From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>
To: development@lists.ipfire.org
Subject: Re: Migrating our IPFire Forum to Discourse
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 14:22:24 +0000
Message-ID: <55FA0825-169E-4DA1-9DDD-4EE51F7D98F9@ipfire.org>
In-Reply-To: <D45C7B8C-A880-40C8-9CB0-85BDC7DB328C@ipfire.org>
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Hey,

So since I have not received much feedback (except from Erik) I suppose we ar=
e ready for the launch.

Therefore I would like to invite everyone for an

  IPFire Community Portal Launch Party

on this Monday, November 4, the usual time when we have our IPFire Telephone =
Conference at 8 pm CET, in the usual conference room one.

I guess this not enough of a reason to pop some champaign, but bring a nice d=
rink, some good fun and we will celebrate this huge milestone together!

See you there!

-Michael

> On 24 Oct 2019, at 10:36, Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org> wrot=
e:
>=20
> Hello guys,
>=20
> The moment is here - finally! I have set up a new server with Discourse run=
ning on it - again. But this time, this all looks a lot smoother with our bri=
lliant new infrastructure underneath it.
>=20
> I would like to give you an update and what has happened recently and what =
is going to happen, and where I need your help.
>=20
>=20
> So what has happened?
>=20
> I built out people.ipfire.org. You have all seen this. This is now our new =
place where people register for an account and where they put in a couple of =
details about themselves. Normal users might not spend too much time here, bu=
t we will definitely use this a little bit more because it is the place where=
 we host our phone conferences, contact other people, manage accounts and so =
on.
>=20
> All services that we have (Bugzilla, Patchwork, Wiki, etc.) are already con=
nected to it. What was missing is the forum.
>=20
> Therefore I built a single-sign on solution for Discourse now. There is no =
registration possible on Discourse. This is only possible through people.ipfi=
re.org.
>=20
> I think this is super simple, and working great!
>=20
>=20
> What is going to happen next?
>=20
> Since this milestone was taken now, we are ready to start our migration to =
Discourse.
>=20
> I have an announcement post ready (https://blog.ipfire.org/post/the-new-ipf=
ire-community-portal, https://community.ipfire.org/t/welcome-to-the-new-ipfir=
e-community-portal/24/4), but I am not going to send this out, yet. Inviting =
people to an empty forum is a bit like walking into an empty restaurant - it =
feels a bit awkward.
>=20
> So, before we start with the migration process as outlined in this post, I =
would like you to log in to Discourse, play around a little bit, find some th=
ings that might need change. Even start a post on something so that we get th=
e place a little bit more lively.
>=20
> The new forum is called =E2=80=9CIPFire Community=E2=80=9D, because I consi=
der the word forum to be a little bit dated. I have also done some changes to=
 how it works: There will be no German section any more, because that was alw=
ays a bad idea and has to go. I would like you to help me to police that as b=
est as we can. Then, I removed the =E2=80=9Cdevelopment=E2=80=9D area, becaus=
e I believe that we do not need to have this on here at all. We have mailing =
lists for devlopment, bugs should be reported in Bugzilla, etc. I would like =
to separate those two things. The =E2=80=9Cconfiguration=E2=80=9D section is =
also gone, because pretty much everything on the forum is about how to config=
ure something. It was a non-category. Now, I have split this into networking =
issues with some sub-sections for larger topics like QoS, Web Proxy and WiFi.=
 There is a security section for IPS, Firewall Rules, etc. I considered VPNs =
to be important enough to have their own category. Mainly to be able to split=
 it into OpenVPN & IPsec, too.
>=20
> I would like to hear your feedback on this. I would like to avoid having an=
 extra category for every single option on the web UI and every single add-on=
, because simply nobody will find the correct category when there are a hundr=
ed to choose from. At thee same time, when someone is searching through the f=
orum, the categories should be helping them to find the right thing very quic=
kly. So it is difficult to get it right I believe.
>=20
>=20
> The challenges ahead
>=20
> The whole migration is risky, we all need to do our best to keep the conver=
sation going and invite people over. Blocking access to the old forum will pr=
obably make people rather angry than anything else. This has to happen, soone=
r rather than later, but we should try to make it as smooth as possible.
>=20
> This is a great opportunity now for a fresh start and I am looking forward =
to be able to talk to more people of our community. It is large, but people d=
o not chat much. Hopefully that will change.
>=20
> I will need to do some things on the backend. We only have one LDAP/Kerbero=
s server right now and we need more for redundancy. The user experience of pe=
ople.ipfire.org and the login could be slightly improved, too, but I think it=
 is good enough for a launch. I will improve the logos on Discourse before we=
 are ready to launch though.
>=20
> There will also be the problem to fight spam accounts, which we now have to=
 implement ourselves. We will have to see how this goes, but I cannot imagine=
 this being even worse than what we have right now with our forum.
>=20
>=20
> Okay, enough of me talking. Please head over to https://community.ipfire.or=
g, log in, test, and let me know what you think.
>=20
> Best,
> -Michael


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