on usability issues and acting as a PN evangelist to the educational community. In November of 2001 she started the site Designs4Nuke.com to consolidate and share all the information and resources regarding theme design for PostNuke. With a Master's Degree
in Educational Technology she brings a unique perspective to the project having developed web based products focusing on usability, standards, documentation, and community. Over the years she has presented at conferences about PostNuke and has authored articles on effective information design. She recently moved with her son from San Diego, California to Woodland Park, a small mountain town in Colorado.
HostNuke Ltd. (Drak)
Drak has been with the project since July 2001 and was the first to create hosting accounts with PostNuke preinstalled as a way of making it easy for new users to get started. He has 19 years experience in the computer industry and devotes most of his time working for a humanitarian charity. He donates equipment and colocation to the project and is responsive for all server level security and administration.

Mark West, Lead Developer
Works as the computing officer for Systems and Operations for Kingston University and lives
in
South
West
London,
UK.
He
specializes
in
directory
enabled
enterprise
computing,
he's
taught
programming;
techniques,
data
structures
and
algorithms
to
first
year
undergrads
at
Kingston
University
and
adheres
to
a strict
style
of
programming
- heavy
on
layout,
consistency
and
style.
Believing
the
benefits
of
this
strict,
consistent
and
academic
approach
to
coding
is
a stronger,
more
stable
and
bug
free
end
product.
He
has
been
using
PostNuke
from
the.70x.
series
and
is
the
lead
developer.

German
PostNuke
Foundation
(Represented
by Andreas
Krapohl)
Andreas
Krapohl
[aka
larsneo]
is
President
of
the
German
PostNuke
e.V.
foundation
and
is
the
head
of
IT
for
a local
newspaper
in
southern
Germany.
Has
been
with
PostNuke
since
almost
the
beginning
- at
first
with
some
translation
stuff,
then
as
module
author
(phpBB_14)
and
since
early
2002
as
a core
developer.
Main
focus
is
security,
usability
and
accessibility.
He
believes
a solution
should
be
simple
and
elegant.


Current
Jobs in PostNuke
Structure

Development & Quality
Assurance
Communications & News
Moderation
Forum
Moderation & Support
Documentation
Language

Project
Marketing

Generated on August 18, 2005.

Interview: Mark West, Core Developer   (News)

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

I was looking for something a bit different to run a website for myself and a group of friends to orngaise our social lives - going to the pub, events, photo galleries etc. This was late in 2001. I installed postnuke, php-nuke and a few other dynamic website engines/content management solutions. At the time PN was on v.70x. Although I wasn't entirely happy with PN at this stage I read much about the direction of the project and the totally modular style proposed by the API and the general nature of where PN was heading. This fitted in with views on the required architecture for a site engine like PN hence I chose to wait for the .71 release and begin my work here.

.71 was released and many of the aims of my (little) project could now start to be realised. One necesssary feature was missing from my requirements. The core polling solution didn't fufill all of my requirements so I began coding. As with any new technology it was slow going at first - the API was brand new at this stage so the amount of people able to aisist wasn't as high as it is now. But I stuck at it and by june 2002 had the first version of my advanced polls module. At this stage I began to think about releasing
the code for the community. This was going to be my first ever code release and contribution to the open source community so it took a few weeks thinking to make sure that I had the time and commitment to support the module once released.

Hindsight says it was a good decision. The code was well recieved (despite some initial early bugs) and no public site. At this time I was asked if I would be interested in joining the core team. Unfortunately events of that summer meant that I never got to accept that offer - envolution and xaraya were born with PN continuing as well. At this stage I took at step back and concentrated on my own code and a full analysis (almost function by function) of the core code.

The new phpbb based forums came up and were a signifcant improvement on the old cyboards based forums, as has been shown by the success of these over the last 15 months. I began helping people out on the forums and with my analysis of the code on going began helping answer development questions. A few hours here and there became a lot more. By late january of this year i'd
reached a point whereby I felt I had a lot the offer the project and the community as a whole as well as having the time and commitment so stepped up again and volunteered to join the core team.

Since then i've been working more hours than i'd like to count helping shape what will be .8. The amount of work involved in the step that is .8 is something that I underestimated when joining the team. Taking that many modules to API compliance and fully templating the output has an proved to be a huge task.

What is your task in within pnCore?

My primary role is that of looking after the modules development. However I help anywhere where I feel I have something to offer. The main areas this doesn't involve are theming and anything requiring anything remotely graphical. I can write entire modules but get stuck with the admin icon ;)

What is your development like?

I'd probably descibe my development style as professional (due to the requirements of my job). Having taught programming; techniques, data strcutures and algorithms to first year undergrads at Kingston I would also say that I have a very strict style of programming - heavy on layout, consistency and style. Those that have taken a look at the .8 CVS should see a level of consistency of approach across all of the code I have written. I believe that the benefits of this strict, consistent and academic approach
to coding is a stronger, more stable and bug free end product.

