PostNuke

Footnote: 1

Background:
Due to the events of 9-11 and the fact that our company was decentralized, the need has arisen for an integrated knowledge transfer/management system. Corporate intranets began as the " new way to communicate", having now boundries and little if any integration. Great ideas, but poorly executed.
After the over priced presentation, touting non other than MS Share Point Portal Software, had ended, I turned to management and said with in open mind and less than a 1/16th of the cost we can get the same result.

The Solution
You guessed it...PostNuke!!!
There will be over 20 Locations using the customized PN system for daily news updates, Event's/Calendar, Policies & Procedures, Surveys and Achievement Recognition, just to name a few.

What are we going to use?
Answer: We will be employing 3 servers + Load Balancing

System Configuration

• Dual Intel® Pentium® III processors @ 1.266GHz
  
• 1GB Total SDRAM 133MHz (2x512) per server
  
• Wide Ultra2/Ultra3 Hot Plug Drive Bays (2x1")
  
• Integrated Smart Array Contoller Module
  
• RAID 1
  
• 2X - 18GB Ultra3 SCSI Hard Drive (10,000 rpm)
  
• High Speed IDE Low Profile CD-ROM
  
• Two (2) NC3163 PCI 10/100 WOL embedded
  
• Red Hat Linux 7.2, Intel Standard
  
• 1 Load Balancer
  

Concerns?
My main concern with this new system will be fail-over and redundency, daily archival of MySQL database and load balencing. Besides the painstaking task of untangling the current mess and developing a sound IA that will fit into PN.

Call for HELP!!!
Anyone having experience in the areas mentioned above, do share your experiences.

Regards,
JT

DISCLAIMER: Although, I will be unable to grant access so you can take a look-see at what I have done, be on the lookout for more information on the progress of my project. I plan on releasing benchmarking and implementation information in the near future.

Next to be installed will be game modules and the real-time web chat, which is currently being replaced as the old one lacked robustness. No joke, though. This classroom's website is the envy of all the other classes that have put up a site because, as all you nukers know, it is dynamic and interactive... the two essential ingredients in cooking up repeat website hits. All the other sites at the school are either static or have a very, very unhappy and busy webmaster trying to create a dynamic illusion.

For the time being I have removed the .htaccess pedophile block so all may have a look. Please leave your thoughts, comments or anything else in my email, post on http://www.ebzb.com or post here. I would love to know what you think. Please don't bother registering or posting on this site as the posts will most likely never see the light of day.

Here are some touches I added which I feel better gears the site to the non-technical student/parent/teacher audience

I removed the standard Main Menu entries and expanded the description by function right on the menu itself. Non-applicable menu items were removed.

The Photo Block, which ties in with the PostNuke ready PHP written photo album from http://www.menalto.com is great for not only showing classroom pictures (currently removed whilst the .htaccess is off) but is also a great way to show artwork of the kids. This is a big draw.

The Sunclock is also very interesting to the scientifically minded kids, which disappointingly to me, is not very many of them. Though this particular Sunclock image is actually a real-time rip from another site of an image which is way to big (thus a slow load) the rpm's are readily available. In fact, I will put them in the download area in http://www.poor-bastards.org along with a copy of this article.

The Messaging System, promoted as a private email without Internet access make the parents feel the kids are safe sending and receiving email from only those who are registered.

The teacher loves having 24-hour access for announcement posting or calendar updating.

The forum, which has just been put up, I expect, will be a focal point for discussions about middle schools the children may attend someday, along with what is playing at the local movie theatre

If you are thinking of creating a school site, or if you already have, be sure to share your ideas and feel free to analyze this site to rip any ideas you see. Write and let me know of school sites you put up.

One side note. The school administration has seen the site and has asked me to do the school's official site, pro bono. I have agreed with the understanding that I can promote myself and run some banner ads. I expect this will be some awesome exposure.

Keep on Nuken'!

