the new oVirt website: live preview!

[Garrett LeSage]

Hi everyone!

Check out the new site here: http://mediawiki-garrett.rhcloud.com/

I've turned the Inkscape mockups into a real, working website, powered 
by MediaWiki.


## Background ##

During last week's IRC meeting, we talked about the possibility of using 
MediaWiki as community CMS. I spent this week making a custom skin that 
both works with some simple layout as well as standard MediaWiki pages.

It's also worth noting that it works on all screen resolutions and 
browser widths — the whole design is “responsive” which means it's 
optimized for mobile phones too, which is perfect for looking up 
documentation or telling people about oVirt at conferences and while 
traveling.


## Discussion ##

I would like to propose that we discuss the new website design & 
implementation during this week's IRC meeting, especially since there's 
now even more to see.


## Next steps ##

The website theme (including the signed-in state) is nearly done and 
looks amazingly similar to the mockups[1]. We have some content for the 
first few pages. There's still a bit more to do before making it live, 
however.

[1] mockups: http://people.redhat.com/glesage/oVirt/website/mockup-1/

The next steps are:

1. Fix any bugs found with the MediaWiki skin / theme
2. Work on content for the remaining pages
3. Map links on the main pages to existing content
4. Write additional content where necessary (if there's no page yet)
5. Upgrade MediaWiki on oVirt
6. Make sure the new pages are on the current wiki
7. Install the skin and a few configuration settings
8. Flip the switch (immediately after step 7), and we have a new site!


## One more thing... ##

It wouldn't be a great demo without letting you all testdrive the 
wiki-ness of the site, right? I've created a test user for everyone to 
quickly sign in and kick the tires on the wiki instance.

User: test
Pass: demodemo

You can also create your own account, if you'd like to. Please note that 
this is a temporary site for development purposes, and is not intended 
as a production website for oVirt. That said, it's a good place to play 
around.

You'll only see the wiki-ish stuff when you're signed in, and I worked 
hard to put them at the top of the page in an orderly fashion. Click on 
the items at the top to see menus with all the standard MediaWiki 
features, except grouped. Even the header is a dropdown (to see the 
different modes on the page). Since editing is key to any wiki, I made 
the edit action a stand-alone button at the top.

Also, when you're logged in, you'll notice that "Home", "Download", and 
"Community" are locked down so that only those in the administrator 
group can edit. Feel free to edit other pages or make new ones.

In addition, you might see some weirdness when using the site, as I'm 
not 100% done developing it. It's fairly stable, but it still is an 
alpha preview. I may alter things further or turn on some debugging 
output from time to time. Generally, though, I'll try to keep it in a 
working state. Just ping me on IRC if you have any concerns.


## In closing ##

I'd like to thank the team for challenging me during last week's meeting 
about using MediaWiki in this wiki-as-a-website concept. It's been a fun 
and interesting week jumping back into PHP after so long. I like the 
results, and I hope you do too!

= = =

I'm looking forward to your feedback, both here on the list, and also in 
the IRC meeting!

Garrett