The modular nature of PN has meant that even in the core team there hasn't been that much need to work very closely on individual code. Generally things revolve around a lot of discussion around the approach, style and form of a problem or solution before a line of code has been written and then one person goes away and produces that bit of code.

Community has a siginificant impact - I wouldn't be here doing this and spending the time I do if it wasn't for the community. I've made many friends across the world during my time on PN. I make a specific effort to be as prominent as I can on the forums. As coders we can often loose focus while our heads are in the code but time on the forums quickly re-focuses the mind. If people can't use or don't understand the product being produced then the development effort has been wasted. Much of the work I have done
has been centered around solving specific problems that i've encountered while helping others.

What is the biggest difficulty in your development?

The biggest difficulty I find is keeping the requirements of PN light due to my experiences with corporate style computing. PN has and always will work with some basic web hosting but this inherently limits the approach that a developer can take to a solution. For example there is always much talk about integrating product x with product y. If asked this question at work I would recommend directory enabling the product or selecting an alternative that already is. Clearly the average web hosting plan doesn't come with an
LDAP compliant directory.

Which route will Postnuke in your opinion go in the future?

I don't know that's really not up to me (well directly at least). The community will shape the direction based on thier feedback and experiences with the work that myself and others produce. The forums will again play a big part here. I'll soon know if something i've written isn't working as it should :)

What is the weakest/strongest point in PostNuke?

The strongest points are the community and the foundation that this provides. The weak point is documentation but then this is the case with 99% of open source projects and I have to admit that i'm as bad here as every developer that's been interviewed thus far.

Anything else you always wanted to say about Postnuke?

Aside from the name which i've always thought was kinda daft the only thing I can think of for the community to keep the suggestions and comments coming in and if anyone is thinking about wanting to help the team then I can always think of plenty of tasks assistence would be welcome on.

Thank you very much for you time.

No problem - happy to be able to answer a few question. I'll be off to the forums again....... Before I go though - if anyone

Generated on October 23, 2003.

Interview: Klavs Klavsen   (News)

What module(s) are you working on?

I help Øivind out a little with PagEd - he does some great work - and fast too !

I sent a few patches to Jason Judge, the creator of another great module called feproc (FormExpress Processor) - and as he didn't have an itch any more, he asked if I would like to take over maintainership, and so I have done, and released a few new versions with some features/fixes I needed myself :)

Other than that, I have made a small(!) addition to the FAQ module, that I hope will get in the PostNuke core soon - which makes the FAQ module require that you enter en email address, and emails the admin of the site, whenever someone enters a FAQ - they are both downloadable from my site http://VirkPaaNettet.dk. I've been trying to find out if it will be
included in the PostNuke core - cause if it does, I'd gladly add admin-options to the code, so one can select/deselect these additions - but no sense in doing this, if it's just going to be a bigger patch, for me to maintain seperately from the core of the FAQ module.

I also translate (or am working on a translation - delayed due to different reasons :) for PagEd, FormExpress, feproc and pncommerce when I get the time (and PostKart - available at my site, but you all know what happened to PostKart).

Basically, I don't like to re-invent the wheel - I'd rather improve it :) - and I always see if my suggested changes sit well (enough to be included in the main tree) with the maintainers of whatever I want to change/enhance a bit - as I don't want to be stuck maintaining patches that will never get in the real source. If I do make patches, I make them as small as possible, so that it's less of a fuzz to merge, each time the original source gets updated.

What is your real-life job?

I'm an Open Source and Security Consultant, and I have recently started a managed (ie. Only I mess with the source-code, and ensure it actually works - fixing problems, reporting them to the authors and adding features as my customers see fit) PostNuke hosting service, called http://VirkPaaNettet.dk My reasoning for doing this, was that I had used postnuke for more than a year, and was happy with it, so I figured that others could use this too and started it. My hope is that, if this becomes a success, I will contribute a percentage of my profit as donations to the maintainers of the FOSS that I heavily depend on, and if money allows, also sponsor whatever improvements my customers need.

I don't like to spend time, writing html for my site when I don't need to - I'm lazy, which I believe everybody should be. Less wars, better code :)

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

Well, my first real PostNuke site, was http://EnableIT.dk (original design, by a friend of mine, who'se a pro designer :) - and as you may be able to see, the pages are just the usual articles, with a few annoying things hacked away. This way to create pages, isn't very pretty IMHO, but then I found PagEd, which made me realize that with PN and PagEd I had a combination that could be used by everybody, even my own mom (and she does use it, for her up-and-coming company site :) - and started http://VirkPaaNettet.dk

When did you start working on your own module?

Well, I haven't written any modules of my own (only themes, like the one for EnableIT), I don't think I'm going to need to write my own module, anytime soon either, unless a customer wants to pay for it, as this is one of PostNuke's greatest strengths, the wealth of modules.

