Re: [general] New Arabeyes Drupal Website

[Djihed Afifi <djihedlists at googlemail dot com>]

Salam,


Ossama, Abderrahim, Sameer and Khaled have already given their ideas
better than I could. So here is a summary of what I think we agree on.

I think the website team has been formed:
* Mohamed Farag.
* Mohamed Sameer.
* Daif Al-Otaibi.
* Abderrahim Kitouni.

I'd suggest Farag to take care of leading the team. You should really
take a lot of input from Sameer especially with regards to management of
the revamp. Abderrahim knows what the current site has. Daif saw the
actual code and tinkered with it :)

Please take the following notes and the previous emails, be practical
and see what they'll lead to. Farag, in your server, can you setup four
accounts for the above team? If not, please let us know ASAP so we set
this up somewhere.

More worky, less talky :) Should we meet Friday 18:00pm GMT? (website
team) I personally will just be a bystander :-)

In the future, could you guys use
http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Website_Revamp to track the status of the
project? using the wiki has proved very good at managing and letting
people know what is done and what needs to be done.

Summary:
--------

* A prototype means a mostly working instance that takes minimal effort
to integrate. i.e We need minimal code to get it up and running. Mostly
just configuration.

You may, of course, show off parts of the work from time to time, and
you are encouraged to do that. At some point, we'll talk to adn to get
you a subdomain so you install your stuff to the Arabeyes server, which
would then be transferred as the main site when things are done.

I also think design should get into it. Feel free to leech off whatever
graphics you may find on the current site.

* Multinlingual: this is probably priority 1. It has to support both
Arabic and English. If a compromise has to be reached, go for Arabic.
i.e the emphasis has to be on Arabic.

At one point we used to be a lot more geared towards upstream
developers. Now our users are mostly Arabic speaking translators and
developers.

* Functionality: daif can help you a lot here as he saw code and he has
proved capable of tweaking it. Here is what we need:
- News.
- Press section.
- Contact, about.
- A hall of fame section.
- SVN information (howto and statistics).
- Downloads.
- Projects (this should largely mirror the current main projects page).
Please allow for a "dead projects" subsection - could be as simple as a
flag in the db. You can make it one big nice page if you want! but
please let us have an easy way of adding/deleting projects. As Sameer
described: each project should have icon, logo, description, and
maintainer. The rest should go to the wiki I think. Just give a link to
the wiki page.

Khaled's idea of "sub-projects" may also be nice. But please leave it
off for now until we see what you guys come up with.

- Mailing list integration (subscription, etc) 
- Donate section.
- Member list and profile pages.
+ it should allow for simple addition of other sections. I assume the
popular CMS's make this simple ATM.


One rule of thumb: KEEP IT SIMPLE. If you think you are making it too
complicated, you probably are :)

An example of a site that look good and is simple: 
http://www.transmissionbt.com/


* On LDAP: adn, I know you are busy, but just let us know whether we can
do this very easily. We currently have SVN + Wiki + trac + new site, and
it would be nice to be able to integrate all three.

* Choice of CMS: I'm honestly not too knowledgable of the differences
between what's available. But here is one piece of advice, Farag:

Pick one, research if necessary. Stick to it, and do it. Feel free to
pilot and try what's available, and come to a rational conclusion :-).


Djihed








في ن، 04-08-2008 عند 09:03 +0200 ، كتب Mohamed Farag:
> Thank you so much Djihad for your efforts yesterday!
> Thank you all for the enjoyable time.
> 
> I need your opinion before going ahead and install a test install on my server, therefore making a prototype as Djihad requested.
> 
> First: for all:
> 
> Drupal 6.3 Arabic files are not ready yet.
> Should we install Version 6 and use the Arabic files made available for 6.3 (that are originally for 5.9)? 
> And start a new project for testing and it. 
> http://drupal.org/node/232828
> 
> Or should we go with the older version of Drupal (V. 5.9) with its
> Arabic language files that is stable and tested? just to be practical?
> http://drupal.org/node/232778
> 
> and then we can make a plan for upgrading?
> 
> 
> Second: 
> For all:
> Please send me all your ideas for the new website in all aspects and functions/ modules, features that you see important. All your inputs will of course be subject to discussion and consensus approval. 
> 
> Third:
> For Djihad: What exactly do you need in the prototype?
> Also, do you mean a working install of the CMS, but not fully filled with data and stuff..or just homepage design under drupal?
> 
> Also, do you think I should start website discussions in the admin list, or dev list? or here in the general list?
> 
> I will also need to have contact with Daif to arrange our work on this project. Then we can give an expected deadline for the prototype.
> 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Mohamed
> 
> -- 
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