Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:39:06 +0300 (EEST)
From: Henri Bergius <Henri.Bergius@iki.fi>
Subject: MWS for 14th of October, 1999 (#20)
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, chris@linuxdev.net, deb@linuxchix.org

Greetings!

As expected, I wasn't able to produce this
new MWS on schedule because of the Workshop.
However, here it finally is.

While this week has been a bit slow on actual
development, we've still been busy with work
on other aspects of Midgard - mostly training
and documentation because of the Workshop 
yesterday.

The development work will resume in next week, 
and we hope to get a beta of Midgard 2.0 out 
in early November.

There also won't be MWS for the week 42 as I'm 
on a business trip in the US and don't have 
good enough access to my mail.

But now to this week's headlines...

============================
----------------------------

Current versions:
	Stable: 1.2.3 (Mad King)
	Devel.: 1.3

----------------------------
============================

The Midgard Workshop

The Workshop is now over. There were eleven 
participants overall, which is slightly less than
the number of registrations, but then again, that 
was expected. Also it helped as now the classroom
wasn't overly crowded.

I think the event went quite well, although the
actual training was slightly too short. Midgard 
has so many interesting aspects that it is quite 
impossible to fit it all into one day. Maybe we'll
reserve two days for Midgard training sessions in 
the future.

We went through Midgard's architecture, its components
and basic development strategies in Takomo, and then
continued with an installation lab in a nearby pub,
so everybody got to see how Midgard installs on a
Linux laptop.

After that we got into Eero af Heurlin's famous
Land Rover (after which the Midgard 1.0.x series
was named) and got to Data Fellows' office for
sauna. In the sauna facilities the discussion on
Midgard, Linux, and other matters of interest 
continued for many hours...

Thanks to Takomo, Data Fellows and all the participants 
for helping us make the event happen!

----------------------------

Midgard training slides

The slides we used for training in the Workshop are
now available from Midgard's site.

We're planning to base the Midgard manual on the
structure of these presentations so comments would
be welcome!

To those needing them, the original MagicPoint
files for the presentations can be found from 
Midgard's CVS repository in the doc/slides directory.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/slides/workshop/index.html

----------------------------

Installation troubleshooting

Getting Midgard installed correctly is still
by far the commonest problem heard on Midgard's
mailing list. While improving the documentation
and making the installation processes better
helps, the truth is that Midgard requires many 
different components, most of whom are coming 
from other Open Source projects, and so the 
installation will still be difficult for new
users.

One solution could be what Midgard developer 
Emile Heyns is now offering - to organize a
group of people who have lots of experience
in Midgard's installation quirks and can help
new users directly with their problems in getting
Midgard set up and running.

Here's what Emile wrote to us about the idea:

 "I am willing to make time available so people 
 could request one-on-one install sessions. 
 Required would be that

 1. they have made a valid attempt to install it 
    by themselves. Maybe a couple of posts on the 
    mailing list about their problems to eliminate 
    trivial problems and issues already covered by 
    the FAQ.
 2. I can log into their machine, and that they are 
    either online at the same time or that I would 
    get sudo or root access.

 I was thinking of 30 minute slots, as that's usually 
 the time I need to fix things. When I have previously 
 done this I have asked people to contribute 
 documentation in return, no obligation, but highly 
 appreciated. No one seemed to mind. If we do this, it 
 would be best if we have documentation (or other) 
 projects available that would require no more than
 a week or two, part time, to complete.

 We may even want to invite other people who have 
 successfully installed Midgard to do the same."

The idea sounds very good, as this way we can
get most of the people interested in running Midgard
over their initial problems, and possibly also
improve Midgard's documentation as well.

If you have any comments or questions about this,
you can either discuss in on Midgard's mailing list
or contact Emile (E.Heyns@uci.kun.nl) directly.

----------------------------

SWOT analysis on Midgard

There is currently a very interesting thread going
on Midgard's mailing list about doing a SWOT
(Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Strenghts)
analysis on Midgard.

The discussion was sparked by comments we've received
on the DevShed interview, comparing us with Zope.

Some current points for the analysis include:

Strengths:
* Style system, totally separated from the content.
* Finegrained access control built in, allowing us to 
  generate security maps (who can do what where), 
  tuned sitemaps and search engine results.
* Migration from WebServer to AppServer (you can still 
  server static dox and cgi-bins)

Weaknesses:
* Documentation (not an inherent weakness, BTW)
* Deployment & interoperability of standard packages
* Poor presentation of the product.
* Patched PHP is a scare for potential users
* Installation is unacceptable.

Opportunities:
* Integration into PHP. Instant deployment around the 
  world.

Threats:
* Developer mindshare. We need to pick up architects 
  and site constructors (consultants, if you will) 
  if we really want to grow.

You can read the rest of the discussion from the
mailing list archives and send your own comments
there as well.

  -> http://www.progressive-comp.com/Lists/?l=midgard&d=1&r=1&w=2&b=199910&e=199911

============================
============================

About Midgard

Midgard is a freely-available Web application 
development and publishing platform based on 
the popular PHP scripting language. It is an 
Open Source development project, giving you the 
freedom to create your solutions in an open 
environment. Midgard is the tool for creating, 
modifying and maintaining dynamic 
database-enabled web services.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org

----------------------------

About MWS

The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter 
for the Midgard user and developer community.

The MWS is currently being distributed in
following mediums:

 -The Midgard Project's Web site
   -> http://www.midgard-project.org

 -Linux Weekly News
   -> http://www.lwn.net

 -Linux Developer's Network
   -> http://linuxdev.net

 -Open Source Writers Group
   -> http://www.oswg.org

 -Midgard mailing list

If you would like to release it elsewhere,
please contact Henri Bergius 
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi).

Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can 
be found archived at the Midgard web site.
  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html

============================

/Bergie

-- 
-- Henri Bergius -- +358 40 525 1334 -- Henri.Bergius@iki.fi --
               http://www.iki.fi/Henri.Bergius