What is your development like?

I improve/fix where I need to and help out if I can and have the commitment to do so (I have to select my battles, as there are so many).

Do other people help you? How do you work together?

In regards to modules that I work on, I work via Instant-messaging with Øivind on the PagEd module.

I get great help from google, and people on different mailinglists, to which I'd like to extent a big THANK YOU, for lending me some time. I try to give back, by helping back on these lists, and on the lists of my local LUG (SSLUG), of which I'm a boardmember.

How big is the impact of the community on your development?

Well - google and mailinglists (and forums) are a big help. I'm hoping more people realise how great a module feproc is, and start using it :) If anybody is using it - do tell - I'd also like to build up the ToDo list, and people are more than welcome to submit patches ;)

What features should the Postnuke .8 core have to simplify your work?

The main thing I'd like is performance improvements in PostNuke - but until then, I'm going to up the performance with squid-2.5-reverse-proxy-patched.

The biggest issue there, is I can't seem to find anyone who can tell me why the POSTNUKESID is needed for anonymous users (and I haven't prioritized it enought to dig through and find out myself) - as I don't like that every page sends a cookie to my clients. the POSTNUKESID thing, should be deselectable - I can't see it's use for anything but polls, and
the poll module should set that cookie IMHO (by telling PN to do so - which needs to be possible - Xaraya has this feature now).

Which route will Postnuke/your module in your opinion go in the future?

I think PN will stay popular. The smarty templating thing in .8 will be really good - and I see modules like pncommerce and others already making their modules ready to handle this. If PN manages to make it easy for people to change the module templates - or just switch between different output (I mean easy, like my mom can do it via the menus), it will have become truely great.

Anything else you always wanted to say about Postnuke/your module?

Not really, I've said enough :)
Only thing I'll say is a big THANK YOU to all the FOSS developers, thanks to you I may be able to feed my family with the money earned by my virkpaanettet.dk service, and ie. get paid to develop/improve FOSS programs - could life be any better than that (except for kids and a family of course :)

Thank you very much for you time.

You're welcome.

Generated on September 25, 2003.

Open Source Content Management Systems Make E-commerce Websites Affordable   (News)

rmation the staff had gathered and uploaded, and most of their cash reserves—because the custom developer failed to backup the site.

My first concern was how computer savvy and organized this client was. If she was going to require a lot of training and hand-holding, even implementing an open-source solution would cost more than her budget would allow. So I sent her a number of questions to answer, such as:


What kind of site do you need developed?
How did you choose php?
Is an admin interface required?
Do you need to manage banner ads?
What are your support requirements after implementation?”



After she ‘passed my test,’ I told her that I thought she’d have difficulty programming the site from scratch for $4-5,000, even in India. Then I told her that from her requirements, she was ‘re-inventing the wheel.’I told her that there are numerous free open source CMSs with all of the functionality she needed and then some. I told her that by using this approach, I could deliver a fully functional site by the end of the year within the budget she specified.

Within hours, I received a request for an in-person meeting. Because this client had a clear idea of all of the components and capabilities she wanted, I was able to recommend a comprehensive solution that would address all of the issues her specifications raised. This saved a lot of time and expense, as well as made my job much less frustrating.

After the meeting, I sent the PostNuke (http://www.postnuke.com/) manual to the client for review. I recommended PostNuke because it provides full CSS support, HTML 4.01 transitional compliance, and an advanced blocks system. However, she astutely pointed out that, according to the documentation, unique block/page configuration for multiple pages isn’t possible—a stringent requirement for the DoctorVAR.com implementation.

By examining other PostNuke site installations and reading PostNuke.com forum discussions, I quickly figured out that multiple PostNuke installs would work around the page layout problem and provide complete control over the subsite blocks. A PostNuke subsite is an additional installation of PostNuke within the ‘main’ PostNuke installation. For example, if the main PostNuke installation is installed under ‘/htdocs/postnuke’, a subsite would be installed under ‘/htdocs/postnuke/subsite1’.

Each subsite has the ability to be configured completely separately from the main PostNuke installation. This allows the administrator to manage separate topics as their own distinct ‘subsites.’ DoctorVAR.com is configured to share all information between the subsites except for the subsites’ block configuration. Subsites are configured to maintain their own block layouts—thus each page can be laid out uniquely.

The client wanted to use html blocks to handle the bulk of the content since she thought the PostNuke articles feature would be tedious to maintain. However, PostNuke only searches major modules, not html pages. To resolve the html layout and search issues, I integrated a PostNuke module called Content Express (http://pn.arising.net/ce/). This module provides the site with a very friendly admin interface for adding html pages and controlling the site navigation, as well as a search engine for html pages. However, Content Express wasn’t built for multi-site configuration, so I had to figure out what it was doing to know how to integrate it for the multi-site solution.”

