[SEAPY] SeaPIG server upgrade

[Andrew Burkhalter]

As the person that helps run the Seattle Plone user group (i.e. read  
biased opinion that you're encouraged to take with a grain of salt  
forthcoming ...), I have to jump in and correct some of what I  
believe are misconceptions.

The wiki product, Zwiki, that is being mentioned as challenging to  
use is actually an outdated add-on product that's not receiving much  
ongoing maintenance.  One reason for this is that the Plone 3 series  
offers many great improvements in the intranet space.  One of which  
is wiki syntax in the context of Plone's wysiwyg editor.  The  
discussion around Plone's UI  seems either about: 1) an add-on that  
may not be executed w/ usability in mind or 2) outdated Plone releases.

In general, I think you don't choose Plone because maybe it's  
overkill for what you need or you don't want to spend a bit of extra  
on the hosting cost you'd need to keep it running (it's a minimum  
$20-35/month hosting cost).

Intuitive usability is Plone's strong point.  Ironically, the  
MediaWiki UI is completely borrowed from Plone.  This was something  
the Plone user interface designer was happy to share a number of  
years ago.  I just enabled wiki syntax (i.e. [[this should be a  
link]]) for the default page type on a stock plone site in 2 minutes.

I wonder if a Google group and its Pages integration would be the  
simplest choice for SeaPig.  With one click you can allow all members  
to edit the content.  IIRC that saves transactions (i.e. drafts) as  
well.  Another option might be openplans.org, which uses Plone as the  
infrastructure and specifically some of the wiki features and allows  
for permission control of projects.  If we're really looking for  
simple solutions, these are worth exploring.

Hopefully, I can make it out to the next SeaPig meeting.  It's been  
waaay too long.

Andrew


On Oct 14, 2008, at 12:11 AM, Mike Orr wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Bradey Honsinger  
> <bradeyh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think so, too--if we used a CMS, we'd still want to keep the wiki,
>> and there wouldn't be much on the CMS side beyond what's on the front
>> page (and it probably wouldn't get updated half as often, either). As
>> long as people are reasonably trustworthy, there's a lot to be said
>> for letting people edit things that would normally be locked down  
>> in a
>> CMS--directions to meeting locations, for instance.
>
> Well, I'm more interested in the user interface than the lockdown
> part.  Yes, a CMS needs to have permissions and a hierarchy, but it's
> the user interface that people interact with and is the biggest factor
> in usability.
>
> I only asked because I've found MoinMoin a bit clunky compared to
> newer programs like Confluence and Wikipedia.  I thought Plone might
> be an alternative, but it sounds like its editing interface is not one
> of its strong features.
>
> -- 
> Mike Orr <sluggoster at gmail.com>