Re: Wiki vs homepage
Also in the spirit of SEO, maybe we just need to have multiple domain names all linking back or redirecting to ruby-camping.com. I am willing to buy and commit to ruby-camping.com so anyone else is free to buy campingrb.com or any other naming permutation they like. This way we can all have our cake and eat it too! Any objections at this point on me moving forward? On 7/23/2010 12:19 PM, Dave Everitt wrote: May not be attractive, but if it's already a ruby-related meme, worth considering - Dave E On 23 Jul 2010, at 17:38, Philippe Monnet wrote: My preference would be to have Ruby explicitly mentioned in the name and a clear easy-to-read url. This makes it a bit more SEO friendly too which is important for a promo site. IMHO suffixing with rb is not very visually attractive. On 7/23/2010 9:39 AM, Steve Klabnik wrote: I don't know if it's available or not, but why not campingrb.com rather than ruby-camping.com? Many of the other small web frameworks follow this url scheme (sinatrarb and padrinorb). ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
Ok I would really like to get the promo site going so that we have something up and running before Why Day (Aug 19th per http://whyday.org/). I propose the following: 1. I can go ahead and buy the ruby-camping.com domain - should someone also buy the .org equivalent? I think the promo site has to have a straightforward name related to ruby and camping (similar to ruby-lang) to make it easy for people to remember the site or search for it. (We can use whywentcamping.com for something else like either the doc site or the site focusing on learning and hosting simple apps - see Jenna's ideas on this) 2. Until we know what other things we want to do with ruby-camping.com in terms of showcasing apps and all, I can either host the site: a) at my host (11 - ok for now with straight content only - the downside is I will be the bottleneck for updates b) or deploy it on Heroku - we can have multiple collaborators to push content via git. This would also give us more flexibility in the long run (like diff versions of Ruby, db, plugins, etc - and maybe we can get sponsored 3. For the time being I will leave the site as straight HTML and Javascript (we can switch it to Camping+Tilt later) 4. I will create a ruby-camping.com project under camping in GitHub and upload the content. This way anyone can contribute to the design - wink wink uh-hmm Jenna/Dave/Matt/... ;-) Let me know if you're ok with this or provide alternatives. I'd like to get this done this week-end. Philippe (@techarch) On 7/8/2010 1:55 PM, Magnus Holm wrote: Hey guys, Philippe had some interesting points about the website: 1. Keep the home page simple with all content fitting within 1280 x 1024 2. Use a catchy design (need some help here) 3. Accentuate that Camping is about Ruby (maybe also include the ruby logo somewhere) 4. Have a brief note about the connection to _why and a link to a page explaining the history of Camping with further links to _why's other sites 5. Encourage people to try it by capitalizing on some of Camping's strengths: - Fast to learn - requires only basic Ruby skills - Much simpler than Rails but more structure than Sinatra/Padrino - Lightning fast and memory efficient allowing fast and efficient sites - Can evolve from simple file to organized directory structure - Can layer in more features later using persistence and choice of view engines 6. How about using some kind of an animated (auto advancing) slideshow to highlight some of the benefits? See an example at: http://blog.monnet-usa.com/?p=276 7. How about a page on learning with a link to the book as well as a list of links for other tutorials or short explanations on key topics (e.g. how to do migrations, how to use include/extend, how to use different view engines, etc.)? 8. How about a page about plugins with some brief description of their intent? 9. I would love for us to include _why's cartoons in some of the sub pages ;-) Now, the more I look at this list (and my own thoughts about the new camping site) I realize that we're talking about two different things: * A site to attract new users * A site to inform regular users It looks like my attempt (http://whywentcamping.judofyr.net/) tries to target the latter, while Philippe targeted the former (http://rubycamping.monnet-usa.com/). Both sites serves a purpose and I believe both are equally important. -- Here's what I propose: We split the site into two parts. We turn what I've created into a wiki. Everyone are welcome to edit and add their own content. Then we take Philippe's ideas/design/site and turn it into ruby-camping.com or whywentcamping.com or whatnot. It probably doesn't need to be more than a single page. What'd ya think? // Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
Hi Steve - I really like that idea. Of course, someone (us) is going to have to actually purchase the domain at some point :-) - Dave E I don't know if it's available or not, but why not campingrb.com rather than ruby-camping.com? Many of the other small web frameworks follow this url scheme (sinatrarb and padrinorb). ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
