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History   (Content)

2001 and grew out of the frustration of four guys not being able to contribute to the development of another open source project.
PostNuke was the first open source project to provide a sourceforge type free hosting service to third party developers we nicknamed the NOC (Network Operations Center).

Generated on February 1, 2009.

pnMeeting 2007: Mark West talks about .8/.9   (News)

system information module will make it easier for webmasters to collect the needed information in case they seek help in the forums.

The use of Ajax makes the handling of various modules far easier. You can drag and drop permissions or user information fields. And on the user side you can for example rate a content item using the Ratings hook using an Ajax function and not having to reload the whole page after rating it.

The new URL system add permalinks to .8 and make URLs nice and readable as you can already find them in other systems like Wordpress. The permalinks can be defined by the administrator and can be included into other modules. It already works for example with the News module and the Pages module. The Pages module in the Value Addons package is the successor of Mark's htmlpages.

Included into the new Theme module is a Theme generator that creates all the basic files and file entries you need to start working on a new layout.

A real enhancement compared to .7 can be found in the block control - Blocks can be dragged and dropped into place and various block setups can be set not only for modules but for single content items.

There are still 2 or 3 major bugs in the bugtracker that are already partly fixed but which must be fixed before RC2 can be releast. That shouldn't take too much time.

In his outlook on .9 Mark explained that all Postnuke releases after Feburary next year will at least require PHP 5.2 - so ask your hosting providers early enough for updates. The background of this decision is the move towards object orientation in the Postnuke codebase and the fact that PHP 5 is around long enough now to become standard.

The language system is the last big project on the roadmap towards Postnuke 1.0 - other PHP projects will be evaluated to find the best solution. In the same move the internationalisation of content will be improved. Direct translations for content must be possible - News articles with the same ID in different languages are the result. Again getText was discussed as a possible solution and the move to UTF-8.

One of the most complex parts of Postnuke today is the Permission system. It is powerful yet often to complicated. So soultions have to be found to solve standard permissions requirements.

Axel Guckelsberger requested an addition to the hooks system - hooks don't know the permissions a user has for the item they are hooked into. So if you want to download a files that is attached to a forum post the permissions to download would result from the a) the permission of the user to view the thread and b) the permission of the user to download files. Hooks are today blind for this. Mark agreed that this had to be changed for future releases.

While talking about hooks Frank Schummertz requested more hook types. Currently we have display, transform, create, update and delete hooks. A required new type is the init or pageload hook that hooks into the start of the system like the spam prevention system BadBehaviour for example that stops the loading of the page if it detects a spam bot.

Mark Ronchera asked for the use of OpenID in future releases which Mark West answered by explaining the flexibility of the .8

Generated on September 9, 2007.

PHP Projects Join Forces To Go PHP 5   (News)

The Symfony, Typo3, phpMyAdmin, Drupal, Propel, and Doctrine projects have all announced
that their next release after February 5, 2008 will require PHP version 5.2 as part of a
coordinated effort at GoPHP5.org, and have issued an open invitation to any other PHP
projects and applications, both open source and proprietary, that want to participate in the
effort.

Most PHP-based web applications today run in both PHP version 4 and PHP version 5. PHP
4 was released in 2000, and quickly cemented itself as one of the dominant web development
languages. Version 5 was released in 2004 with dramatic improvements in functionality, but
adoption has been slow due mostly to the "chicken and egg" problem that accompanies many
new platform releases.

"Most of the PHP developers I talk to want to use PHP 5 but can't because so many web
hosts offer PHP 4 by default," said Larry Garfield, a Drupal developer and one of
GoPHP5.org's founders. "The hosts won't upgrade until projects do, but projects won't
upgrade until the hosts do. That has made a lot of projects reluctant to be the first to drop
support for PHP 4, so we've decided that we will all be first."

By pre-announcing plans to require PHP 5.2 in upcoming software versions in 2008, GoPHP5
hopes to provide web hosts with the incentive to upgrade their servers to newer, more stable,
more feature-rich versions of PHP as well as sufficient time to do so. Users that are already
using current versions of participating projects won't be left out in the cold, either. All involved
projects will continue to support current releases on PHP 4 for their normal life cycle, giving
both users and hosts time to plan and implement an upgrade.

"The phpMyAdmin project is very enthusiastic to join the GoPHP5 initiative," added
phpMyAdmin's project lead, Marc Delisle. "We see GoPHP5 as a way both to improve our
product's new versions — not always having to add workarounds to remain PHP4compatible
— and improve the experience of our users — by projecting the correct message about the
PHP system itself and its evolution."

