That's great! Good work! I look forward to using the new site!<br><br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 5/25/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Howard Butler</b> <<a href="mailto:hobu@iastate.edu">hobu@iastate.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">All,<br><br>I am pleased to announce the beta release of the new MapServer<br>website. The site is located at <
<a href="http://ms.gis.umn.edu">http://ms.gis.umn.edu</a>>.<br><br>I, Kari Guerts, the mapserver-docs team, and the developers have been<br>working to develop a site that streamlines documentation development,<br>allows through-the-web editing (but not a free-for-all like a wiki),
<br>provides searching capabilites, provides support for multi-lingual<br>documents, and provides for structured content types. The new website was<br>developed using Plone <<a href="http://plone.org">http://plone.org
</a>>, with some additional libraries<br>that add functionality and some minor coding to make things fit the project<br>better.<br><br>Some examples of documents on the site include the Mapfile reference<br><<a href="http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/mapfile/">
http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/mapfile/</a>>, the howto list<br><<a href="http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto">http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto</a>>, and a "Getting started with MapServer"<br>document (only exists on the new site thanks to David Fawcett)
<br><<a href="http://ms.gis.umn.edu/new_users/">http://ms.gis.umn.edu/new_users/</a>>.<br><br>As a user with this site, you can now participate in the documentation of<br>MapServer. By "joining" the site, you can create content, submit howtos,
<br>faqs, and tutorials for inclusion in the site, add comments to existing<br>documents, and help translate documents into your native language. I will<br>be working on documents to describe how you can participate in the coming
<br>weeks. Once you join the site, make sure to go to your "Personal<br>Preferences" page and update your email alert preference, your picture if<br>you want, and your latitude/longitude (Sean posted some details of how this
<br>can be used here <<a href="http://zcologia.com/news/33">http://zcologia.com/news/33</a>>).<br><br>The website should be considered beta-level, much like the beta releases of<br>the software. If you find an issue, please let me know and/or file a bug
<br>in bugzilla in the website category, and I'll try to get to it. The two<br>sites will continue to run in parallel for a while, very likely until after<br>the release of 4.6 and MUM3, to allow it to grow out of its initial bugs,
<br>to allow for ample time for people to get comfortable with it, and to not<br>add another item to the conference crunch.<br><br>Much of the existing documentation on the blue site has been migrated to<br>the new site, although things might not be perfectly in sync yet. We're
<br>working to migrate things over as time permits. There are also a few other<br>website bugs here and there, the logo is just a place holder, and I'm sure<br>there are many other issues I don't even know about yet ;). The general
<br>structure is there, however, with much of the content filled out so you can<br>get a feel for how things will look in the future. After the beta period,<br>the site will probably be moved to <<a href="http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu">
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu</a>> (and<br>continue to exist at its current address), and the stuff in the blue site<br>will be preserved and made available on something like<br><<a href="http://old.mapserver.gis.umn.edu">
http://old.mapserver.gis.umn.edu</a>>.<br><br>I would like to thank Kari, Steve, Tom Burk and the UMN team, the<br>mapserver-docs crew, and the developers for all of their help and input on<br>this project.<br><br>Howard
<br><br>PS. Remember that there is a server outage tonight, so it might not be<br>available due to the outage.<br></blockquote></div><br>