My preference would be to have Ruby explicitly mentioned in the name and a clear easy-to-read url. This makes it a bit more SEO friendly too which is important for a promo site. IMHO suffixing with rb is not very visually attractive. On 7/23/2010 9:39 AM, Steve Klabnik wrote: I don't know if it's available or not, but why not campingrb.com http://campingrb.com rather than ruby-camping.com http://ruby-camping.com? Many of the other small web frameworks follow this url scheme (sinatrarb and padrinorb). Or maybe not. I just think it's an interesting url for Ruby projects. ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
Anyone know who did this: http://camping.tumblr.com/ ? Dave E Jenna: I suggest a tumblr, because it doesn't cost anything, can have group committers, all the features we need, and it too is connected to the rich heritage of _why :) ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
May not be attractive, but if it's already a ruby-related meme, worth considering - Dave E On 23 Jul 2010, at 17:38, Philippe Monnet wrote: My preference would be to have Ruby explicitly mentioned in the name and a clear easy-to-read url. This makes it a bit more SEO friendly too which is important for a promo site. IMHO suffixing with rb is not very visually attractive. On 7/23/2010 9:39 AM, Steve Klabnik wrote: I don't know if it's available or not, but why not campingrb.com rather than ruby-camping.com? Many of the other small web frameworks follow this url scheme (sinatrarb and padrinorb). ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
I love the idea of having Key/Value databases available to camping apps as a standard thing on the platform. They aren't the same thing as a filesystem though, and I don't think we should pretend otherwise. If we don't want to give users filesystem access, that's *fine*, even though I don't see why we shouldn't. What about this - We make a sister project, ForeverHash, which works just like a normal hash except that when you .new it you have to give it a name, like ForeverHash.new(:people), resulting in people.db existing some place in the filesystem. We could have a campers-toolkit gem which would default to using yaml or marshal or whatever to shove that stuff in a file on close, and read it in on launch. When stuff like TokyoCabinet is available, it'd just magically be faster and awesomer. campers-toolkit could have tons of neat little bonus toys like that. Thing is, Heroku is this big scary thing which is all about performance and big deployments and commercialisation and not at all about learning and hacking and making stupid little games and programs that do your math homework for you (that's why I learnt to write basic!). We already have Heroku. We don't need another abstraction to it. Fake filesystem atop a key/value database would be a fun hack, but it'd go crazy with things like the exotic file locks sqlite uses. I propose this: We settle on the idea that we are in fact an awesome bunch and that camping still has that wonderful educational essence of it's beginnings, and that being loosely connected to _why, we already have some weight with educators. There are computer labs full to the brim with boxes doing nearly nothing in schools all around the place! The internet itself was practically born of excessive computing power at universities needing to find something to do with itself! So I propose we stop eating the little scraps of free stuff the capitalist processes that drive services like heroku and dreamhost produce, and really try and pester the educational systems of the world - see if they'll give us a server and plug it in to some pipes to get this idea going. If we can get a dedicated server somewhere, making secured little app hosting is trivial and fun and super easy to do! Web hosting friends inform me that linuxes have no worries at all with hundreds of thousands of user accounts. That's how tryruby worked way back when - it made a new user account when you entered your first command, ran it, and removed the account if it idled out. That's how try ruby was secure! All we need to do is use the same tools shared webhosts have been using for decades, like unix file permissions and apache or ngynix and passenger and chroot and a user account per user or app, and we have a totally viable way to do this. Passenger will run as many processes as each app needs, and shut them down when nobody is using that app. The ruby processes can run under that user's account, and we can automatically apply permissions to the files as they're uploaded and updated. Then we just short out the system/``/chown type commands in the ruby process with a little bootstrap code added to the rackup and we've got it sorted. The tech here is easy and fun. Getting a server to run it on could be tricky - but we have avenues