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February 21, 2005
Documentation about MT-Blacklist plugin
MT-Blacklist v1.6.5 User Guide
Posted by pj at 10:42 AM
February 18, 2005
A handy CSS trick for creating paired bulleted lists
A List Apart has published a useful tutorial on creating two columns of bullet points.
Posted by glittrgirl at 02:17 PM
February 17, 2005
Second draft of website workpackages
Workpackage 1 - Joint MDVM / HSP portal demonstrator page at http://www.health.ac.uk
- Determine portal page functional requirements
- Produce a non-styled mock-up to test content combinations
- Produce a wireframe for the page
- Finalise and implement outcomes of navigation WP
- Finalise content and wireframe and produce CSS
- Implement final demonstrator page
Workpackage 2 - New MDVM website - initially of limited scope
- Determine initial page functional requirements
- Produce a non-styled mock-up to test content combinations
- Produce a wireframe for the page
- Finalise and implement outcomes of navigation WP
- Produce a node / site map on paper
- Finalise content and wireframe and produce CSS
- Implement final page
Workpackage 3 - Navigation design
- Develop and model demonstrator navigation elements for portal page
- Develop and model final MDVM site navigation to ensure interim model fits
- Develop and model interim navigational elements for MDVM interim site (referencing old site navigation)
- Implement navigational elements
Workpackage 4 - Visual design and branding
- Finalise branding for MDVM website (probably based on our PPT style)
- Request all necessary logos from Academy
- Produce CSS to implement MDVM site branding
- Do the same for the joint Portal page
Workpackage 5 - RSS and iCalendar feeds
- Finalise events database table structure
- Develop new events RSS feeds using the Event module
- Develop new fund ops RSS feeds using new schema
- Refine iCalendar view of events
- Build movabletype Latest additions consumer pod into MDVM homepage
- Forms for event information entry to include appropriate publishing and editorial controls
- Forms for fund ops information entry to include appropriate publishing and editorial controls
- Include feeds from mini-projects RSS and a number of blogs (to be determined)
- Hack Feed2JS or MagpieRSS tools to handle the new RSS formats
Workpackage 6 - MovableType gubbins
- Investigate the strengths and threats of using MT for classification over and above a home grown DB approach
- Implement a movabletype blog for Latest additions blogging and feed (to double for classification of resources too)
Workpackage 7 - Using Plone for static managing static content from multiple authors
- Investigate the strengths and threats of using Plone as part of our CMS or exclusively as against a home grown approach
- Investigate if resources external to Plone can be rolled into the publishing workflow and controls without having to extend the content model with Archetypes etc.
- Implement Plone for use as a publishing environment for static authoring by naieve users
- Skin Plone with new branding
Workpackage 8 - Portal / MDVM site and resource searching
- Investigate the functional requirements for site searching in all areas
- Implement according to findings of the above
Workpackage 9 - DTML to ZPT and / or Plone porting
- Generic form builder and manager DTML
- Workshop proposals
- Mini-project proposals
- Publication requests
- Workshop publishing
- Workshop bookings
- Contact details administration
- Contact details user checking
- Newsletter publication process
- Uploading of resources for MPs and WSs
- FAQ, Glossary, project reports and websites, special reports
Workpackage 10 - XSLT based RSS to HTML conversion
- Develop Zope / Python based tools for running XSLT transformations on the various flavours of RSS feeds (including new modules) we will be using
- Develop XSL stylesheets for transformations
Posted by pj at 01:18 PM
MySql 4.x Database Survival Guide
http://www.akadia.com/services/mysql_survival.html
Posted by pj at 12:54 PM
Article about RESTful reporting
Posted by pj at 12:42 PM
Recipe metadata (meatadata?) in RDF? not
XML.com: Eat Drink Feel Good Markup Language
Posted by pj at 12:27 PM
February 16, 2005
First stab at website workpackages
Workpackage 1 - Joint MDVM HSP portal page at http://www.health.ac.uk
Tasks:
- Determine portal page functional requirements
- Decide on HEALTH portal page branding and style including CSS
- Mock up a dummy page for review by MDVM, HSP and BIOME
Workpackage 2 - New MDVM website with limited scope
- Determine the scope of the new website
- Determine which areas will still be served from the old site
- Develop new MDVM branding
- Mock up a style-less barebones HTML page which includes everything that is required structurally to test what content should go where
- Finalise events database structure
- Develop new events RSS feeds using the Event module
- Develop final iCalendar view of events
- Develop forms for event information entry along with appropriate publishing and editorial control workflow
- Develop forms for fund ops information entry along with appropriate publishing and editorial control workflow
- Develop new fund ops RSS feed using fund ops module
- Set-up a movabletype blog for news feed
- Hack Feed2JS or MagpieRSS tools to handle new RSS formats
- Investigate and list the strengths and threats of using movabletype for classification over and above a home made DB approach
- Set up a movabletype blog for Latest additions blogging and feed (this will double for classification of resources too).
