(RFD) Amiga.org's future

[DiskDoctor]

recidivist wrote:
It is a shame these forced upgrades are shutting out the classics.

Maybe it's about time for plan B (of mine)?

I posted this as an idea say in January.

Maybe the solution is (that would be a solution) to create a proxy server, filtering all classic UAs and smoothing new Xoops content (I mean classic html with strict tags and attributes).

This seems pretty simple, any xslt would do the job.

What do you think?

[J-Golden]

Wayne, you had me at AO email address

All kidding aside, do what you gotta do.  We don't own the site, stock in the site or anything else so don't feel to bad if not everyone gets what they want.  And I think it is safe to say that we trust ya in what ever direction you go in and are eternally thankful for what you've done for all of us with this site.

ROCK ON!!!!

[DiskDoctor]

Wayne wrote:

To that end, I've spent the last several weeks evaluating available software and have ended up leaning towards a software package called Drupal. (I'm open to any others)

Please consider CMSes that render i.e. for mobile phones.

Unfortunately neither WAP/WML, WAP1.2 nor WAP2/xhtml profiles match classic profiles, that's for sure.  But when you can define / use many DTD/Schemas, we're all home.

EDIT* check out these:

http://drupal.org/project/mobile_tools
http://www.mobiledrupal.com/
http://drupal.org/project/hellomobile
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/

[bison]

I'd be inclined to go with something like vBulletin and post news items as forum topics, either as individual items, or as a single daily news summary post.

Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old

[freqmax]

I'd say as 'Dementhor' there ought to be a way to control exactly what is sent to the browser.
And like 'DiskDoctor' says it should be possible to setup a proxy.

I used an old browser by writing a perl proxy. And just strip all trendy tags. Viola it worked!

And ANYWAY. All forum posts, and news items must be available in a SQL database. Can't be that hard to get them into something an Amiga browser can compute. Even if it means "Select from .. where .. and printf()"..

Writing a new browser may work, but there's a risk that machines with little RAM or low Kickstart version will suffer. Many programmers seem to not consider that all that nice program code uses resources.

[DiskDoctor]

Khephren wrote:
EAB has a 'mobile' version that I access from my Viewty phone, and would probably work on an Amiga. (Although it is mainly just the forums)

amigaworld has its version, too.  I think xhtml mobile sites and Amiga browsers are not necessarily the same thing (as long as xhtml is actually bundled with CSS).

[DiskDoctor]

Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old

:-(  Please clarify.

DiskDoctor wrote:

Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old

:-(  Please clarify.

Do I *really* need to?

[Zac67]

... And just strip all trendy tags. Viola it worked!

Cool! Tell Viola she's got the job! *SCNR* ;-)

[DiskDoctor]

Wayne wrote:

DiskDoctor wrote:

Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old

:-(  Please clarify.

Do I *really* need to?

You mean down for mobile?  Or you just simple feel kindda bored?

[Crisisdog]

Wayne wrote:

DiskDoctor wrote:

Wayne wrote:
Ya know, the whole "mobile war chant" while potentially valid, is kinda getting old

:-(  Please clarify.

Do I *really* need to?

I don't mean to add fuel to any fire that may be brewing, but I actually applaud what few sites out there have mobile formatted web code.  From my T-Mobile G1, I frequently visit Flickr, Facebook, and TUAW.  I think it would be great to see Amiga.org also have mobile support, but I'm also not a programmer or web developer by any means, and have no clue how complex this would be to implement.

bhoggett wrote:

The option to "don't change the working thing" does not exist unless one was to move to a dedicated server running old software for no other reason than to run Amiga.org. The problem with this would be cost.

Just out of curiosity, what are we talking about to host the site on dedicated hardware.  Is this just for the initial server equipment, or is the actual connection cost going to increase too?

  :-?

[aperez]

Hi Wayne,

Here's what I'd do if I were in your situation. There's an XOOPS 2 plugin which can bridge the amiga.org forums to NNTP quite seamlessly. I'd be more than happy to help you set it up. This would likely IMPROVE the experience for folks on Classic amigas, as NNTP newsreaders are extremely lightweight. If you have any thoughts, questions, etc and would prefer to contact me directly, so we can have an informed decision sans the riff-raff, feel free.

More info at http://www.opensource-cms.nl/nieuws/2009/04/26/xoops/xpnews-11-nntp-protocol-news/

[Opus]

I'd have to agree, You have been a blessing to the Amiga community, we owe you, you do not owe us!

I am slightly disturbed at you saying all 10 users.  Do you have a count of what browsers are visiting?  Please don't tell me yes and less than 10 are Amiga.  I'm here on my peecee, my Amiga is needing some network help, but I sure have visited here quite a bit with Amiga.  If the site no longer even worked on Amiga I think 99% of your visitors could cope anyways.  

[Hans_]

@Wayne

Amiga OS 4, MorphOS and AROS users all have CSS capable browsers. IIRC, there is an older version of OWB compiled for 68k machines. The source code for Netsurf and OWB are both publicly available. If these aren't good enough, the source to Singular, a CSS capable browser for the C64 is also available. If there are enough classic users who browse the web with their machines, surely someone will step up and make it happen?

I'd personally have no problem with you switching to using CSS, but then, I'm an Amiga OS 4.1 user. It is also possible to make a CSS site readable and functional on non-CSS browsers, albeit a bit ugly.

Hans

[brianb]

As a software developer I think your attacking this problem from the wrong angle...  Developing for the lowest common denominator will always lead to poor/mediocre results and frustrating support.   In this case developing around the small minority of "classic" users will hinder the majority.  

Make a *great* site with the newest and coolest tools preserving the content as best as possible.  That should be goal #1.

If the site was meant to be viewed on classic hardware solutions will come forward (heck maybe even a new browser), and if not then there was probably never much interest anyway.

Besides simple/older browsers could always use something like http://mowser.com/   just give it a site and it renders a simple HTML version removing unnecessary code, CSS, images, etc.   Meant for mobile users, but I'm sure a possible work around for the hardcore classic users who have to use their classic systems on the web.

I think developing for the small minority, that do have some possible workarounds, is only going to limit you in the long run and cause increased frustration.  And for what?!  The 5% of people who might use a classic amiga to occasionally access this site?  Why bother...

My $0.02 anyway...