to explore. We NEED to get a good website up with a blog (I suggest a tumblr, because it doesn't cost anything, can have group committers, all the features we need, and it too is connected to the rich heritage of _why :) Then we can put the callout. Once a plan is formed for the tech and the look of the thing, we can get a blog post up explaining the idea and asking for help, and start mailing it around to universities and schools, asking if they have any extra servers they might donate to the cause. Carnegie Mellon physically hosted art code. Maybe they'd host us too! // Sidebar: Okay, so yaml and marshal would suck as a backend because it'd go crazy without any obvious reason if the user launched multiple processes, as they may well do if using lighttpd. Still, it doesn't have to be *fast*, so maybe there's some sort of compramise to be had? Marshal the values, and store them in some sort of indexy thing, where we could use filesystem locks to keep from writing over eachother, and garbage collect / compress every now and then. That could work really well, and could be nice pure ruby. Mmmm. Is this crazy? Am I a nut for thinking that a simple multiprocess safe key/value store would actually be really easy to do? I've played with the filesystem as a storage medium a fair bit.. it seems like it should be almost trivial! Maybe I should make this right now! On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Philippe Monnet r...@monnet-usa.comwrote: I think having a section off of the promo site (and linked from the wiki too) to showcase simple user-created apps is a great idea as I have not seen that concept on other sites. I believe Magnus is building a TryCamping thing too which would be awesome
Re: Wiki vs homepage
I agree wholly on the design front, and would like to contribute cartoony doodles and simple (not Backend Web Developer simple, but Designer Simple) web designs in vaguely _why's quirky fun style, if you guys are up for that. I'm currently rather more focused on Hackety Hack's web stuff, but in a couple of weeks when I get tired of drawing fruit bats and laser-breathing dinosaurs, Maybe camping would be a fun place to doodle? :) If I forget, poke me @Bluebie. @Judofyr - if you want to chat, I am a...@creativepony.com on msn/jabber these days. :) Oh, and I don't know what the others think of this idea, but there is some talk of HetyH having a forum in the next refresh of it's website. How would you guys feel about being a part of that? I'm rather fond of the idea of reuniting the old _why community in some common shared space like that, though I'd fully understand if you guys feel it'd be a smelly situation to be a category in another project's forum. Maybe instead - if you guys are pro-forum - there could be a website.. perhaps named something like 'Whyism', a special little cult of _why place for us all to hang out and talk about all his old projects, and our new stuff too. To keep the spirit of it all alive? — Jenna Fox http://creativepony.com On 09/07/2010, at 5:55 AM, Magnus Holm wrote: Hey guys, Philippe had some interesting points about the website: 1. Keep the home page simple with all content fitting within 1280 x 1024 2. Use a catchy design (need some help here) 3. Accentuate that Camping is about Ruby (maybe also include the ruby logo somewhere) 4. Have a brief note about the connection to _why and a link to a page explaining the history of Camping with further links to _why's other sites 5. Encourage people to try it by capitalizing on some of Camping's strengths: - Fast to learn - requires only basic Ruby skills - Much simpler than Rails but more structure than Sinatra/Padrino - Lightning fast and memory efficient allowing fast and efficient sites - Can evolve from simple file to organized directory structure - Can layer in more features later using persistence and choice of view engines 6. How about using some kind of an animated (auto advancing) slideshow to highlight some of the benefits? See an example at: http://blog.monnet-usa.com/?p=276 7. How about a page on learning with a link to the book as well as a list of links for other tutorials or short explanations on key topics (e.g. how to do migrations, how to use include/extend, how to use different view engines, etc.)? 8. How about a page about plugins with some brief description of their intent? 9. I would love for us to include _why's cartoons in some of the sub pages ;-) Now, the more I look at this list (and my own thoughts about the new camping site) I realize that we're talking about two different things: * A site to attract new users * A site to inform regular users It looks like my attempt (http://whywentcamping.judofyr.net/) tries to target the latter, while Philippe targeted the former (http://rubycamping.monnet-usa.com/). Both sites serves a purpose and I believe both are equally important. -- Here's what I propose: We split the site into two parts. We turn what I've created into a wiki. Everyone are welcome to edit and add their own content. Then we take Philippe's ideas/design/site and turn it into ruby-camping.com or whywentcamping.com or whatnot. It probably doesn't need to be more than a single page. What'd ya think? // Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
