From: "Ken Pooley" <kpooley@sewanee.edu> To: "MWS" <mws@midgard-project.org>, <user@midgard-project.org>, Subject: MWS #55: What should be in the Midgard Site, 1.4.1 is coming, A 2.0 road map, Midgard on IRC! Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 02:58:15 -0600 MWS #55, January 11th 2001 Greetings! It has been an interesting time in the world of Midgard. After a lot of work, by a lot of people, 1.4 is stable and released. There is concrete movement towards 2.0 and Ami Ganguli has pretty specific requests for help and a good timeline marking out where and when we should see pieces along the way. Bergie has returned from his stint with Finland’s finest and is motivated to push the project “to be all it can be”; I am working on an interview with Bergie that should be ready in the next issue or so. There are discussions crossing all of the lists about how to rework the Midgard Project site to better serve the wide range of users who need resources and support. There is a new IRC channel, sponsored by Torben Nehmer, to give all of us a place to meet when we just can’t get to Paris. I am still interested in talking to current Midgard users who would like to answer questions about how they use Midgard and what it has brought to their organization. Contents: Editor's Note Discussion of Midgard-project.org and its future. Bergie starts a discussion of what we need from the project website. 1.4 is out and 1.4.1 is on the way. PHP 4 and Repligard in late January. A revised timetable and roadmap for Midgard 2. Good news:We are on schedule. Bad news: Here is the list of things to do, or no 2.0 for you! A Midgard IRC Channel debuts. It’s a good way to ask a question when that “;” is looking so wrong. ============================ Discussion of Midgard-project.org and its future. ---------------------------- One of the first things Henri Bergius initiated upon returning to the list was an ongoing discussion of what information and services should be included in the Midgard-Project website. There have been a number of threads. They are mostly related to the need to make basic information available to new users, readily assist with software installation and make the documentation as easy to access as possible. This is a really important discussion for the whole Midgard community to participate in, if you haven’t put in your .2 euros, you should think about it. The growth of the installed Midgard server base over the last year has been tremendous, this growth brings with it a lot of different perspectives and valuable experience. There should be a requirements document coming out of the discussion and all will be urged to review it when the time comes. ============================ 1.4 is out and 1.4.1 is on the way. ---------------------------- Midgard 1.4 was released, on schedule right, around Christmas day and seems to be a successful release. There have been relatively few bugs reported though all are encouraged to check in, and if necessary report bugs at the bug tracking webpage, http://www.midgard-project.org/bugs/. The bug tracker is also the place to request features in future versions. The next release, 1.4.1, is scheduled for late January. 1.4.1 is intended to provide support for Php4 as well as provide fully functional and integrated Repligard. 1.4.1 is the last planned release in the 1.x tree, as most development energies will turn towards 2.0 over the next few months. There is potential for a 1.5 release but that will only happen if feature needs arise which are appropriate to the architecture of 1.4. ============================ A revised timetable and roadmap for Midgard 2. ---------------------------- Ami Ganguli has been working hard on writing the core of what will become Midgard 2.0. He has released a revised road map for the development process and a timeline for completion of the various stages (The web version of this article will have the text of the road map appended to it.) Most encouraging is a projected completion date for the whole version of December 1st. In the mean time there is a lot of work to be done. The code is being written in C and the development projects are currently prioritized according to their relative effort and priority. While the schedule is ambitious it is also assembled in such a way that parts can be easily dropped if they prove unwieldy or they consume too many resources. The modular nature of Midgard 2.0 should allow enough feature extensibility that parts dropped now can be re-included at a later date if resources allow. ============================ A Midgard IRC Channel debuts. ---------------------------- Torben Nohmer has put up an Internet Relay Chat channel and has been trying to moniter it most days. IRC is a great way to get in touch with someone who can help you out, in real time, when you get stuck on that one line of Midgard script that just won’t work, compile or go away. Even though it seems like Emile is running an e-mail based chat it is just an illusion, as we have recently discovered he, does go on vacation and there is not a T-1 on the beach in Surinam. Torben, however, does not vacation in faraway places. He is online most afternoons and evenings but is looking for others to cover those times when he isn’t available. The IRC channel is #Midgard, the server is found at irc.Midgard-project.org. Like the discussion forum Jakob Nielsen posted at http://www.jakobnielsen.net/midgardforum/viewboard.phtml?BoardID=1, IRC is a great place to toss out that nagging question see what comes back. I will try to be there during the day, central standard time (GMT-6), as soon as I get back to my office everyday. ============================ About Midgard Midgard 1.4 is a content publishing tool for small and medium sized sites. It is based on Apache, MySQL and PHP. The application and its documentation are licensed GPL, LGPL and GFDL. This licensing strategy guarantees that developers, webmasters, ISPs, and business managers are investing in a strategy where they're free to share solutions and participate in the application design. -> http://www.midgard-project.org ---------------------------- About MWS The Midgard Weekly Summary is a bi-weekly newsletter for the Midgard user and developer community, as well as the extended web community. If you would like to release it or publish it, please contact Ken Pooley (kpooley@sewanee.edu). Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can be found archived at the Midgard web site. -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html Midgard mailing list. The Midgard mailing list is one of the most vital and visible aspects of the Midgard Community. Questions get answered, suggestions debated and work gets done. E-mail:midgard@greywolves.org ---------------------------- Places to see Midgard in Action: http://www.midgard-project.org http://www.hklc.com http://www.5fthigh.com/ http://www.linuxde.org/ http://www.hec.nl/ http://www.stonejobs.com/ http://www.cruisexcursions.com/ http://www.sewanee.edu -More to come ============================