To complete the site, I integrated free PostNuke modules to provide an ezine, forum, job bank, and banner/ad management. Within two weeks, my client was laying out pages and uploading data. And by the end of two months the DoctorVAR.com site was up—within her budget and without sacrificing one feature or requirement. The only software she had to purchase was a classified ads module and shopping cart for $59, plus a $30 theme. The rest of the modules were free.”

The flexibility, performance, and ease of administration of the DoctorVAR.com (http://www.doctorvar.com/) implementation is a testament to how robust and cost effective open source CMSs are.”

Additional Resources:

PostNuke.com (open source weblog/content management system) http://www.postnuke.com/

Content Express (open source Web content management system) http://pn.arising.net/ce/

WhatsNews (open source ezine module) http://nuke-modules.gading.de/

phpAdsNew (open source ad server) http://www.phpadsnew.com/one/

phpBB (open-source bulletin board package) http://www.phpbb.com/

phProfession (open source job bank) http://www.phpsolutions.co.uk/index.php

DoctorVAR.com Website Content/Stickiness Articles http://www.doctorvar.com/subsite8/?mid=12#stickiness/

DoctorVAR.com Web Presence Articles http://www.doctorvar.com/subsite27/?mid=22#WebPresence/

Web Marketing & E-Commerce http://www.wilsonweb.com/

Apromotionguide.com - Free website promotion tutorial http://apromotionguide.com/


Linda Christie, a freelance writer based in Omaha NE, is the Executive Editor for DoctorVAR.com.

Generated on April 23, 2003.

PostNuke CMS Make E-commerce Websites Affordable   (News)

e said. “So I started planning my site by analyzing how sites keep me coming back. Good content is the primary draw, but what else?”

Analyzing Website Assets and Annoyances

After a few days of surfing her favorite haunts and examining sites she’d let fall by the wayside, Christie came up with a laundry list of characteristics that she liked: short, easy to remember and descriptive site name; clear focus and organization; easy navigation; free and meaty content; plus links to additional resources.

She also identified a number of annoyances that sent her running to another site: multiple broken links, signup required to access content, popup ads, outdated content, poor navigation and/or search capability. And her number one complaint—locking you onto the site by disabling the browser back button!

Website Do’s and Don’ts

Then she went one step further and read numerous articles on what other people look for. “These articles strongly influenced not only what features were incorporated, but where they are placed,” Christie said. “For example, privacy and the ability to contact a real person are top priorities for many site visitors. So I placed both in the top navigation bar for easy access.”

She also discovered that the best sites are designed to involve visitors—to invite them to contribute content, give feedback, voice their opinions, and exchange information with and help each other. “To improve the ‘stickiness’ of the site, we expanded our plan to include a forum, polls, contributing content, free classifieds and a job bank. I also redesigned my e-newsletter tone to make it more personal, as well as to make subscribers come to the site to read the full story or fill out an opinion poll.”

Custom Development Gone Wrong

After talking to several Web developers, Christie chose a developer offering a custom designed PHP solution using SQL databases to store thousands of stories and favorite links. However, two months into the project, it became evident that the developer didn’t have adequate programming staff to launch the site within the promised three-month schedule. Unfortunately, Christie felt she had few alternatives. “I’d already spent hundreds of hours working on the site design and adding thousands of favorite links and articles to the database—work that would be lost if I changed vendors.”

Three months later and one week before launch, the site went down. The next day it was still offline, even the backend admin area. Then the dreaded call came: hackers had broken into the server hosting facility. “What about the backup? I asked.”

“The last backup file was corrupted,” was the answer. A two-month old zip file didn’t match the current software version, making site restoration almost impossible—but they said they would try. “At this point, I lost all confidence in the developer—not to mention over five-thousand records I’d uploaded,” Christie said.

Searching for a New Solution

Christie wasn’t sure what to do. “I couldn’t afford the time or money to start coding the site from scratch. I knew I would be shopping for champagne on a beer pocketbook of $5,000,” Christie said. “But I didn’t want to compromise unless I had to.”

Christie began searching online for a new developer. Soon, one of the people she contacted emailed her a slew of probing questions.

What kind of site do you need developed?
How did you choose PHP?
Is an admin interface required?
Do you need to manage banner ads?
What are your support requirements after implementation?”


“I felt like I was taking a test,” Christie said. “But the quality of his inquiries gave me confidence this person wanted to clearly understand the scope of the project, as well as my level of expertise to manage the site.”

Soon Christie scheduled a meeting with Scott Kroeger, owner of Hudson Avenue Technologies in Omaha NE, to discuss the challenges of launching such a complex site on a limited budget. After Christie reviewed her well-documented site map and specifications with Kroeger, he recommended a proven and supported open source content management system (CMS): PostNuke.

“Many developers start coding right away,” Kroeger said. “Since my background is in integration, I get more excited about finding open source software, figuring out how the code works and then using my technical skills and coding to make the modules work together. This way I don’t have to spend a lot of time programming from scratch and debugging code.”

