[LGM] the web infrastructure (Was: lgm/2024)

[Timothée Giet]

Hi all,

I think the initial proposal from Cédric makes a lot of sense, to 
summarize it:

- We use static pages for the main LGM website. What tools we use to 
generate them doesn't matter much at this point.

- To gather the proposals and visitor registrations, we use the forms 
from the grafiklabor website. Simple links to the corresponding pages 
from the LGM website and here we go. We have a very good tool there, 
which we (well Aish) developed specifically for the needs of 
grafiklabor, and it would suits as well the needs of the LGM. As far as 
I remember, it handles to add several speaker to a talk proposal, to 
propose several talks without entering again speakers info, and allows 
people proposing a talk to come back to edit their submission if needed. 
It would be much more efficient and convenient than with the email 
system we used last times.

- And then of course it'll be easy to add the talks to the main website 
when the program is ready, that is not a problem.

So for me it's kind of a obvious that we should go this way, at least 
for this year ;)

Cheers,

Timothée


Le 23/11/2023 à 15:01, Contact AFGRAL LGM a écrit :
> hey
>
> i really think impossible to build a tool that would really match the
> needs. And i think more that each organizing would rather use the tools
> they are used to manipulate. So i don’t see the option of developping
> something specific as a good one.
>
> When i was proposing to use the dynamic tool we built for Grafiklabor,
> it was just for this year and not assuming it would be reused. But if
> there is a wish for, this is build over Django, it’s home build so we
> could do what we want, and self-hosted. I could manage it if needed.
> But once again, this was not my full expectation.
>
> Our needs are quite simple :
> 1. grab information from speakers about their conference
> 2. build page that display the program details to everyone, which can
> be done with a static tool (whatever way to produce it)
> 3. eventually, get informations about visitors with a registering
> process
>
> 1. can be done with mail, eventually ODT, markdown or PDF form
> template. With this solution, the organizing has to deal with files
> which is not very difficult.
> 2. if we don’t use dynamic tool to get submissions, i don’t see any
> reason not building a static site. The pipeline should be different
> regarding the first point choice. We’ve already use pelican, but elisa
> is efficient with copy-paste too :-)
> 3. that’s the hard point, if we want to have an average count of future
> visitors and improve organisation details. But this is not a need, only
> comfort. We could just provide an email on the website and say "hey!
> send email here if you wish to come".
>
> cheers.
>
>
> Le jeudi 23 novembre 2023 à 13:54 +0100, ale rimoldi a écrit :
>> hi cédric
>>
>> yes, i guess that we might need to talk about our web infrastructure.
>>
>> the current status:
>>
>> for several years now, we have been hosted by tuxfamily.
>> it's a simple hosting service that offers static websites and php
>> (with
>> a good ssh access to the site)
>>
>> on the one side, this has provided us with a solution that needs very
>> little maintenance from our part and is compatible with our loose
>> organization.
>>
>> on the other side, we have little choice on what we can run on the
>> server.
>>
>> for many years we have had a wordpress instance per year that was
>> then
>> converted to static files. it was ok and allowed some degree of
>> collaboration but (without commercial plugins) i don't have the
>> feeling
>> that nowadays wordpress provides a satisfying solution.
>>
>> the last few years we simply had static websites.
>> that works well.
>> but then we miss a tool for managing the submissions and
>> registrations.
>>
>> i've tried to look for tools for managing conferences that are
>> compatible with our server.
>>
>> i've found one that could work:
>>
>> https://github.com/opencfp/opencfp
>>
>> there are also a few plugin for wordpress, but they mostly are
>> slimmed
>> down version of pro (commercial; not really free software) plugins.
>>
>> generally speaking, my impression is that (even outside of the php
>> based solution) there are not so many tools that focus on managing
>> the
>> content. they are mostly tools for selling tickets. and most of the
>> tools that somehow fit our needs, are tailored for way bigger
>> meetings.
>>
>> cédric is suggesting that the tool for managing the conference could
>> run on their server.
>>
>> this is a very interesting option, because if other server side
>> languages can be used, there is wider set of tools to choose from.
>> (as
>> an example https://getindico.io/)
>>
>> if we can find something fitting that would be perfect (but won't
>> give
>> a solution for future organizers, who don't have access to their own
>> server).
>>
>> there is one thing from my side: i'd prefer if we could have the
>> schedule of talks and presenters on the lgm site and not on the
>> external site. (we can always export it at the end, but it would be
>> really nice if the links were correct from the start)
>>
>> and in the future, we might think if we should have our own instance
>> on
>> a server. but, then, somebody has to regularly pay the fee and there
>> must be administrators who keep it secure.
>>
>> have a wonderful day
>> a.l.e