Hi all,
the good news is I could actually get to the webserver files using SFTP(WinSCP).
I always assumed some extra password or admin rights would be necessary, but I just tried after finding https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Project%20Web%20Services/ page and not seeing an explanation of who actually gets access.
This allowed my to clean out some forgotten/outdated/broken files in htdocs, which were till then served on the web. It seems, only new files got uploaded, but moved or deleted files stayed on there forever.
There was/is some other stuff on the outer directory, but I did not touch it. Stian must have had his reasons for keeping these on there?
I'm not particularly fond of WordPress. About a year ago, I wrote a Plugin for WordPress and it felt like trying to tap into a mess of callback-spaghetti-code.
I've gone ahead and tried some changes using Jekyll ( https://jekyllrb.com/ ). I put these on my GitHub repo ( https://github.com/wintertime/FreeCol/tree/jekyll ), to get some feedback before I change the main repo.
To try it out you need Ruby and Jekyll, but this is really easy -- instructions for different OS are there: https://jekyllrb.com/docs/installation/
Then check out the branch,
$ cd www.freecol.org
$ jekyll serve
type 127.0.0.1:4000 in your browser.
Uploading the website later will be
$ cd www.freecol.org
$ jekyll build
then upload from the newly compiled _site subdirectory instead of directly.I was able to simplify the news section considerably and would like to know, if you like it.
Now with a change to one file code for all news pages can be updated.
Adding a news item is just typing the text into a new .html or .md file with a small yaml header.
The other pages could be simplified in the same way and then the code much easier modernized and the website made prettier.
How do you all like it?
Greetings,
wintertime
Gesendet: Sonntag, 29. Dezember 2019 um 06:15 Uhr
Von: "Jonathan Aquilina" <[email protected]>
An: "D Blakeley" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Michael T. Pope" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected]
Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Von: "Jonathan Aquilina" <[email protected]>
An: "D Blakeley" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Michael T. Pope" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected]
Betreff: Re: [Freecol-developers] Website fixes
Hi Guys,
This is really up to those in charge to take the decision but the hosting offer still stands. SF can be a huge pain in the rump though.
Jonathan Aquilina
On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 10:15 AM D Blakeley via Freecol-developers <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi guys,A few things to reply to!Mike:I think Winter is after your thoughts/approval on his new site ideas. Also I have just posted at this link below, if you could spare a moment to help out a fellow Aussie I'd appreciate it thanks haha. Should be the last time I have to pester you about a big sourceforge change as this really is the last thing it needs to help your fans navigate to the right places! After this in the future it just might be a thread sticky or 2 which I can pester David about. https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/#a702/9e85/07a6/d983/f301Winter:> No, I do not want the website to gain even more warnings. I was hoping we could> decide on which pages with warnings are still useful, which could be deleted.Opps sorry I misread that part as I thought winter was referring to heavily outdated sections of the site not labeled as such. Everyone ignore what I said on that bit lol.Jonathan:> I would be willing to sponsor some webhosting on my shared cpanel server.> I was thinking of setting up wordpress for the site?Your later point was certainly what I was thinking as Wordpress is so darn low maintenance and easy to use and controls the annoying sorting & navigation of all the news items for you. Creating pages and posts is dead easy too as its pretty much like a word doc editing but if you want full control then you can access the html code behind the page editor too. It's also pretty good for setting up separate non-news page sections too. Eg all those project info and history pages etc could easily be copy & pasted to wordpress section pages accessed through a wordpress main menu similar to the existing sites menu options. Wordpress menu buttons also support drop down options meaning all sub sections from the old site could be easily brought across too. I use a wordpress blog for all my website news now (separate from my main website thats store elsewhere), I don't use drop down menus but if you click on either my 'Fav Fan Game Projects' or my 'What's Blake Playing Right NOW' buttons you'll be taken to wordpress hosted sections that are NOT part of the news blog. https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/Winter:> IIRC, one problem with this was the goal to keep all parts of the project
> on a single provider (like SF or GitHub).But yeah as winter points out I don't think they want offsite hosting, as fully accessible public hosting is better for everyone to help out on. I'm not sure if a wordpress built site can be put into a SF/Github hosted area but if it can then I'd be all for that as I can EASILY help in all areas of moving content across and adding new news items etc.> Yes, I always found it the right decision to stop using a CMS, especially> when nobody can commit to updating it regularly. I only have about a month
> before starting in my new job, not sure how much time I have then. That's
> why my main concern is to get the website into a fixed, sustainable state
> without need of much maintenance soon.
> For that, I'd just like to have it in a way to not need every news 3 times
> and having links updated automatically.
> Maybe the way to get that could be static page generation for news articles
> before uploading? We would not need anything fancy, if it could just find
> a few magic tags in slightly modified current pages and add articles from
> text files and generate links to the articles, it would be sufficient.Well good thing I've got the next month off work because that means I can help you try and sort this mess out into something low maintenance before we both get busy again! :)And yeah if some sort of news making page can be constructed that does all the inserting and news list management stuff for you on the existing site that'd be fine too. As presumably then even someone like me could use it to create news if needed lol!> as mentioned below, I'd like to add static page generation.
> I think, Jekyll would be nice for that:
> - https://jekyllrb.com/
> - It would make it easier to add new content/news.
> - It allows for removing redundancies in pages.
> - We could slowly transition page by page (maybe just
> the news at first).
> - It supports markdown (could, for example, translate the
> cv3-discoverer-english/log.md into html after a tiny change).
> - It is also used in GitHub Pages, so it'd be compatible
> in case of a move there.
> - It only needs a Ruby installation with the gem installed,
> then one more line in console/script for uploading and
> a slightly changed directory to upload from.
> I installed it here and it looks like it works for me.
> I'd just need to know beforehand, if you would approve of
> using it?I've never heard of these guys but if they have a nice easy to use frontend that allows even noobs like me to create website content (eg menus, pages, inserting text & pictures) much like the wordpress and wix webpage builders but obviously also has that lovely well organised backend code access for pros like you guys to tinker with if needed (or even some one like me who knows a bit of html to play with if needed) then I'm all for for this idea too mate! :)However I realise I'm not the one you were hoping you'd get a reply to your question from haha! :P Hopefully Mike or someone can give you their thoughts on that. :)If we do go ahead with something new we'd wanna create it in a different folder on sf/gh and bring over resources from old wewbsite folders only when needed so that we're creating a nice new clean well organised site/folder/file structure from the ground up without the 20years of junk that has accumulated in the old site folders.I'm gonna hold off on my big screenshot and videos section overhaul plans I previously talked about until these website future plans are decided on as there's not much point in me working on the existing screenshot section pages and sub pages if a whole new site is going to be developed!RegardsBlake
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