Doug Gregor wrote:
On Feb 8, 2008, at 8:13 AM, Beman Dawes wrote:
David Abrahams wrote:
I don't know. Much as I am reluctant to do so, I'm thinking I probably need to learn PHP to be effective with the new site. I'm very unhappy with that. Are we going to effectively require every Boost developer become proficient in PHP? That seems like a non- starter to me.
I think it's a non-issue, for several reasons. There isn't all that much PHP on the new web site, so most web site updates will still be good old HTML. Even in those parts that are PHP, most updates just involve writing HTML, because PHP is just an HTML-generating superset of HTML, and in unless there's a PHP control structure around it, the HTML you write in PHP comes out as HTML on the other end. Plus, we're getting big benefits from the PHP that we are using, e.g., an RSS feed for news from which we generate the front-page "News" section without any separate steps. That kind of benefit, which keeps several places up-to-date when the same underlying data is changed, is worth a small amount of initial effort to save much more effort in the long-run.
The problem isn't the "small amount of initial effort". Rather, it is that important part of the web site content can only be updated right now by a very few people. For example, here is the section of the home page that reports "News": <div class="directory-item" id="important-news"> <h2>News</h2> <ul id="news"> <?php $_count = 0; foreach ( $_news->db as $_guid => $_item ) { $_count += 1; if ($_count > 3) { break; } ?> <li><span class= "news-title"><?php print '<a href="'.$_item['link'].'">'; ?><?php print $_item['title']; ?><?php print '</a>'; ?></span> <span class= "news-description"><?php print $_item['boostbook:purpose']; ?></span> <span class= "news-date"><?php print $_item['date']; ?></span></li><?php } ?> </ul> <p><a href="/users/news/">More News...</a> (<a href= "feed/news.rss">RSS</a>)</p> </div> I suppose if you understand PHP then this is crystal clear. But I don't, so will have to use SVN blame to see who wrote this, get them to add a comment pointing to some documentation on how to add/update the news items, and then cross my fingers hoping it really just does involve HTML that I can edit with my trusty old HTML editor or maybe my shinny new HTML editor. --Beman