PHP 5 offers developers a wide array of features designed to make developing fast, modern
web applications faster and easier. That includes vastly improved XML handling for Web
services, an integrated SQL database called SQLite, better handling of time zones,
dramatically improved security tools, stronger object-oriented functionality, and more.

Many PHP projects already require PHP 5. Encouraging a larger installed base of PHP 5 will broaden the market for those projects as well. PHP is a widely-used general purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development. PHP is one of the leading web development languages in the world, running on a third of the world's web servers. It is the platform of choice for companies from Yahoo to Facebook as well as the most widely available development platform on shared hosting,
which powers millions of web sites world wide.

For more information:

http://gophp5.org/
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/gophp5.php
http://drupal.org/gophp5

Press Contact:

larry.garfield@gophp5.org

Generated on July 10, 2007.

Postnuke-Downloads.com ends   (News)

is devoted to collecting and sharing all kinds of Postnuke related modules, blocks, themes and so on using Postnuke-downloads.com

The domainname and hosting will stay under my wings and supervision but the rest of the site can be set to your preferences. Within limits of course.

If you think this is a task for you and you are very familiar with Postnuke, send me a mail and we can discuss the rest. It is very important for me the sites backbone stays postnuke. Otherwise it has no meaning anymore.

When nobody is interrested, I will end the site somewhere in October and will forward all traffic to the Dutch Postnuke Community.

Regards webmaster at postnuke-downloads.co

Generated on September 23, 2005.

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.

pnAddons.com Under New Management, Soundwebdev.com Opens   (News)

his new project: soundwebdev.com. The transfer and move is amicable and all involved are looking forward to their new projects.

pnAddons will continue to host all of Harry's old projects including zClassifieds and most of the hacks and blocks. Alex will do his best to support the users of these projects. Alex had this to say about the future of pnAddons: "I dont plan to change many things at pnAddons. Actually for some time [I'll change] nothing. In the future the site will continue the same line of postnuke development and probably I will just add new content to it and a postnuke sites portofolio."

Soundwebdev.com will be the new home of future pnBloodhound development and support as well as other projects including pnMyGuide and pnCopilot. Sound Web Development is a Postnuke-centered hosting and development company. Please consider soundwebdev.com for your postnuke-hosting needs!

Thank you to the pnAddons community for your past and ongoing support and loyalty. Please continue to support both pnAddons.com

Generated on April 14, 2005.

FUPEI.com ? Friendster-like site built on Postnuke   (News)

start-up, all the stats are rocketing high, especially after some computer media in Indonesia exposed FUPEI.com in their articles.

What is FUPEI.com anyway ? You could simply associate this site with ?a friendster-like site?. Well, not just that. FUPEI is built upon Postnuke and several modules ? all of them are free and open source. The site developer only made several customization such as friend linking module and theme (off course). The rest of the modules are e.g. Photoshare, XForum, Messenger, AutoTheme Lite, etc, which you can find on the net.

This site is still under steady and continuous development. Our developers are still tweaking codes and theme templates aimed to reduce the server load and to save bandwidth, while on the other hand to bring a better experience for the users. Some friends from Indonesian Postnuke Community also have volunteered to assist us in improving the system.

But of course, thanks to postnuke and all the modules, the system is already stable, realiable and secure. Our next plan is to find a sponsor, since our hosting service provider already stated that FUPEI.com is consuming a lot of resources, and suggested that we upgrade the account :-(

To all the developers whose modules are used on FUPEI.com, we'd like to express our gratitude. FUPEI.com would take longer time to develop without your modules. Please inform us if you think we have violated your license, since we don't have a clear understanding on legal terms. Last but not least, our gratitude goes to all postnuke developers ? and of course, to all postnuke communities world-wide.

On behalf of FUPEI.com's develope

Generated on June 8, 2004.

Interview: Franky Chestnut, pnConcept.com   (News)

Hacks
dWl Mod Suite - This was for pn0.713, it was inspired from modifications that were done on the Downloads and Web Links modules at phpNuke. There is an All Page and that would be the only real important thing about this one. It was one of my first hacking I made. And to think of it, I still use the all page on my site [demo] but I think that is all that is left of the modifications. Also in this hack, I made it so there is a listbox with the title instead of just a field when you wanted to modify a link or a download. Little things like that. People should not use it today... all files comes from pn0.713.

pnMailUserHTMLHack - Another modification of the pn0.714 Mail User mod. All it did was to give the choice to send an email to a user in text or in html.

pncUserHack - None the least, this is my most popular work. It began with only the possibility to choose the password you want when registering and today, you can add dynamic fields, list, checkbox, define required fields, moderate registration and so on. Lots of options with the mail because for a time, the goal was to give admin the possibility to use PostNuke on hosting without mail function. But as users were asking more and more... it became what it is today.

pncUserHack was made with pn0.723 so I do not recommend it for newer version today. The future is unknown for this one, it depends on many things.

