At 9:07 AM -0500 10/14/02, Puneet Kishor wrote: >Listers, > >While I wait to resolve perl errors on my Jaguar perl 5.6.0, I have >a more generic question re content-management. > >I want to make a few websites for a few starving artists and >galleries starving = zero or tending to zero resources; artists = >almost computer illiterates). I have promised them the world in that >the websites would be dynamic... visitors would be able to search >for artworks based on different criteria, there would be an events >calendar, etc. etc. More than anything, once set up, these >artists/galleries would be able update the website themselves. After >promising all this, I said to myself, "Oops!". > >Additionally, I have to develop these websites on my iBook, and host >them on a cheap, server I am going to buy from eBay and install >FreeBSD on it. My assumption is the FreeBSD is gonna be the closest >to OS X in its directory layout and tools, and therefore not send me >on too much of a loop (while these artists view me as a computer >god, I am actually a Unix newbie). > >Here is my thinking -- I should consider using something like >MoveableType or even a wiki to make the websites. That would allow >the artists to themselves update the content as desired. I could use >something like Mason, but I really don't want to get into mod_perl >for now (I know Mason can work without mod_perl, but really likes >mod_perl around). I want to have a little a standard deviation as >possible from the stock installs... read, Apache 1.3.26 and perl >5.6.0 that comes with OS X. I am not averse to MySQL (I know MySQL >quite well) but am not comfortable with PostGres (hence, >Bricolage/Mason would not be an easy choice for me). > >MoveableType is really elegant... could it be configured to create >an art gallery website? Wiki is perhaps the most elegant in its >simplicity... what do you folks feel about that? > >Any advice much appreciated on any or all aspects of the above.
Wiki. Definitely. Use TWiki (http://www.twiki.org) -- several levels beyond any of the others in depth, breadth, and maturity. A very serious effort, full of features, customizability, etc. Most, if not all, of what you would find yourself wanting to hack in to another wiki is already in TWiki. It's even one of the few that supports file uploads, which it sounds like you need. All TWiki needs is a standard web environment (Apache, typically) and (until the almost-ready new version comes out with the option of a lightweight replacement) RCS. You can find OSX specific instructions for installing TWiki on OS X at http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnMacOSX, and you should follow the installation instructions that come with TWiki carefully and methodically, but you should be up in a couple of hours after downloading. (After a lot of experience on various Wiki sites and heavily customizing one based on the original C2 wiki code base, and after experimenting with a number of others, I recently installed TWiki at Wesleyan University.) -- Mitchell L Model MLM Consulting Visiting Associate Professor [EMAIL PROTECTED] 42 Oxbow Road Computer Science (508) 358-8055 Wayland, MA 01778 Wesleyan University ~~ Mentoring, training, & tool building for object & web technologies ~~ Interface design, usability evaluation, & productivity enhancement ~~ Specializing in bioinformatics & knowledge representation ~~ Expert in Smalltalk, Python, Perl, Java, C++, Lisp, Zope, Wiki
