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Website Project
Current Deployment
Our main website is hosted on a Linode 512 running 12.04 donated by Linode.com and acts as an entry point for all our resources. It is kept up to date with the current version of WordPress and uses the Ubuntu Loco Light Theme available at lp:~ubuntu-website-community/ubuntu-website/light-wordpress-theme
Website: http://ubuntu-california.org
Planet (aggregation of user blogs): http://planet.ubuntu-california.org/ with configuration updated daily from lp:ubuntu-california-website/planet-configuration
Photos (Pro Flickr account donated by Flickr): http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubuntu-us-ca
EricHammond owns and manages DNS for the ubuntu-california.org domain name
Planning
The rest of this page is being kept for future reference should we decide to change our hosting, it was from when we were brainstorming ideas for the website in 2010.
Our website will be a public-facing web presence for our team, complementing our existing team-focused wikipages and our existing public web presence (microblogging, Facebook, etc.). The website will offer a venue for communicating with the general public, showcasing our community, and highlighting our advocacy efforts.
While some may consider this unnecessary, generous time discussing exactly who our target audience is will help guide our choices and assumptions, focus our efforts and minimize (hopefully prevent) misunderstandings going forward.
Contents
Collecting ideas for the launch of our website.
Information or "content" we may want to produce:
Main site Blog/News for announcements and event summaries (Use Wordpress? Drupal?)
Gallery2 or similar for single place for hosting files
Planet for aggregation of team member blogs, see CaliforniaTeam/Projects/Planet for current plans
MicroBlogging timeline with SimplePie RSS parser.
Videos, team contributed or other relevant videos to our defined target audience, possibly hosting on miro using some kind of "channel" or maybe submit them under an author so one link will show a list of the ones we want to show. Implementation depends on what's possible with the existing system.
- Event Calendar(s) (iCal too)
- General Ubuntu information
- Landing page for physical content ("You just got our $FOO and followed a link on it, here's some information pertinent to you...")
- Private data storage (things with information we want pseudo-public: spreadsheets with personal information for people who want CDs, etc)
- Information on our projects designed to be read by the general public (instead of by team members) (this is covered somewhat by some previous bullets as well)
- Add Yours!
Design
Resources
Multiple resources will be needed for providing the functionality we desire on this website.
Domain name. Choice of the domain name is first. Looking at the LoCoTeamList it seems most teams use a second level domain under either .org or under a two letter country code. I see a number of LoCos choose ubuntu-[two letter code].org outside the US, matching their email list and IRC channel names. US Teams seem to vary in their choices. While the LoCoTeamList is older it still should be current enough for a simple comparison. I don't yet see a similar directory list feature.
- The team is entitled to ca.ubuntu-us.org via Canonical
- The team is entitled to california.ubuntu-us.org via Canonical
- Purchase of at least one primary domain name may be of interest. In the event of a purchase, a domain would be purchased under or transferred to an account which has at least 3 members of the team with access. Possible advanced uses (subdomains, MX) might be possible later depending on the implementation details.
One option is ubuntu-us-ca.org which is already registered and is currently forwarding to our wiki.
EricHammond has reserved ubuntu-california.org for the use of the team and will transfer ownership, set up DNS, or redirect as desired by the team. Same with ubuntu-california.com, ubuntucalifornia.org, ubuntucalifornia.com
- Hosting
- Main website, especially the front page and additional subpages for navigation. Access for updating content should be shared among those most skilled and interested in helping out.
- High bandwidth content or additional application hosting may require additional resources depending on costs and features. If more than one hosting site is used the features should be thoroughly tested to ensure a smooth "end user experience" for the defined target audience
- Revision Control
- to keep the website code centralized
Hosting Options
Note: to avoid "hit by a bus" concerns, all options MUST allow for multiple administrators who have control of payment (if applicable) and full administrative access to the server/solution.
Here are several options. These are not mutually exclusive, and therefore, can be combined where feasible.
Option 1 - Canonical
Canonical offers web hosting for approved LoCo teams, details here: LoCoHosting
Note: This option has been largely frowned upon by team members who have experience working with Canonical's hosting team, as they have been known to be very slow to respond to maintenance tasks and frequently run old versions of the very limited software they offer.
Option 2 - Ubuntu US Linode
Elizabeth Krumbach has offered to host on the ubuntu-us.org and ubuntupennsylvania.org Linode 512 server running Ubuntu 10.10 with:
- Wordpress
- Gallery2
- Planet
- DNS via Linode's DNS manager
Access via ssh to this server would be granted to at least one other trusted member of the team with sysadmin experience. This server was granted as a donation to the Ubuntu community by the great folks over at Linode.com.
Option 3 - Google AppEngine
free application hosting with decent usage quotas
- involves coding nearly from scratch. Backend can be in Python or Java.
will reuse code from existing open source projects
- can fetch information from different locations (RSS feeds) and display it as desired
AadityaBhatia is volunteering to help out with this option (Python preferred, Java ok)
- Access can be given to any number of Google accounts for uploading the application package using the provided tools.
Option 4 - Google Web Toolkit
independent of hosting provider, server-side language; best when coupled with AppEngine
- makes it a web application (like Gmail) that displays all the information on one page
- dynamically updating the content using async AJAX calls
- requires coding the User Interface in Java
requires JavaScript on client side to view the website
AadityaBhatia has a framework ready.
Option 5
Add yours!