Integrating/Customizing Open Source Solutions

The two biggest challenges Kroeger faced with the PostNuke implementation were finding a site search solution and providing unique page layout capabilities for each major category or page.

“Linda wanted the flexibility of using html blocks to handle the bulk of the content,” Kroeger said. “However, PostNuke only searches major modules, not html pages. To resolve this issue, I integrated a PostNuke module called Content Express. This module provides the site with a very friendly admin interface for adding html pages and controlling the site navigation, as well as a search engine for html pages.”

Unique block/page configuration for additional pages isn’t supported by a single PostNuke install. By examining other PostNuke site installations and reading forum discussions, Kroeger quickly figured out that multiple PostNuke installs would work around the page layout problem and provide complete control over the subsite blocks.

“A PostNuke subsite is an additional installation of PostNuke within the ‘main’ PostNuke installation,” Kroeger said. “For example, if the main PostNuke installation is installed under ‘/htdocs/postnuke’, a subsite would be installed under ‘/htdocs/postnuke/subsite1’. So my challenge was to figure out how to make all 28 installs talk to each other by modifying what database tables each subsite looked at. I configured the subsites to maintain their own block layouts—thus each major topic category or subsite/page can be laid out uniquely. Also, Content Express wasn’t built for multi-site configuration, so I had to figure out what it was doing to know how to integrate it for the multi-site solution.”

To complete the site, Kroeger integrated free PostNuke modules to provide an ezine, forum, job bank, and banner/ad management. “Within two weeks, I was laying out pages and uploading data.” Christie said. “And by the end of two months the DoctorVAR.com site I’d dreamed about was up—within my $5,000 budget and without sacrificing one feature or requirement. The only software I had to purchase was a classified ads module and shopping cart for $59, plus a $30 theme. The rest of the software was free.”

Kroeger added, “Because Linda had educated herself on Website design and defined the site specifications so well, I knew clearly from the start what was expected. This made my job much easier, which combined with my open source integration strategy, saved her a lot of time and money.”

The flexibility, performance, and ease of administration of the DoctorVAR.com implementation is a testament to how robust and cost effective open source content management systems are for supporting robust e-commerce Websites.


For additional information about DoctorVAR.com visit their Web site at http://www.doctorvar.com.


Additional Resources:
DoctorVAR.com Website Content/Stickiness Articles

DoctorVar Web Presence Articles

Web Marketing & E-Commerce http://www.wilsonWeb.com/

Apromotionguide.com - Free Website promotion tutorial http://apromotionguide.com/

Content Express (PostNuke Module)http://pn.arising.net/ce/

WhatsNews (PostNuke ezine module)http://nuke-modules.gading.de/

phpAdsNew (open source ad server)http://www.phpadsnew.com/one/

phpBB (open source bulletin board) http://www.phpbb.com/

phProfession (PostNuke job bank module) http://www.phpsolutions.co.uk/index.php


Linda Freeman is a freelance writer based in Omaha NE.

Generated on March 15, 2003.

Thanks Postnuke !!!   (News)

Why you ask ?
Why did we make this choice ?
We feel that based on the previous arguments inside the postnuke community, the apparent lack or support or listening to the Postnuke support sites within the leadership and the direction the current postnuke project is going that we can not to continue to support the project as we should. The leadership of Postnuke has not worked with its support sites and seems unable to communicate with us on major changes that affect us all. Postnuke has been an international community and we feel that we have spent too much time developing, supporting, creating setups for our users only to have our opinions ignored or not consulted at all. The postnuke.it staff can not continue in this manner and has thus decided to part ways with the current postnuke leadership. We have tried to make Postnuke speak as many languages as possible but it seems people don't care about allt he hard work our staff, and our contributors have done.

Incredible but true, they don't take care of all our experience but they want only to show arranging facade, also a little international, but only a facade, why to give support is much laborious one and demands many energies, hours of job, passion, persons that work to us and is not given to from one translation and enough. why it is just from the fact that postnuke.com will make in house its translation (based on ours) that the first suspicions are been born. Suspicions then confirmed from the decision to centralize all the situated ones of support, download, etc, to impose one graphical common and in exchange for to deign to us of a link to postnuke.it until we behave ourselves well..... They are throwing to the wind and they have not considered the resources of the Italian support, the many large to the world, throw to the wind cvs, handbook, documentation, translations, translated, modified modules, adapts to the Italian system, operating module wiki all that happen ?..... for one myopia we think about the Postnuke leadership and because we think they wants to concentrate all in Postnuke.com site, and in bottom to perhaps carry Gloria to 4 specific persons. The idea is to little leave to Postnuke.it practically only the support with forum...... a for all which we instead have offered to all the Italian community up to now.
And so TiMax, perhaps one of the last old guard members of Postnuke is leaving the project. The leadership does not understand that to localize a support site does not just mean translations, but having a full site that contributes to the project. How can our Italian speaking members user the English postnuke.com site to find news, downloads, and information in the forums. A support site needs to offer all these things, answer its own questions, and any custom needs its community needs. A support site needs to be in a position to truly contribute to modifying the project as its local community
members suggest ideas.
For me and the staff here, it does not go well that we are dictated to and have laws affecting our site enacted other than by our own needs. We will not be told how to support our members, how we should look, what we should say and the such. We have our own needs.
Too many times in the past we have been left of bug fixes, modification requests and communications with the core developers that has effected our support for our Italian member community. No more.
In future versions of PostNuke they will rewriting or at least doing major changes to correct blocks, modules, topics in order to adapt things and we have been left out. We have said them, ENOUGH!!

