PostNuke

initial reactions to the possibilities for


community building, workflow via rss feeds,


and user empowerment in general have been


very positive. we believe we have found


a killer app for our university.




therefore, we have been thinking on how we


could scale postnuke to dozens, later hundreds


of virtual hosts.




obviously, we need to automate the process


of setting up a postnuke site as much as


possible. we are thinking about the following


issues:

• footprint of default postnuke installation
  
  
  we could reduce the footprint by having a
  
  
  central code repository and symlinking to
  
  
  that repository. this opens up a can of
  
  
  worms in regards to security, though.






• quota support for the database
  
  
  we need to find a way to include the database
  
  
  in the user quota. this can likely be done
  
  
  very easily by assigning correct ownership
  
  
  to the mysql database files.






• customized config files
  
  
  we will develop a script to fill in the
  
  
  correct values per host into the config.php
  
  
  file.






• customized database content
  
  
  we will develop an sql dump with sensible
  
  
  defaults for our environment that showcases
  
  
  the features we care about and drops geeky
  
  
  stuff.






• staying in sync with new pn versions
  
  
  we are positive that postnuke will evolve
  
  
  powerful collaboration features in the
  
  
  next few releases, and we don't want to
  
  
  miss out on them. we therefore want to make it
  
  
  as easy as possible to migrate our user
  
  
  base to new pn versions. this calls for
  
  
  some scripts as well.






• performance, performance, performance
  
  
  obviously, its quite a different matter
  
  
  if you run sloppy code on a lone site
  
  
  that gets five hits a week, or on a
  
  
  busy server that has dozens of pn
  
  
  installations deployed. i know that
  
  
  phpnuke sucks re: performance, and i
  
  
  hope that postnuke is noticably more
  
  
  performant. some optimization work
  
  
  would have to get into the core.

i would be interested to contribute these


scripts back into CVS to facilitate this


for others.




has anyone done anything comparable? i would


be interested to get in touch with you and


learn about the issues you came up with.


i will make sure that the needs of large


pn deployments are considered in the


development process.




-gregor


postnuke developer