Blocks
Block Your_Avatar - My first block. It shows the avatar from your profile and a list box to change it directly on the block. Today, this one makes me laugh.

pncPaypalContribute - A pnAPI block that shows a Paypal button for donations. The email and currency can be choose in the administration for this block.

Mods
FeedBack- This was my first module and it still work although I think it was made for the pn0.6x or pn0.71x series. I took the Recommend_Us module and made it so it sends an email to the admin and it was my first experience. I saw later 2 or 3 modules that had the same name and we're doing the exact same thing. I thought it was funny but it was for everyone an easy way to start I guess.

pnUser_Points 0.22X - This one will disapear and I'll be glad because it never quite fully worked well. Not that it is a bad module but it doesn't work very well when your database becomes medium or large. The way it was written, it was using so much ressources that most of the time, the module couldn't update itself like it was supposed to do. What I did to put the 'x' after the 0.22 is that there was no administration in the original one. So you had to change the configuration directly in the files. And for me, I thought that it wasn't very..... actual. So I made the administration for the configuration and I added the possibility to clean the table where data was inserted. I also made the initialisation so people didn't had to insert the table by hands anymore.
I remember that I didn't want this one to go out with my name on it but since I didn't had any answer from the original authors when I finished it, I release it as it was. And people kept the association and came to me for the support and the future version.

Next version will make this one completly obsolete. 100% pnAPI, much less ressources, Groups points and Archives.

pncPopMessages - That one is a copy of the original Admin_Message but with a block include that would pop a message. I made a copy because I want to separate the original Admin messages from the messages that would pop.

pncGroups - I made this one because I didn't want to add manually users that would help us on PostNuke-France.org on various things. Documentation, support or even administrate a part of the site. So the module is giving the hability to the users to register for a group with all the permission fuss. You also can make a group open or close, define how many users can register for a particular group and so on. 2 blocks were included, one to show groups information and the other, the list of users in a particular group.

pncSimpleStats and pncSimpleStats Xantia - These are my last ones. While working on the pncUserPoints and discovering that ressources may not be a problem like the old User_Points was, I made this little Stats module with some some functions that were for the pncUP. For each category (news, comments, reviews and xforum), it shows a page with the list of users and the amount they proposed or wrote. No database, always getting the most recent count.
The Xantia version was my way of practicing with the new pnRender Engine and to give the result to the users. It is templated.

Upcoming
pncPaypalMod - Just my personal Paypal mod that won't do a zillion thing. The pncPaypalContribute will be moved to this mod. The goal is to make a simple mod that will show the list of contributors but won't have many functionality. I know there is probably 10 out there but I'm a programmer and I like to create my own. I just want something basic. I have a working version under a desk somewhere but never had the time to finish it. And.......... it will be free ;-) (No pun intended ha ha ha !)

All other upcoming mods are reactualisation, pnAPIsation and for some, templated of the existing ones : pncUserPoints, pncGroups, pncPopMessages, etc...

I also made the decision to concentrate on simple modules whatever they will be. I want them easy and fast to create and give them to the community so they can learn with various examples. And since we are near a new era (brrr) with the Xantia and pnRender engine coming, all will be templated for the occasion like the pncSimpleStats.

Voilà ! That is about what I've done and probably worth mentioning...


Where do you live?

I live in Paris - France, but was born in Canada.

What is your real-life job?

I work as a technicien and programmer on a professional software for music publishers. Mostly done in MS Access.

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

I'm not quite sure when I started but I'm a survivor of phpNuke. At first, I didn't like PostNuke (0.60 I think) and went back to phpNuke. But later, I felt that it wasn't serious. If I remember correctly, the only reason was the huge modules pool that was available for phpNuke then. But after a time, when you see that you will only use 1% of what is available, you take a peek behind other doors. And I came back to PostNuke (0.62) to make more tests. And got hooked.

As I wasn't very up-to-date about 'collaborative' programming, I was curious to discover how it was done. I made lots of tests with other CMS but was constantly driven back to PostNuke for various reasons or even to take a break. Then I got tired of testing and it was a natural decision to stick with PostNuke. The code under the hood had more common points with what I was exploring than the others.

