Brainstorming: Unify our news source
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

Currently, we have at least 3 official sources of news form KDE.

We should at least merge the first two and maybe the ev too.

Current problems of dot.kde.org:

  • Old design, old branding, links and pages
  • No translations => bad for international promo
  • Awkward name dot [dot] kde [dot] org

Current advantage of dot.kde.org:

  • wysiwyg? => easy for the promo team to edit

Current problems with kde.org/annoucements:

  • Not enough people with SVN access => difficult for the promo team to change
  • Raw HTML/PHP => difficult for the promo team to change
  • No RSS feed

Current advantages of kde.org/announcements:

  • Branding
  • Translations

We need to find a solution :)

The biggest problem is that to use the current translation system we need to have the content stored in SVN or git and this also means that we need the promo team to edit the content in SVN or git.

ognarb updated the task description. (Show Details)Nov 7 2019, 5:57 PM
ngraham added a subscriber: ngraham.Nov 7 2019, 6:01 PM

+1 for retiring the dot.kde.org brand. It's an incredibly awkward name. Even if we just move it to news.kde.org or something, that would be a huge improvement.

Getting a decent news feed is just a case of moving kde.org over to Wordpress or some similar setup I think. This is a task which has failed before but as discussed on IRC it's not that massive, the old content can remain as static .html fine. It just needs someone to work out how to do the translations and then port of the theme and port over the content.

dot.kde.org has a silly name because it's a clone of slashdot but merging it's functions into kde.org might be interesting to do

I don't know why ev has its own website rather than just a page or three under kde.org but that's up to e.v. board and membership. Plenty of KDE project have their own websites.

IlyaBizyaev updated the task description. (Show Details)Nov 7 2019, 6:10 PM
IlyaBizyaev added a subscriber: IlyaBizyaev.
ognarb added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 6:13 PM

And we also have nobody with knowledge of either Drupal or Wordpress :( (I learned very recently that creating a Drupal theme is very hard)

The biggest problem is that to use the current translation system we need to have the content stored in SVN or git and this also means that we need the promo team to edit the content in SVN or git.

This is incorrect: as long as the site engine can output pot files and get po files, everything works. There is a (never implemented, my bad) plan to make the wiki translatable through gettext, because the translation component can export/import gettext files.

Also, please note that the announcement page and the dot (KDE.news) have different goals. The dot is meant to also contain general articles and interviews. A dot entry could simply briefly say that that a new release announcement is in place and point to the proper page on kde.org/announcement/ or whatever else. This would remove the duplication.

It just needs someone to work out how to do the translations and then port of the theme and port over the content.

Then it's not easy at all: no one found a way to make wordpress contents translatable in an easy way so far.

ognarb added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 6:20 PM

@Itoscano Sadly there are no CMS that support pot files :(

@Itoscano Sadly there are no CMS that support pot files :(

It's more or less like our problem for the identity.kde.org replacement, but that does not mean that we don't need a solution.

I've no looked into Wordpress translations but I just find it astonishing that the most popular CMS doesn't have loads of different ways to do translations including .pot files somehow. But life is often astonishing.

ognarb added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 6:30 PM

Yes it's quite possible to have a CMS system with support for pot files. I started writing one such system some time ago but this would also mean going full custom, and a lot of work since we will need to create efficient caching, making sure the service is secure and doing the long term maintenance.

ognarb added a comment.EditedNov 7 2019, 6:51 PM

An alternative would be to use gitlab as an CMS for markdown content.

Example https://invent.kde.org/websites/kate-editor-org/blob/master/content/about-kate.md -> click edit button to edit the text

I've no looked into Wordpress translations but I just find it astonishing that the most popular CMS doesn't have loads of different ways to do translations including .pot files somehow. But life is often astonishing.

https://poedit.net/ seems to suggest that it's possible.

An alternative would be to use gitlab as an CMS for markdown content.

Example https://invent.kde.org/websites/kate-editor-org/blob/master/content/about-kate.md -> click edit button to edit the test

This is what the Plasma Mobile crew is doing for their weekly blog posts and it seems to be working out pretty well so far.

ognarb added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 8:12 PM

I've no looked into Wordpress translations but I just find it astonishing that the most popular CMS doesn't have loads of different ways to do translations including .pot files somehow. But life is often astonishing.

https://poedit.net/ seems to suggest that it's possible.

From the poedit website:

Translate WordPress themes and plugins quickly without any prior experience.

This doesn't mean that the poedit can translate the content of the posts and articles :(

We could always try to extract the post from the database but I don't think translator will be happy if you give them one big html string to translate. And then we will need to put it back in the database.

Yes it's quite possible to have a CMS system with support for pot files. I started writing one such system some time ago but this would also mean going full custom, and a lot of work since we will need to create efficient caching, making sure the service is secure and doing the long term maintenance.

Instead of a full-blown CMS, an interface to write markdown/RST/whatever other markup format, according the static CMS used, could be enough.

For example Netlify CMS is just a wrapper around Jekyll or other engines (please note that I don't suggest to use it, it's a, uhm, complicated software; it's *just* an example).

ognarb added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 8:40 PM

There is https://github.com/titpetric/pendulum that looks promising as an interface to hugo. And Netlify is 'open source' but doesn't provide documentation to how to install it locally and work less well with gitlab than with github.

duffus added a subscriber: duffus.Nov 8 2019, 7:13 AM

Also, please note that the announcement page and the dot (KDE.news) have different goals. The dot is meant to also contain general articles and interviews. A dot entry could simply briefly say that that a new release announcement is in place and point to the proper page on kde.org/announcement/ or whatever else. This would remove the duplication.

I agree that they have different purposes and not convinced of any need to merge

I don't think getting all the dot stories translated in the usual dot time frame, or even get them translated ever, would be realistic as that would be a huge increase in translator workload. I do think that having them translated would be great though and that could only ever happen if they were translateable

duffus added a comment.EditedNov 8 2019, 7:15 AM

For ev.ko are there German legal reasons/advantages for it being separate?

ognarb added a comment.Nov 8 2019, 2:55 PM

Also, please note that the announcement page and the dot (KDE.news) have different goals. The dot is meant to also contain general articles and interviews. A dot entry could simply briefly say that that a new release announcement is in place and point to the proper page on kde.org/announcement/ or whatever else. This would remove the duplication.

I agree that they have different purposes and not convinced of any need to merge

So we should clearly define that should go in kde.org/announcements in dot.kde.org.

Until recently it was:

  • Applications, Plasma and Framework release in kde.org/announcements
  • Interview and other articles in dot.kde.org

Now we have the 'Apps in month X' announcements in dot.kde.org too, I think this will replace the Applications release announcement

I don't think getting all the dot stories translated in the usual dot time frame, or even get them translated ever, would be realistic as that would be a huge increase in translator workload. I do think that having them translated would be great though and that could only ever happen if they were translateable

+1

Could the announcements maybe have an rss feed? Then if that was included on planet that would go a reasonable way to not needing to have them additionally on the dot?

ognarb closed this task as Resolved.Oct 15 2020, 8:46 AM
ognarb claimed this task.

We are now just using a paragraph on the dot linking to the big announcement in kde.org/announcements