The new MapServer website

[Howard Butler]

Folks,

This is a heads-up to let you know that the Plone site 
<http://ms.gis.umn.edu> will be come *the* MapServer website once 
MapServer 4.8 is released in a couple of weeks (it will be pointed at 
<http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu>).  The "blue" site will remain on the 
web at <http://old-mapserver.gis.umn.edu> indefinitely to continue to 
provide documentation for older releases of the software.

We need your help.  As we have be moving the content over to the new 
site, we have also taken the opportunity to add more functionality 
and documentation that wasn't available in the old site.  Some things 
may have been missed (good/useful bits in the wiki, stuff buried deep 
in the old site).

- What things do you know of that are missing in the new site?
- What topics aren't covered thoroughly enough?
- What "tidbit"-like documents need to be added?  For example, 
Stephen Woodbridge notified me that we need an FAQ or definition of 
map scale and what that concept means in MapServer.  What other 
concepts like that need coverage?
- Have you noticed any formatting bugs on the new website?
- Do you find the new organization logical and easy to use?
- Does the search mechanism work well for you?
- Have you tried the RSS feeds or PDF download features?  Are they useful?
- Which documents are in the wrong place?
- Have you tried submitting a document?  What works, what doesn't, 
and what essential parts of that process need to be documented?
- Any other issues that you've noticed?

We, the members of the documentation team, have been working really 
hard to make a website that makes things easy to find, allows anyone 
to contribute information, and has most everything you need.  We're 
on the final stretch, and we need your input to put some polish on it.

Thanks,

Howard

PS.  I'd also like to throw a shout out to those who have worked so 
hard to make this happen.  Jeff McKenna.  Perry Nacionales.  Kari 
Geurts.  Tom Burk.   Frank Warmerdam.  Sean Gillies.  Trent Erikson. 
Steve Lime.  Didrik Pinte.  David Fawcett.  The rest of the 
MapServer-DOCS team.  Anyone else that I missed.