- Produce a wireframe for the homepage
- Produce a paper site map based upon the output of 4 above
Workpackage 3 - Do a cost benefit analysis of what Plone offers us over a home grown CMS approach
- List Plone benefits for suitable comparison
- Investigate if resources external to Plone can be rolled into the publishing workflow and controls without having to extend content model with new archetypes etc.
Workpackage 4 - Set-up Plone for use as a publishing environment for static content
Workpackage 5 - Specify the functional requirements for Portal and MDVM site and resource searching and implement
----------------------
Stuff that needs to be done:
- LTSN-01 staff contact details
- NPC listings
- Functional reqs for the joint Portal page
- Investigation of EPOZ vs Silva and Kupu for simple content authoring
- Investigation of best way to catalogue and classify site resources
- Investigating ways of managing non-standard Plone content within Plone vs MySQL
- Plone site skinning
- Porting of current services from old to new site and from DTML to ZPT including:
-- Generic form builder and manager DTML
-- Workshop proposals
-- Mini-project proposals
-- Publication requests
-- Workshop publishing
-- Workshop bookings
-- Contact details administration
-- Contact details user checking
-- Funding opportunities administration
-- Events administration
-- News administration
-- Newsletter publication process
-- Uploading of resources for MPs and WSs
-- search of BIOME database
-- FAQ, Glossary, project reports and websites, special reports
Posted by pj at 04:42 PM
Website meeting notes
New portal page
New splash page for www.ltsn-01.ac.uk in new style and pointing off to the old archived site. (MDVM homepage)
MDVM homepage will have time dependent content ported over now using MySQL and ZPT.
We will have a blog for classification which users do not see directly but whose RSS feed populates 'New additions'.
Access will be provided to archives and subject archives.
Links to old site.
Stuff we'd like on the new MDVM homepage:
- Search
- Calendar
- New additions to this site pod
- Link to browse by subject area
- Link(s) to old site
- Events: includes WS, external events, deadlines for fundops and calls
- Funding opportunities coming up
- Link to main portal page and HS&P
- Find teaching materials (including BIOME)
Mock up an MDVM web page with all the possible content on in a long list but split up with DIVs.
New cadmedfac address required from upstairs.
Posted by pj at 01:11 PM
February 15, 2005
Running JavaScript in Python
But why?
Posted by pj at 02:43 PM
February 11, 2005
Logging Apache into MySQL
ONLamp.com: Writing Apache's Logs to MySQL
Posted by pj at 10:17 AM
February 10, 2005
CETIS Metadata FAQ Wiki
Posted by pj at 11:39 AM
February 09, 2005
An iCalendar view of our events database
I've spent today hacking together a PHP script to generate a view of our ltsn01_general.events table.
http://www.ltsn-01.ac.uk/static/ltsn-01_events.ics.php
I've also written a cron job which uses curl to get a snapshot of that output into a static .ics file:
http://www.ltsn-01.ac.uk/static/ltsn-01_events.ics
I've successfully subscribed to this in iCal.
There is also a web view of this calendar here:
http://minnesota.ncl.ac.uk/calendar/
Posted by pj at 04:29 PM
vCalendar and iCalendar in PHP
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/chow20021007.php3?print_mode=1
Posted by pj at 11:53 AM
PHP WebCalendar Project
SourceForge.net: Project Info - WebCalendar
Posted by pj at 10:37 AM
iCalendar and vCalendar Python API
iCalendar and vCalendar API tools in Python:
- http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/python-pdi
Posted by pj at 10:16 AM
February 03, 2005
Types of content currently published on the LTSN-01 website
This is a stab at a rough, top-of-the-head, first draft information architecture:
The site contains content describing or arising out of subject centre activities, past and current and also there are a number of resources aimed at our constituency which are published on the site. There is a caveat in that obviously many of our activities also produce resources.
I would like to make a distinction between information describing activities and the resources which we publish.
Further, there is a distinction between internally sourced and externally sourced information. A good example is funding opportunities. These typically cover external sources of funding. However, LTSN-01 also provides funding for or participates in research and developement projects, mini-projects and also workshops.
These inter-relationships between our areas of activity and the role of the website for promoting external opportunities needs to be reflected in the information architecture of the site and in the navigation elements.
Activities:
- funding opportunities (including workshop and mini-project calls)
- workshop promotion and booking
- contact details maintenance
- mini-project information and publication of reports
- news and events service
- publications:
-- newsletter
-- special reports
-- email bulletins
- pulication requests handling
- discussion boards
- research and development projects
- link of the month service
- cataloguing resources into BIOME
Resources:
- service for search of BIOME databases
- FAQ
- Glossary
- Free web courseware
- project reports and websites
- workshop resources
- newsletter
- special reports
Another issue is what to do with out-of-date content that we post. There should be some sort of archive area so that there's a clear delineation between current and older information.
We should maybe seek to archive and publish old email bulletins too?
There are two other issues that need to be decided upon as well, one is the issue of metadata for each page on the site. The other related matter is how each piece of content is classified, i.e. whether we should use MESH, METRO and whether we should be assigning terms from the Academy vocabularies to keep them happy.
Posted by pj at 03:29 PM