PostNuke

One of my longer titles for an article, no doubt. Earlier this week I posted an article about a site I put up for a school on the California/Oregon border that went over so well I was asked to put up a site for the entire elementary school. (See 20-feb-02 YAPNS: Kids! remember to Duck and Cover! regarding http://the.classof2011.info ) All I can say is wow. I recieved quite a few emails from people in various stages of similiar projects. Some are at the conceptual stage and are stuck. Others had completed sites they wanted me to see, all of which had unique features that frankly, I wish I had thought of! Bottom line is there are many people out there with great intentions and some of them need help from those of us who do not-- well from those of us who do not need as much help. I don't think I have met anyone yet who has all the answers, sabe the cab driver who took me from the Kansas City airport to my hotel in '99. I thought he actually did have all the answers and then later that day it occurred to me he couldn't possibly. I mean, he was living in Lansas City for crying out loud.

In contrast to the different stages of development and the many unique ideas I saw was a commonality in that all who wrote either inferred or outright stated that a central focal point for this concept would be a good thing.

To that end, I have set up an alias for all who are interested to sign up on. Time permitting I will put up majordomo in the future. I also have a domain/website which is at present floundering for a purpose, so I guess this is it. I willm over the next week or so, gear www.ebzb.com for the purpose facilitating the exchange of ideas of people interested in PostNuke and websites in general for the classroom.

Long Live PostNuke

• Users should be able to turn off specific features, such as free registration, in the admin panel without tampering with the core code. These flags should be globally available so that blocks and modules can adjust accordingly.
  
• Users should be able to inactivate certain fields in forms (registration, submit news, web links, etc.) via admin panels.
  
• Users should be able to add additional codes via "user exits" predefined in the core code. One example would be calling external authentication system for userid/password verification.
  
• Creation of industry-specific patches. I work with an off-the-shelf ERP system and it comes with many industry-specific solution patches to transform the one-size-fit-all ERP system to an industry-specific ERP system. Likewise, it would be nice to have standard patches for unique sites like corporate, members-only, paid-subscription, pay-per-use, etc. to transform the standard PN to "industry-specific" PNs.