[Catalyst] Catalyst Web Presence summary

[Kiki]

Hello all,

My name is Grün Christian-Rolf (aka Kiki/kixx on IRC). I'm currently
trying to organize the Web related aspects of Catalyst.

Here we go... on the plus side we have a Trac installation which
provides: svn repo browser, wiki, and bug tracking database.
Yes, it's in python, and it would be nice to have some or all of this
functionality in a Catalyst app. But, it's working OK.

There also should be a blog, for which an MT install was proposed. While
there are some licensing issues, until further notice (aka we can use a
better Perl-based blog software) it should do. An alternative would be
to use http://use.perl.org/ journals but people are apparently
unsatified with the RSS feeds (items missing). A third alternative that
was proposed is for each blog author to publish his own feed (assuming
he has the means to do so) and the just provide an aggregated feed on
the website (I'm not sure I understood this last one correctly).

We also have a really nice web design (you can see it at
http://catalyst.project.ngmedia.net/preview/ or
http://catalyst.bsdro.org/).
Alas, there is no content whatsoever. Yes, there is material on the trac
wiki we could use, but IMO the main page should have some "marketing
speak" or whatever they call it, regarding:  So anybody who wants to
contribute content to the site is welcome. Required texts would be: Main
blurb (if you want also a replacement image for those apples),
Development blurb (something about KISS, DRY and TIMTOWTDI and how
development in Catalyst is 10 times faster than in Rails ;-) ),
Deploymenyt blurb (how you can run it on 5 different OSes and as many
web servers, etc...) and Scalability blurb (oh, how doth thee scale,
Catalyst o'mine!)

The sections listed on the site are:

*Community*: short page with description and links to mailing list,
mailing list archives and irc channel (it would be nice to have IRC logs
as well, afaik Matt has some, but they could be split by days)

*Documentation*: page with links to the various types of documentation
(CPAN-released, trunk, refcards, FAQ). Now, the official documentation
is on CPAN, but it won't be visually consistent with the look of the
site, so my proposal is to have a documentation mirror generated from
the current release, styled like the rest of the site (shouldn't be too
complicated with the aid of some templates and Pod::Html) There is also
much content on the wiki which can find its place here, including videos
and all those cute pictures.

*Developer*: this should link to the trac site and perhaps also give
instructions on how to checkout from svn and build (all that Build.PL
stuff), also documentation for plugin developers (howtos, link to
modules plugins should use)

*Download*: short page with links to CPAN releases, also instructions
for installing (Windows, Debian, FreeBSD) and short info on how to
install most often used base dependencies (Perl, Apache, MySQL/SQLite)

*Support*: not much here for now, looking for ideas

We could aso register a domain name. I understand the aly.st was taken
(which would give us the cool http://cat.aly.st/ URL), but perhaps
someone could get in touch with the domain owner (whois aly.st) and ask
what it takes to obtain that domain. There are also other domains names
which could be registered (not as cool, but better than nothing).

And last not least, there are some projects in development: there's a
wiki (MojoMojo), there's a blog (Agave). And there might be also a CMS
(Nac), but
this last one is only in the design phase (a.k.a. I wrote down ideas,
have yet to write some code). Agave would be a nice blog, and perhaps
MojoMojo could replace Trac (dunno what its status is resp. how well it
could integrate with a bug tracking system and svn).

Nac is a project which aims to host this site I'm talking about. There
are some ideas at http://trac.nac.bsdro.org/ and feedback (on mailing
list and/or wiki is welcome).

So to sum it up:

TO-DO:
  - contribution of material to the site (at least to replace the "Lorem
ipsum" place holders): anyone who has ideas
  - official documentation pages styled with "official Catalyst site
style": volunteers?
  - moving wiki documentation to site: same as above
  - content for the support section: anyone with ideas
  - install and administration of blog (MT): needs server and some
MT-savvy admin (if possible)
  - Nac design & development: I can manage version 1.0 to get it off the
ground, we'll see from there

Cheers,
Kiki