New MapServer Website (beta)

[Ryan, Adam]

FANTASTIC!


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard Butler [mailto:hobu at IASTATE.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 5:35 PM
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] New MapServer Website (beta)
>
>
> All,
>
> I am pleased to announce the beta release of the new
> MapServer website.  The site is located at <http://ms.gis.umn.edu>.
>
> I, Kari Guerts, the mapserver-docs team, and the developers
> have been working to develop a site that streamlines
> documentation development, allows through-the-web editing
> (but not a free-for-all like a wiki), provides searching
> capabilites, provides support for multi-lingual documents,
> and provides for structured content types.  The new website
> was developed using Plone <http://plone.org>, with some
> additional libraries that add functionality and some minor
> coding to make things fit the project better.
>
> Some examples of documents on the site include the Mapfile
> reference <http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/mapfile/>,
> the howto list <http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto>, and a
> "Getting started with MapServer" document (only exists on the new site
thanks to David > Fawcett) <http://ms.gis.umn.edu/new_users/>.
>
> As a user with
> this site, you can now participate in the documentation of
> MapServer.  By "joining" the site, you can create content,
> submit howtos, faqs, and tutorials for inclusion in the site,
> add comments to existing documents, and help translate
> documents into your native language.  I will be working on
> documents to describe how you can participate in the coming
> weeks.  Once you join the site, make sure to go to your
> "Personal Preferences" page and update your email alert
> preference, your picture if you want, and your
> latitude/longitude (Sean posted some details of how this can be used here
> <http://zcologia.com/news/33>).
>
> The website should be
> considered beta-level, much like the beta releases of the
> software.  If you find an issue, please let me know and/or
> file a bug in bugzilla in the website category, and I'll try
> to get to it.  The two sites will continue to run in parallel
> for a while, very likely until after the release of 4.6 and
> MUM3, to allow it to grow out of its initial bugs, to allow
> for ample time for people to get comfortable with it, and to
> not add another item to the conference crunch.
>
> Much of the existing documentation on the blue site has been
> migrated to the new site, although things might not be
> perfectly in sync yet.  We're working to migrate things over
> as time permits.  There are also a few other website bugs
> here and there, the logo is just a place holder, and I'm sure
> there are many other issues I don't even know about yet ;).
> The general structure is there, however, with much of the
> content filled out so you can get a feel for how things will
> look in the future.  After the beta period, the site will probably be
moved to > <http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu> (and continue to > exist at its
> current address), and the stuff in the blue
> site will be preserved and made available on something like
> <http://old.mapserver.gis.umn.edu>.
>
> I would like to thank
> Kari, Steve, Tom Burk and the UMN team, the mapserver-docs
> crew, and the developers for all of their help and input on
> this project.
>
> Howard
>
> PS.  Remember that there is a server outage tonight, so it
> might not be available due to the outage.
>