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From: Ken Pooley <kpooley@sewanee.edu> To: "'kreichard@internet.com'" <kreichard@internet.com>, Subject: 28th of September, 2000 (#48) Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:38:11 -0500 Greetings! This is the first of the biweekly Midgard Weekly Summaries. We have been working with the template a little bit to make it as useful, and easy to use, a publication as possible. I welcome all feedback and am especially interested in how readable the text is when it gets to your screen. I have been wrestling with a certain word processor from Redmond to get the text to mail as well as possible but would love to hear of other alternatives. Let me know what you think. Contents: Editor's Note Welcome to a new MWS. - More information, easier to read, biweekly Migrating to 1.4 from earlier installations. - Most of us will have to do it eventually, planning a roadmap from 1.2.x to 1.4 Starting a site redesign. -We are starting to think about what the site needs to do and how. What do you think? ============================ Welcome to the new Midgard Weekly Summary. ---------------------------- We are in the process of redesigning and refining the layout and publication of the venerable MWS. Our goals in this are twofold. On one hand we are trying to include as much useful information as possible in as logical a structure as possible. To that end at the bottom of the page you will find directions for subscribing to the Midgard list, a list of sites using Midgard as well as links to documentation and downloads. At the same time we are trying to make it as easy as possible to find out what is in the news. Towards that goal we have tried to condense the top section of the news and included a 'table of contents' with summaries of this week's articles. We will also be adding a new MWS@midgard-project.org email address in the coming weeks for feedback and contributions, until then reply to the MWS on the Midgard mailing list. ---------------------------- ============================ Migrating to new versions of Midgard. ---------------------------- The coming months will bring a wealth of changes to Midgard and what we can do with Midgard. While a lot of attention is paid to the complete rewrite of Midgard which will come with version 2.0, Midgard 1.4 will bring a number of substantial improvements and changes. Version 1.4 is entering its final beta releases and should be released in the next few weeks. For those who are new to Midgard or have been running through the various beta versions of v1.4, the final release will be a relief. For a number of us, who still run sites on 1.2.x, the transition to 1.4 should be reasonably straight forward but it is not quite a plug and run proposition. Additions and changes to the 1.4 database structure make it necessary to make a number of changes to the Midgard database before 1.4 can be run, those changes, not coincidentally, also form the basis for a number of the new features in 1.4. They include, blob support, repligard, snippets, events, some parameter changes and site groups. Emile, programmer, sky diver, and all around good guy, has worked a great deal with scripts which map current data installations and make changes to the database based on where your data is and where it needs to go. It would be advisable to back up your data before you send a script through your database but the process is not terribly difficult. Emile did caution that the Site Groups upgrade could cause problems if there are changes or customization to the original admin files. This step in the upgrade comes late in the process and Emile seems confident that by the time the final release of v1.4 comes these problems will be addressed. The database upgrade is the most problematic step in the process, from the point of view of the application the upgrade should be quite straight forward. Basically substituting the various libraries and apps will take care of the upgrade, providing the new functionality provided by the new database structure. A number of vendors have developed package management strategies to ease application upgrades, in the past there have been Red Hat RPMs released for Midgard as well as packages for SuSe. A few open source programs, best found on Freshmeat, also attempt to translate different flavors of packages if those of your choice are not available. (No warranties or guarantees are implied by this reference) It is prudent to back up a copy of your httpd.conf file, found as part of the Apache installation, before trying upgrade the application portions your Midgard. Keep in mind, especially if you have an older Apache installation that you may have to monkey with your new httpd.conf to get all of the domains to run again. There will be more specific information about the upgrade as v1.4 nears the final candidate. The Midgard list is also an excellent source of information and quick answers to upgrade insecurity. At the same time parts of the Midgard website have recently had the ability to create enduser annotation added. The goal of annotation is one of community history, as we each have observations to add there will be a place where the experiences of the community can be recorded and retrieved. ---------------------------- ============================ www.Midgard-Project.org site redesign ---------------------------- Over the coming weeks Ron Parker and I will be working on a redesign of the main Midgard-project website. Ron has done a great deal to start systematically defining project requirements for the new site's functionality. The essential goal of the redesign is make access to information easy and tailored to the various constituents served by the site. Ron and Emile have done a great deal to add functions to Midgard which encourage community participation in the development of information resources through the use of page annotation. We also want to provide resources for individuals and businesses, which use Midgard, to showcase their projects and solutions. As always if you have suggestions or comments we welcome all input, we hope to add a webmaster e-mail address in the near future. ============================ ============================ 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/ -More to come ============================