For this reason we will support Postnuke until version 0,714, and beginning from today all the resources, the support, the staff will come move to you on Envolution.
Why Envolution?
With Envolution we feel we will have the following advantages over the current situation at Postnuke:
It is an Italian project, that it truly wants to speak Italian, that listens to its Italian support site (and other languages) The Italian staff is supplied with its own branch of separated development, with cvs independent, but we can still work in harmony with the main development. It is a plan that also only having 2 months of life is much stable one, where it has been worked in order to clean up the code of PostNuke maintaining what there was of bond. Envolution has several functional enhancements over Postnuke in our opinion. Envolution has incorporated a graphical template engine like Encompass, in order to manage better layouts and separate content from code. In Envolution, we are already using the 4th release version the template graphical engine so it is stable. There is already work on a two phase advancement and the implementation of the XML, while in Postnuke they are just beginning work on a template engine and other features (implement qualche.cosa in the next version) Through the NoMoreBlocks module, which was developed by the Italian development staff, it is possible to arrange the blocks for each modules and have different setups. With the next few versions that are in development it will be possible to manage also themes and templates. Envolution has a International support and is constantly increase its development In Envolution constantly they land new developers and designers. Recently Pyksel has decided to join to the development of Envolution. Envolution is perhaps the first CMS planned to have elections in order to decide who will direct the several sections. Envolution is in a position to supporting nearly the totality of the modules, blocks, topics and addons for Postnuke. A true dedication is being made to unsure constant, stable development for users and developers of its modules, blocks. Every effort is being made to ensure compatibility between versions and not having drastic code changes without not at least deprecating code first.They have already in two months created a documentation manual of 200 pages covering nearly the entire project. The guide will be translated in Italian, and a guide in flash for the use in Italian is already in the works And which are the disadvantages?
Envolution is not as readily know as Postnuke is and thus some 3rd party module developers may not support them. As the project grows, and because postnuke .714 modules work with the current Envolution release, we feel more developers will be coming on board very soon.
For all these reasons all the staff of Postnuke.it will dedicate resources, time, development and support to Envolution.
Perhaps you are asking what to make of all this?
Obviously our staff wants to help you move to Envolution. We will continue to support the needs of our community and nothing will change for that. We will continue to offer news, support, downloads, docs in Italian and the personalized
development that you have come to expect over the past few years. We appreciate all the hard work everyone has done If you continue to follow us we will help to easy transfer your site from Postnuke to Envolution. Since Envolution
supports nearly all modules, topics, blocks from Postnuke .714 this should be an easy migration All the staff will be at our disposition if you ever meet with any problems we are here to help. We will also be working to port existing modules and blocks to take full advantage of some of the features of Envoltion.
With much sorrow we must leave postnuke, but with much enthusiasm we invite to you to join us with our new adventure with Envolution: The rest are relative

Generated on October 25, 2002.

Development on pnCommunity to begin ...   (News)

Vision:
pnCommunity is a "super-module" or suite of integrated modules aimed at strengthening communication and project management across the entire Postnuke Community - developers and end-users alike. On many levels, pnCommunity should serve as a replacement to SourceForge.net built around the core Postnuke product. While initially built to serve the Postnuke community, pnCommunity will also be an aggressive first step towards a corporate "killer app" which can further strengthen Postnuke's growing foothold on corporate Intranets.

Many of the components listed below exist either as current PN or PHPNuke modules or as other open-source projects. To build pnCommunity, we need to bring the best elements of each of these apps together under a common, tightly integrated platform which further dovetails cleanly into the pnCore.

Preliminary Components:

01. pnCVS
Building on Jan Schrage's work, this will tie CVS release management to project milestones.

02. pnFunctions
A dynamic function library for developers ... similar to the function library found at PHP.NET bur dedicated to PN functions.

03. pnProject
In many ways the spine of pnCommunity, pnProject provides project management tools like task tracking and resource assignment.

04. pnFeedback
Tied closely to pnProject and potentially many core modules, pnFeedback will provide robust tools for generating, tracking and acting on bug reports, feature requests and documentation requests.

