No opaque database formats.
I'm not recommending opacity, I'm recommending bang-for-effort. All RDBMSes support import/export utilities, just as object formats can be decompiled. (but this isn't about DBs so let's drop that).
For the record, I'm against an opaque CMS and for plain text files (for storage). I'm in favour of a CMS from the point of view of tracking content by id's rather than by URLs or paths. I even don't care if those id's appear in URLs or paths, just as long as there's a radically flat collection of content items that can be grouped/linked as we see fit.
Today I want article X to be a beginner's article. Tomorrow I want it to be an XBL article. The day after it needs to be both. Eventually it's an embarassment and needs to disappear into archives. Then it's suddenly a "Top Ten of all time".
That requires some form of flexible aggregration technology that benefits from some kind of permanent object tracking. I don't want to have to re-sort the hierarchy, or to track down "forgotten" pieces. I want to be able to manage my inventory of content.
Have you read http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html ?
I'm familiar with those problem solving strategies. We're not building a VLSI chip here, though. There's big blocks to play with too: Apache is the obvious example.
Navigation, or rather search and multiple indexes, is necessary. Styling should be attractive as you say, but that takes work. Default flat-document text style is not enough.
Sure, necessary I agree, but not first.
Follow the logic of "worst thing": There should be a week of d.m.o being just this one page:
<html> <form ..etc..> <input name="pick" type="radio">Give me references!</input> <input name="pick" type="radio">Give me tutorials!</input> <input name="pick" type="radio">Give me articles!</input> <input name="pick" type="radio">Give me opinion!</input> <input name="pick" type="radio">Give me anything new!</input> </form> </html>
At least the next-least-worst iteration will provide something closer to what the readers want. Nothing trumps what the readers want, not navigation, not styles, and not infrastructure. Without the readers, there's nothing. And the readers primarily want content.
We'd bust our carefully debated navigation and styles to pieces if we discovered that doing so would triple the hits. Might as well start right there and say "what brings hits", rather than debating structure/infrastructure in an info-vaccuum.
I'm for putting this page, or something real close, straight up, while we sort out a trivially simple CMS *strategy*.
- Nigel. _______________________________________________ mozilla-documentation mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-documentation