Another passing thought: It'd be very much in the spirit of freeform fun little hacks if the camping website included a section of user created apps. They would need to be moderated somehow, unless someone were to set up a try-rubyish highly sandboxed environment to run them. It just seems like there'd be no better way to show what Camping is all about than to have it's very own website full of fun little examples of camping apps, with a way to see the source code of each right in there. If you guys had something like that, i'd love to contribute some quirky little multiplayer games, and an extremely simple chat thing. :) What with rack mounts, this should be easy, right? Why did say at art code that he didn't really care if the code editor part of HetyH was really good - what mattered was the sharing. The forum. The code messaging system. The apps which could talk to each other over the web through the various APIs. That was the important part of hackety hack. I think that's the important part of camping as well. The main reason I use Camping over Sinatra and the likes is the way it feels so warm and fuzzy, and I know if I have any troubles, I get to come talk to all you awesome people. :) If we had the sandboxed thing, it'd be fairly trivial to include a little cli app in the camping gem to upload the app in to a whyism or hetyh or whatever account, where it could sit in a little bin of recent uploads, and be attached to forum posts, or shared out like tinyurls. The most important part of all that is kids. Kids don't have web servers. It's all well and good to have camping ourselves, but if we're to think for one minute that we're helping kids learn ruby (which after all, was _why's mission), we've got to be offering some fairly easy way for them to host this stuff. Does anyone know much about sandboxing? Anyone know if it'd be particularly difficult to do things like monkeypatch the IO class to effectively chroot and secure a camping app? Can we disable `system calls` too? What's involved in making something like that viable? Hosts like Dreamhost seem to already be making use of Passenger to dynamically allocate ruby processes to apps, so they can be booted up when requested and shut down after they idle for a minute. :) — Jenna Fox http://creativepony.com/ ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
I agree to the separation as well. A site that introduces camping with a simple example/tutorial and that links to a wiki (with more advanced stuff) and the mailing list is a good way to go about it. Dave On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Philippe Monnet r...@monnet-usa.com wrote: Yeah, I agree that it makes sense to have two sites, one to promote Camping and one to serve as the official reference. And a wiki would be very convenient for that. On 7/8/2010 1:55 PM, Magnus Holm wrote: Hey guys, Philippe had some interesting points about the website: 1. Keep the home page simple with all content fitting within 1280 x 1024 2. Use a catchy design (need some help here) 3. Accentuate that Camping is about Ruby (maybe also include the ruby logo somewhere) 4. Have a brief note about the connection to _why and a link to a page explaining the history of Camping with further links to _why's other sites 5. Encourage people to try it by capitalizing on some of Camping's strengths: - Fast to learn - requires only basic Ruby skills - Much simpler than Rails but more structure than Sinatra/Padrino - Lightning fast and memory efficient allowing fast and efficient sites - Can evolve from simple file to organized directory structure - Can layer in more features later using persistence and choice of view engines 6. How about using some kind of an animated (auto advancing) slideshow to highlight some of the benefits? See an example at: http://blog.monnet-usa.com/?p=276 7. How about a page on learning with a link to the book as well as a list of links for other tutorials or short explanations on key topics (e.g. how to do migrations, how to use include/extend, how to use different view engines, etc.)? 8. How about a page about plugins with some brief description of their intent? 9. I would love for us to include _why's cartoons in some of the sub pages ;-) Now, the more I look at this list (and my own thoughts about the new camping site) I realize that we're talking about two different things: * A site to attract new users * A site to inform regular users It looks like my attempt (http://whywentcamping.judofyr.net/) tries to target the latter, while Philippe targeted the former (http://rubycamping.monnet-usa.com/). Both sites serves a purpose and I believe both are equally important. -- Here's what I propose: We split the site into two parts. We turn what I've created into a wiki. Everyone are welcome to edit and add their own content. Then we take Philippe's ideas/design/site and turn it into ruby-camping.com or whywentcamping.com or whatnot. It probably doesn't need to be more than a single page. What'd ya think? // Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list -- Dave ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Wiki vs homepage