05. pnForums
Built on the forthcoming Comments API, pnForums will eventually replace current support and development forums. Tight integration will allow moderators to generate bug reports, feature requests and other key information from forum posts. Conversely, other elements of pnCommunity will auto-generate topics/posts with in pnForums.

06. pnKnowledge
Fed by pnFeedback and pnForums, this tool should help expand and flesh out online Postnuke documentation.

07. pnDevelopers
Developer-specific member list and user details. Think of it as a developer resume which can be used by project leaders. Allows users and devs to rate developers much like the Developer Profile on SourceForge.net.

08. pnPortfolio
The next generation YAPNS. Creates a gallery of categorized Postnuke sites. Provides an announcement tools for new or updated PN-based sites.

09. pnLibrary
A tool for posting and announcing new Themes, Modules and Blocks. Submission to pnLibrary will automatically post a News article in the appropriate PN subdomain and potentially generate a topic in pnForums for discussion of the new release.

10. pnJobBoards
A place for developers to announce their availability and for end-users to post Postnuke related projects/jobs. Think www.guru.com, but Postnuke-specific and tied into pnDevelopers.

11. pnRatings
Built on the Ratings API, pnRatings will allow user rating of the various elements of pnCommunity.

12. pnPrinter
Online resources (particularly documentation) will be made readily available in a printer-friendly format.

To review the first draft of the pnCommunity vision document in it's entirety, please visit developer.hostnuke.com: Dev Forums.

As a final note, this will be no small project. The pnCommunity team always welcomes folks from all corners of the Postnuke community to join our ranks. If you are interested lending your talents to this project, please email Doug Daulton (apakuni@ursastudios.com).

Thanks to the pnCommunity Team and additional project sponsors Gregor J. Rothfuss (Gregor) and Steve MacGregor (Grape).

Regards,

Doug Daulton (Apakuni) - Project Manager
Curtis Hays (stratagem) - Team Lead, Website Services

Generated on June 5, 2002.

Show me the money!   (News)

The questions I have are:
1) I love using PN and MySQL. Are there clients out there paying decent money to get PN sites built?
2) Can I make money on the integration/design part of the deal?
3) Are others successfully doing it?
4) Is there a job board for this type of work?

Any help would be appreciated. I am at a crossroad and need some help knowing which way to go.

Thanks.

msr

Generated on April 17, 2002.

Lot of things to say.   (News)

e and powerful links manager. I have work hard to make it as I wanted and to feed it. You can see it in action on my site at links.
Ok, that just an example about tools that we want keep alive in our own site. But of course we try to integrate our tools as much as we can. So, as my site is multilingual, I would like to implement the multilingual feature from Postnuke. The problem is that I don’t know very well how this feature works. I mean I know how to use tags and how to implement vocabulary files but unfortunately I don’t know how to detect the language currently in service. I suppose we need to play with cookies but how to decode it, especially when my files are not in the root of Postnuke. But I think is not a problem cause a cookie can be read from an other folder ?? well that my first question. Is someone have some tutorials about how Postnuke works or is it to early to ask cause is in beta ? But I think it’s the same problem to develop modules. How to adapt which are existing if we don’t know what we must change ?

I think you will find that quite a few perl scripts like Gossamer Threads, would require quite a lot of work to work with PostNuke. I would perfer to look at functionality that is similar, than trying to port something that would take much longer

2. Also, the second issue is about modules and addons. As I like to have Gadgets ;) like child, I like to implement new tools on my site for the happiness of my visitors. I have found lots of interesting thinks from time to time. As everybody, we know how is frustrating to see feature working in other site but not on our, cause these modules have been primarily developed for PHPnuke. Everyone have notice that we are poor (Postnuke users) about working modules ;-( It’s cool to have a stable and well written “OS” but without applications to use with, who cares) That was the case of Linux against Windows. So I think it’s important to create a “real and clean” approach to increase the number of “Certified Postnuke modules”. As someone said it’s cool to offer this kind of guaranty which mean that a module have been correctly tested and written for Postnuke. I don’t want to blame anyone ;) but to be honest the “mutant_plugins pakage” was not a success at all. Only 2 modules had worked. And the forum…. Héhé I will come back later to speak about that. Well, concerning this issue, what I suggest is to create a board where everyone who found a module, will put information about it in a same place. So everyone will know what kind of module we can find among the php community. I say PHP community because sometime we found great tools that could me easily (or not so easily) transform in a module. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time. I have already spoke with one module developer and he is ready to port his php module to Postnuke. I think that most of time, developer will be nice enough to make it available for Postnuke as long as it still compatible with PHP Nuke of course. Ok, I continue with my idea… The board will be viewable by everyone, and will offer this options:

a. Everyone put his ideas about a module he found or he would like to found.

i. This module exist and works for Postnuke (need to be certified),

ii. This module exist and but I’m not sure if it’s work for postnuke,

iii. This module was made for php nuke and don’t work for postnuke,

iv. This module doesn’t exist but can be built as modules,

v. I found a nice soft and would like that someone port as a module,

vi. I have an idea of a module,…



b. We offer the possibility to everyone to vote for the modules they want first. So we can develop modules, in priority, those which are the most needed. But of course everyone is free to develop which he wants in priority.
c. Then the next board will show:

i. the name of the module,

ii. the definition of it,

iii. the functionalities,

iv. which developers take care of this module,

v. the new functionalities that people would like to see implemented,

vi. the stages of the module development,

vii. ….