With time, I was getting better at answering technical question and had a big presence in the french community. So David from Boomtchak ask me to co-administrate. When Boom went down for a time, another french support site went up and I was there again (Kaintech). I even been asked on Envolution-france but I didn't stayed long. Then the administrator of PostNuke-France ask me to take the lead because he couldn't stay, I took the opportunity and I'm there since then.

So I guess that for the french community, I'm known for the administrator hat, and for the rest of the world, for the lines I wrote.

When did you start working on your own module?

It was soon after deciding that PostNuke was the CMS I would stay with. Since I'm an self made programmer as that I didn't know much about php, I started by modifying already existing modules. That is how the UserHack was born. All it was doing at the time was giving the hability to users to choose their own password when registering. After that, I did various hack on the Downloads, the Web Links and when I gained confidence, I added an admin interface to the User Points mod and my first module was a FeedBack module. (Although many people made the same one, I didn't know at that time).

What is your development like?

I'm the "cliché" I guess, I work alone and like to be alone in the dark with a bottle of wine, my cigarette, and far away, the tv on. Yes, late at night when the bottle is empty, there are consequences on the coding. I won't say that it is the reason of course, but I try to make every line of code readable. Much needed at the end of the night. In fact, I think I put more time on how the code looks than how it looks when it is rendered. He he !

I like to consider myself the one that sometimes touches the soft spot of people. This is without being pretentious of course. I don't do very big things, I'm not the great programmer and my background may be slightly light, but the small things I do, people have been waiting for them. Like the first UserHack. When people were eager to have the possibility to choose their password at registration, I did it. When others or myself wanted an admin for the User Points, I did it also. And so on... I think that is mostly how I made my name.

I also rarely do something that I won't use myself. So many things I did were things that I wanted for myself in the first place. By chance, others were thinking the same.

The only tool that I consider worth mentioning is my code editor (if I can name it) : Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com), great syntax highlight, no crappy tabulations since the editor changes them in spaces and makes files readable the same way for everyone. I can't bare it anymore to read some code from others and taking half an hour only to make it clearer to read so I can understand it and fix or make modifications if needed. That is why I take my time to make my code so everyone on any computer sees the same thing.
You can also change code in files directly on your host with the ftp functionality. Perfect for newbies. Pros will probably move on to something that suits them more.

What is the biggest difficulty in your development?

I saw someone write "Time"... and that would be the same for me. It is not a PostNuke related problem since I am probably part of the rare ones to be happy that PostNuke is slow in development. I work hard in my professional job and I rarely sleep more than 3 or 4 hours a night so I'm very slow on creating any new things for PostNuke. People will say I never quite meet deadlines I propose and it's true (PostNuke related of course).

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

Good documentation and clear examples for newbies, intermediates and advanced users and developpers. I learned everytheverything from what others did and I'm still and will always be in a learning mode. The Example mod is a great start but when I have wanted to do something just a step more complicated, It has taken me awhile to find out how to do it. I have searched the smarty doc, and the Xantia code for a long time just to do something a little more complicated than what the Example mod was doing.

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

I will follow its evolution and I have already started doing so. As I stated, I have already made a pnRender enabled module with the pncSimpleStats for practice and also to give another example for others and... I'm not sure but I think it may be the first non-official module done that way. And I intend to make more mods that are simple so people can have a look at them and say : "oooh, that I understand !".

What should users of your module regard?

I guess that one of my strong point is evolving with what the users want or doing the little thing that users were waiting for. When I look at my pncUserHack, between the first and the last ones, there are so much differences, it is freaky... but it is all what the users wanted at that time.

My weakest point would be the time I take to make something but that it is not something I have control over...

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

I know that there are developers like me hiding or keeping a low profile. I, myself, am often trying to keep a low profile because whenever I do something, it is always a great battle for me to support what I do because of time constraints. That is why I don't do much publicity. But I do my best to gain confidence about what I do and I hope to be able in the future to give more time to PostNuke, helping or coding. I hope that open minded developers that do have the time will get out of the dark and share their knowledge, skills and talent and contribute more to the development, documentation, support, etc.

Actual pnDevs are really, really great... but to give them a chance so they don't loose their mind, giving them a hand would be great.

Thank you very much for you time.

My pleasure ! And hoping my english wasn't too bad ! ;-)

Franky’s Homepage:

Generated on February 10, 2004.

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.

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