I looked through a number of existing top-level ASF project websites, and they all appear to be serving up static HTML pages. Some of them use a wiki at http://wiki.apache.org/{project name}; otherwise, the sites appear to be generated by some sort of script/template combination. If there is a choice, I would recommend following this model: using static pages as much as possible will effectively eliminate almost all security and maintenance issues.
Most ASF sites do not have a search feature, and those that do rely on third parties (e.g. google). It would be easy enough to follow that model, though if we use Sphinx, it has a built-in (javascript-based) search engine. There are a lot of template-based options for building sites, and I am completely unfamiliar with most of them. Velocity is another ASF project, but I have never worked with it. Several years ago I used Template::Toolkit quite a bit, which is written in perl. Since so much of the VCL uses perl, this might be a good option -- not that one actually needs to know perl to use it. It would also be possible to use an XSLT-based engine, but I XSL syntax can be very unforgiving. My current favorite is Sphinx, which relies on python to generate the HTML. Aaron Coburn On May 4, 2012, at 11:51 AM, Aaron Peeler wrote: >> >> As for the website, I agree that some design work would be really useful. I >> am assuming that ASF would provide a hosting arrangement, i.e. a domain like >> vcl.apache.org? Would that also include server space to run any type of CMS? >> Confluence is a nice all-in-one package, though if you are considering a >> complete overhaul of the site, I could also recommend a system like Drupal >> (MySQL + PHP). Drupal has a lot of bells and whistles that can make for a >> very nice, highly interactive site. The downside of drupal is that it is not >> specifically designed to handle software documentation. On the other hand, >> if we only need to serve static html pages that focus on documentation, etc, >> I can also recommend Sphinx. The downside of Sphinx is that it is really >> best for Python and C++ projects, and it doesn't support web-based updates >> -- it does create excellent sites, though. > > I believe we can run anything we like. ASF does provide the hosting > and the top-level projects do have their own url > <projectname>.apache.org. > > I'm not up-to speed yet on what our options are or what the other > projects are using. The Apache infrastructure team is recommending > projects to migrate away from confluence. Has anyone else had a chance > to research which cms tools are available supported/recommended by > ASF? > >> >> I am also a little unclear on the timeframe for modifying the website -- it >> this something that would be done prior to graduation or upon graduation? > > I don't think it is a requirement, but ideally it would be nice to at > least have a start on a new site by graduation time. > > > Aaron Peeler
