Re: New Firewall GUI documentation

[Stefan Schantl <stefan.schantl@ipfire.org>]

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Dear mailinglist followers,

I've created a draft for the "Creating firewall rules" page and did some 
setup for the layout.

Now we need a lot of helping hands to get content on the page - so 
everyone is invited to contribute.

It's pretty easy, just grab a theme or section, there are some notes 
that should give an idea about what to write down.

Happy writing and thanks in advance,

Stefan


> Hello,
>
> so, since we have finished the documentation for Tor, the DNS forwarding
> GUI and the wireless client GUI, we can now move on to something new,
> which is documenting the new firewall GUI.
>
> So, basically everything that exists about the current firewall can be
> throws away, because the GUI has entirely been rewritten. I already
> started a new section on the wiki with a little bit of a structure, I
> imagine works well:
>
>    http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/firewall/start
>
> This is a huge project and I guess that we won't finish this in a week
> as the workflow dictates, but at least we should try to finish as fast
> as possible. In order to make this easier, I would like to split the
> section into some smaller parts:
>
> * Introduction
>
> This should cover what is so distinct about the IPFire firewall. I think
> there is a lot to mention and I started a little list of features that
> should be mentioned.
> Generally, this section should contain advice that you should never open
> more ports than you need and so on...
>
> * Creating rules
>
> Because explaining this on one big page won't work, I recommend
> splitting this into two parts: a) a reference which explains the "rule
> creation" page on the web user interface in detail and b) very tiny
> step-by-step guides which cover topics like "setting up a
> port-forwarding".
> Doing it this way, you won't need to read the entire reference if you
> only want to create a port-forwarding. If you need some more
> information, you will find everything in the reference.
>
> We could also add some step-by-step guides for those people who know
> about DMZ pinholes and stuff, to make the transition easier for them.
>
> Opinions?
>
> * Migration guide
>
> There should be a migration guide, that explains what happens when the
> update is installed and covers any possible trouble that may come with
> that.
>
> * Other things...
>
> There is the P2P block feature, that should be documented somewhere.
>
> It would also be nice to mention the firewall.local file, which is not
> that important any more, because the new GUI is capable of so much more
> things, that you won't need to create your own rules any more. Maybe
> some people do, so we should document that as well.
>
> ----
>
> These are lot of things, that need to be documented. I hope that a lot
> of you take part in in this project.
>
> If you need some input about what to write, there is already some
> documentation in the deprecated "nonpublic" part of the wiki:
> http://wiki.ipfire.org/nonpublic/en/configuration/firewall/start
> Don't copy from that, because that documentation is considered as
> developer documentation and is not very handy for end-users.
>
> So, please go ahead and start writing. If you are not sure what to
> write, discuss these topics first on this mailing list. Make sure that
> everything is in easy terms, so that end-users actually get help from
> these documents.
>
> Please don't do screenshots, yet, because the GUI may still change a
> bit. We don't plan on changing anything major, but bugs and other
> inconsistencies may need some minor changes on the look & feel.
>
> Happy writing,
> -Michael
>
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