I'd like to give everyone a quick status update of where I'm headed with the LDraw.org website eco-system.
My overall vision is twofold:
- Unify the site theming to better present our information
- Reduce the amount of "nut and bolts" admining that needs to happen by reducing the various software platforms we use. I realize that we have 5 different software packages running on the server. 2 of these are custom written for LDraw.org (the OMR and the Parts Tracker). The other 3 are not (Forums, Main site CMS, and the Wiki). I don't see the last 3 going away anytime soon since I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and write our own forum/CMS/wiki implementation. However, the less dependencies we have, the less we have to worry about projects being abandoned resulting in us having to change software (like we did with the old forum software).
The theming project is ongoing from when it started last year. Expect this to spread to the OMR and in a limited sense to the Forums and Wiki. The Forums and Wiki will be more difficult because the software platforms in use have their own particular theme systems that don't mesh neatly with the one in use by the main site CMS
I'm also looking to retire the wiki and omr subdomains. Eventually the PT will be rewritten but this won't happen anytime in the near future. However, the OMR is much like a PT for models so I may use it to get experience writing software of a similar nature. Note this is all in the preplanning phase and no obvious action will happen until, most likely, the last few month of the year.
P.S. If you have any specific suggestions for the websites, there's a thread for that, please post it there.
My overall vision is twofold:
- Unify the site theming to better present our information
- Reduce the amount of "nut and bolts" admining that needs to happen by reducing the various software platforms we use. I realize that we have 5 different software packages running on the server. 2 of these are custom written for LDraw.org (the OMR and the Parts Tracker). The other 3 are not (Forums, Main site CMS, and the Wiki). I don't see the last 3 going away anytime soon since I'm not going to reinvent the wheel and write our own forum/CMS/wiki implementation. However, the less dependencies we have, the less we have to worry about projects being abandoned resulting in us having to change software (like we did with the old forum software).
The theming project is ongoing from when it started last year. Expect this to spread to the OMR and in a limited sense to the Forums and Wiki. The Forums and Wiki will be more difficult because the software platforms in use have their own particular theme systems that don't mesh neatly with the one in use by the main site CMS
I'm also looking to retire the wiki and omr subdomains. Eventually the PT will be rewritten but this won't happen anytime in the near future. However, the OMR is much like a PT for models so I may use it to get experience writing software of a similar nature. Note this is all in the preplanning phase and no obvious action will happen until, most likely, the last few month of the year.
P.S. If you have any specific suggestions for the websites, there's a thread for that, please post it there.