Hey guys, Philippe had some interesting points about the website: 1. Keep the home page simple with all content fitting within 1280 x 1024 2. Use a catchy design (need some help here) 3. Accentuate that Camping is about Ruby (maybe also include the ruby logo somewhere) 4. Have a brief note about the connection to _why and a link to a page explaining the history of Camping with further links to _why's other sites 5. Encourage people to try it by capitalizing on some of Camping's strengths: - Fast to learn - requires only basic Ruby skills - Much simpler than Rails but more structure than Sinatra/Padrino - Lightning fast and memory efficient allowing fast and efficient sites - Can evolve from simple file to organized directory structure - Can layer in more features later using persistence and choice of view engines 6. How about using some kind of an animated (auto advancing) slideshow to highlight some of the benefits? See an example at: http://blog.monnet-usa.com/?p=276 7. How about a page on learning with a link to the book as well as a list of links for other tutorials or short explanations on key topics (e.g. how to do migrations, how to use include/extend, how to use different view engines, etc.)? 8. How about a page about plugins with some brief description of their intent? 9. I would love for us to include _why's cartoons in some of the sub pages ;-) Now, the more I look at this list (and my own thoughts about the new camping site) I realize that we're talking about two different things: * A site to attract new users * A site to inform regular users It looks like my attempt (http://whywentcamping.judofyr.net/) tries to target the latter, while Philippe targeted the former (http://rubycamping.monnet-usa.com/). Both sites serves a purpose and I believe both are equally important. -- Here's what I propose: We split the site into two parts. We turn what I've created into a wiki. Everyone are welcome to edit and add their own content. Then we take Philippe's ideas/design/site and turn it into ruby-camping.com or whywentcamping.com or whatnot. It probably doesn't need to be more than a single page. What'd ya think? // Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: Wiki vs homepage
Yeah, I agree that it makes sense to have two sites, one to promote Camping and one to serve as the official reference. And a wiki would be very convenient for that. On 7/8/2010 1:55 PM, Magnus Holm wrote: Hey guys, Philippe had some interesting points about the website: 1. Keep the home page simple with all content fitting within 1280 x 1024 2. Use a catchy design (need some help here) 3. Accentuate that Camping is about Ruby (maybe also include the ruby logo somewhere) 4. Have a brief note about the connection to _why and a link to a page explaining the history of Camping with further links to _why's other sites 5. Encourage people to try it by capitalizing on some of Camping's strengths: - Fast to learn - requires only basic Ruby skills - Much simpler than Rails but more structure than Sinatra/Padrino - Lightning fast and memory efficient allowing fast and efficient sites - Can evolve from simple file to organized directory structure - Can layer in more features later using persistence and choice of view engines 6. How about using some kind of an animated (auto advancing) slideshow to highlight some of the benefits? See an example at: http://blog.monnet-usa.com/?p=276 7. How about a page on learning with a link to the book as well as a list of links for other tutorials or short explanations on key topics (e.g. how to do migrations, how to use include/extend, how to use different view engines, etc.)? 8. How about a page about plugins with some brief description of their intent? 9. I would love for us to include _why's cartoons in some of the sub pages ;-) Now, the more I look at this list (and my own thoughts about the new camping site) I realize that we're talking about two different things: * A site to attract new users * A site to inform regular users It looks like my attempt (http://whywentcamping.judofyr.net/) tries to target the latter, while Philippe targeted the former (http://rubycamping.monnet-usa.com/). Both sites serves a purpose and I believe both are equally important. -- Here's what I propose: We split the site into two parts. We turn what I've created into a wiki. Everyone are welcome to edit and add their own content. Then we take Philippe's ideas/design/site and turn it into ruby-camping.com or whywentcamping.com or whatnot. It probably doesn't need to be more than a single page. What'd ya think? // Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