This, in order to know who do something to avoid people doing the same thing twice. We know how is frustrating to find 2 great modules which do the same things but both have one functionality that the other one don’t have. So, if we want both of this feature in our site we must choice one or install both modules ;-( . The better example to give is the module memberlist. Héhé I can’t tell you how much people have the both version in their site (like me, ok).



Well, this is how I see the things to perform and to go, all, in the same direction ;-)


Your ideas are valid, but right now, we are concentrating more on the core of the script to make the use of plugins even easier. If the core of the script is small, versital, and fast, then the plugins become even more viable.

This might however help those of you that are working on plugins to meet your site specific needs. Most plugins that I have found spring from necessity, rather than luxery.



Oh yes, 3rd issue. Concerning existing modules. As I saw in the forum, when we have problem installing a module, users explain their problem with it, and “niceguyeddy” (really nice guy) try to check where is the problem to solved it. But don’t blame it, if after one week the discussion fall in the dungeon and the problem still there. That’s normal cause he have to much thinks to do. As example here I will speak about Submit DHTML module ;) We still want it. Or IM-Buddy which still not a module at all. So, to solve this problem we need again a board where we will find :

1. the name of the module,

2. the problems encounter,

3. the causes and the error message,

4. the stages to solve problems (with colors green for problem solved, yellow for problem take in consideration by a developer, red for a problem not yet take into consideration). When I say problem solved, I want to say really solved and certified solved by the “Postnuke team” cause I see often someone says : “I’ve solved the problem but he haven’t test it widely before to say that, and the problem still be present.

Ok don’t know if I lost all of my readers but I continue héhé ;-)



Of course all I said before is valid for Postnuke development. When we notice a problem or when we have some idea about improving Postnuke where do we put our requests ? on the forum or you submit an article of course, but after one week who remember what you said and what the postnuke team answer ? You need to do a wide search inside forum or articles to see if the topics was treated. We need here again to see what’s going on. To follow and above all to not forgot what has been asked:

1. Where are you in the development stage,

2. Is my idea took into consideration,

3. Is this idea will be implemented in the next release,

4. Is this idea important for all ? Here again users could vote for the features they think are the most important.

5. some color again to see :

a. green, the feature is now implemented for the next released,

b. yellow, the feature is in course of development,

c. red, the feature is not yet take in consideration,



An example again ? Yes of course ;) I have notice that in postnuke 0.61 we can’t modified the type of the block we create, so I have ask if we could next time change the type of block (simple include file, html, links block,….) as we can change block language or position at anytime. The answer was yes it will be done for the next released but it’s still not ;) Here again I don’t blame someone ;) Just try to explain what we can do, to improve things ;) I’m a strategic consultant, it’s why I like to improve the way to manage things and to make the life better. Perhaps it will be done for the next release, perhaps they forgot, and perhaps someone will asked the same question again and again cause he doesn’t know if someone else have asked the same question 2 or 3 weeks before.

Concerning block I take the advantage to tell you that I encounter problems.

If I use :

 simple file include: it doesn’t interpret the php code of the file and show it’s content (code lines). In the file window I see this : “$row[url]“ how do I use it ? if I put an url inside [] no block appeared. If I put url inside the window and erase the code showed before, I can see the content of an html file correctly but if I come back to change block configuration the link have disappeared and I must retype the file root.

 Php script : I got error, can’t interpret ….error line 1….

So I use html block as before with a hack in my theme which interpret the path root of a file put inside the block. So I got my php file interpret correctly inside a block. But, because is there a but ;-) if I switch to an other language, the content still be in English for all language) .

For any bug what so ever, if it doesn't end up on SourceForge, then there is always the possibility that it will be lost on the forums. There are links to the bug reporting all over this site. It just needs to be used, so we can track and assign the problems:)


Ok it’s time to stop my annoying letter. Now I still alone to read myself boooooooo.

I will finish by the forum issue as I told you before. I just want to inform you that I found a really great and also free forum which will soon work with sql database. But use cgi to run. After lots of comparison it the direct challenger of “Vbulletin” the reference. Take a look at www.ikonboard They’re official and multilingual version will be available in the next two weeks. Test it, it’s a very very powerful forum .



Ok I have finish for now and I will come back soon to know what everyone thinks.



Thanks again to everyone for their job.

Generated on August 25, 2001.