Obviously we will start off with a lot of disk space and RAID controller. I guess the main question that I do not know the answer to is whether RAM or CPU has a greater effect on user experience. Since RAM is cheap we will probably get as much as possible, but would it be worthwhile to get a dual CPU box, or would the system not benefit from SMP?

I am guessing that the next step would be to eventually graduate to a dedicated database server. For starters, though, we just want to make sure to get something that will not grind to a halt.

Thanks in advance.

-chris

I`m not a programmer, but i`m willing to learn to do this as this will make many users to remember their passwords easily...and will return to the site.

You can reach me at anwarsadat@youthciti.com

You can find it, and contribute on the document at docs.postnuke.com, and here it is;
Multisites Example (HomeNuked).

I ask EVERY ONE OF YOU, that has better knowledge about this issues than me, to PLEASE HELP, and EDIT THIS DOCUMENT and contribute as you wish, so it can be as correct as possible, and as helpful as possible for those that use that kind of environment described in the document.

Please keep your editing and contributions strictly to the example give in the document.

If you want to make example documents for other type of environments I hope you will do so, but then please create that as a seperate example document.

PLEASE HELP, EVERYONE :-)

I have left out the credits for what is new, but will be in our release notes. Special Recognition goes out to Jim McDonald (Core Development Manager) for the work that he has done on pnAPI, pnHTML, pnMod, and pnSessions, and the Modules Developer Guide. Other recognition goes out to Pablo Roca (Data Design Manager) for his work with the ADODB compliancy issues. Also of note Gary Mitchell, Gregor Rothfuss, Sascha Endlicher, Greg (adam_baum), Antonino Sabetta, Volodymyr Metenchuk, and many more for their work in making this release what it is. Sorry, for leaving out so many names, but my fingers are starting to bleed!

* What's New? *

Fully ADODB compliant -- works with PGSQL and MSSQL.

Session: Providing privacy to users is a priority, sessions provides you with a safer way of handling user logins without exposing information through the browser.

Three level security -- High, medium and low so that you can control when your users site access expires.

Improved performance -- optimization of many parts of the code, often through direct replacement, to improve performance throughout.

Improved stability - new core codebase provides far greater stability than any other Nuke variant

New default theme. -- fresh new look to your PostNuke. Voting on the default theme will take place this week.

Improved security -- new system for handling user input and automatically protecting sites against the most common PHP and cross-site attacks.

New modules system - allows for future versions of PostNuke to be backwards compatible with older modules, no more being stuck on an old version of PostNuke because you use a module which has not been upgraded.

Modules Developer Guide -- A full featured guide on how the API works.

E_ALL Errors corrected -- Errors that slowed performance, and left phantom problems in the codebase have all been corrected.

Blocks Performance Enhanced -- More optimizations to the core that fall under performance enhancements.

Configuration moved to database - site configuration now held in a database table for improved ease of use and speed of access. Also allows modules and plugins to add to the site configuration without the hacking of core scripts.

Admin control of themes -- allow users to control their theme or set a site-wide theme for all users through the use of a setting.

Dynamic User Data -- Allow you to choose what information to be collected on your site. In the beginning stages of development, but is very well integrated into the system.

Block hiding -- An admin configurable selection that gives the ability for users to hide any of the admin-defined blocks if they do not wish to see them.

XML-RPC Integration -- More on this closer to release!

Ratings Module -- By itself, does nothing, but is a tool for module developers to add ratings to content without having to develop new code.

Center Blocks (Otherwise known as Centre Blocks) -- Now the ability to add center blocks in conjunction with left and right blocks.

*End Spoiler*

More announcements to follow. .71 is feature packed, and is very close to being a complete rewrite of the core. More work has been packed into this release than any other. We have managed to close most of the loose ends with the separation of the core from the modular functionality. This release is in my opinion a giant step towards the 1.0 release and is in complete compliance with our roadmap.

Thanks for reading, and I hope that this gives you a little insight on what is to come!

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