[SAC] Re: GRASS -> Drupal migration?

[Markus Neteler]

Hi SAC, Tyler,

On 10/11/07, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) <tmitchell at osgeo.org> wrote:
> On 9-Oct-07, at 5:54 AM, Markus Neteler wrote:
>
> > (tell me if I should contact someone else)

now cc'ing SAC and Wolf Bergenheim (GRASS GSoC mentor and
developer who offers to admin a GRASS Drupal site).

> Hi Markus,
> I do suggest you follow up with the systems committee, so they can
> help provide input and direction.  But in the end, I think I'm the
> only one really comfortable installing/maintaining Drupal.
>
> > we would like to move the GRASS Web site to drupal
> > (of course some developers ae against it but...).
>
> Is the website currently complex?  Are you hoping to maintain the
> same look and feel of the site, or do you want, like MapGuide, to
> have your site based on the OSGeo website theme?

I think we can demolish the old site + structure + layout. I am
maintaining it since 1997 and only got down to 80% of contributions,
for many years I was above 90%. This indicates that the
convenient way of handcrafted HTML/PHP doesn't work for
the "masses". And I want more people to be able to maintain
the content.

> > Questions:
> > - which DB is our Drupal running - PostgreSQL?
> It's running MySQL.  We don't have Postgres running on our production
> servers.

OK.

> > - would it be possible to have a Drupal instance
> >   on grass.osgeo.org?
>
> Yes, this is the same way that MapGuide is running.  It shares a
> bunch of common Drupal files, but they have their own configuration
> and themes.

Nice.

> > I have already the GRASS GSoC mentor who volunteers
> > to administer a GRASS-Drupal server.
>
> Perhaps the volunteer would end up helping with SAC or WebCom too,
> then eventually I could have some more help with Drupal in general.

I guess I could collect some people.

> If you file a ticket to SAC and cc: me, let's see what happens.
>
> Tyler

Excellent. Of course there are some GRASS people against
such a step but well. Also the mirroring (20 sites or so) which we
currently do needs a re-design then. But probably mirroring is
less important nowadays or could be done for the heavy files
only.

Wolf suggested that we set up a GRASS-Demo-Drupal on his
machine and then migrate the content. He told me that the OSGeo
Drupal is V4 while V6 is forthcoming (no idea if that matters).
Anyway, we may discuss this here.

Thanks
Markus