PostNuke

Did it evolve out of some special need, or how did you get the idea? What was the impulse to start a completly new and complex module?

The seed for Pagesetter was laid shortly after I started working with PostNuke back in the summer 2002. I needed a setup where I could let non-admins describe the mountaineering courses our web site promotes. Soon I discovered Content Express. It did the job, but you had to be very very carefull in order to make all pages look identical, and it was still difficult to get non-techies to do the job (which it may still be in Pagesetter?). Since then I have always been wanting a module that let me ("me me me" as Mr. Anderson would have said) define the database fields and layout, but still, of course, with all the fancy features of a module like Content Express. The same applies to PagEd which also is a really nice content module.

The final push came when I saw Xaraya's article system. At that point I was ready to convert Photoshare to Xaraya. But then something (I actually don't remember what) turned my mind on Pagesetter. Bang! I didn't have time for it at that point, it was awfull, and my mind was completely filled with all the stuff you could implement in such a module (I don't care much about what you can use it for, it just have to be fun implementing it - typical for my mindset).

In the last interview you told us, that you are doing 99% of the work on your other module, a gallery called Photoshare. Did you find any help for pagesetter? I read for example about a member of the pnCommerce project working on an import/export for pagesetter.

Yep, this time a have gotten a lot of input from Sebastian (pnCommerce) and Jörg Napp (core developer). Both have supplied code snippets and been very kind to answer my pnRender and Smarty questions. I have although not heard anything about a pnCommerce integration. Other people like yourself have
also been very kind to supply both ideas and code snippets for things that are needed. But as a whole Pagesetter is still a one man's show. Not that I don't need any help, it's just that I have so many specific ideas that I really really want to implement - myself.

Since pagesetter 2.0.0 you make use of the new postnuke templating system (Xanthia Templating Engine) based on smarty. How do you like working with it? What problems occurred?

The templating system works really well and is quite simple to use. Smarty took me a few hours in the initial version of Pagesetter and after that pnRender worked as a charm. A pnRender compatible module is really cool to work with. The complete control of layout it gives to the administrator is fantastic.

What happens to Photoshare? Is it more or less ready and it doesn't require much work anymore?

Yeah, what happens to a module when focus changes? It is obvious that I don't spend much time on it now. It does all I need it to, and a bit more, so there's no rush for me to do much for it. But Photoshare is still on my mind, and there are quite a few features that I want to implement. I keep saying "I'll just fix this thing in Pagesetter, and then ...", but (unfortunately?) I always get another idea for Pagesetter and fails
misserably to come back to Photoshare.

Thank you very much for this update on your work.

Homepage: http://www.elfisk.dk/

Some of the key features of PHP 5 include:

* PHP 5 features the Zend Engine 2.
* XML support has been completely redone in PHP 5, all extensions are now focused around the excellent libxml2 library (http://www.xmlsoft.org/).
* SQLite has been bundled with PHP. For more information on SQLite, please visit their website.
* A new SimpleXML extension for easily accessing and manipulating XML as PHP objects. It can also interface with the DOM extension and vice-versa.
* Streams have been greatly improved, including the ability to access low-level socket operations on streams.

How did your Postnuke career start?

In early 2002 I was looking for a CMS for a Website. After some researches I had to choose between PHPNuke and Postnuke, but I chose Postnuke for the besser concept. There was the API, and the big community that convinced me of Postnuke.

What are your tasks in the pnCore-Team?

I work on pnRender, the Postnuke Smarty implementation. Besides I seem to be the only one to keep an eye on static-docs.

When did you start programming for Postnuke?

My first selfwritten modules are fortunatly unpublished. They are only used internally. But my first steps I did in theming.


How do you work?

Most of my own code I write as a kind of "proof of concept". That is e.g. how "Search Statistics" evolved: The idea is to get a statistic on search queries without any changes in the core structure. The resulting modules was written in a hustle - it still lacks an adequate admin interface...


What is the future of Postnuke?

As some your interview partners already said, Postnuke will become more of an application framework. That sounds much like a buzzword, but there's a lot behind that. Apart from the the Photoshare integration into PagEd there's currently almost no cooperation between the modules. The greatest challenge is to offer this kind of mechanisms in an abstract way, so that module developers can use them.

A first step is the hook concept. There should be a lot more hooks available to demonstrate the power of this concept.


What is Postnuke's strength?

The strenght lies in its future. A clean implementation via the API, the development into an application frame and the coming Smarty integration are great oportunities.

The weakness is that Postnuke is quite well documented, but this documentation is hard to find and spread across several sites. The same applies to the modules. The NOC is well intended alas poorly implemented...


I know you have some "side-project", tell me about them.

You can find my projects at http://lottasophie.sourceforge.net.

My best-known Modul is certainly the universal comment module EZComments. I started working on EZComments in connection with my work on the German Postnuke documentation in early 2003. The idea was to implement a documentation including user comments. Content Express doesn't offer comments, so we had to implement them. With Postnuke's hook-concept it was an easy task to attach the comments.

The Title_Hack is a way to display "sensible" information in the title of the browser. The hack has become more popular than first expected. Meanwhile there exist title plugins for a number of modules.

Last but noch least I am involved in the maintenance of My_eGallery. I use this module at my own private site. Several patches and fixes existed for My_eGallery but not centrally available. Patrick (Marsishere) stopped working on MEG so I adopted it and maintain it together with chasm.

The users should keep in mind that my developments often are a "proof of concept". If you find a big, don't keep it - report it in the forum and if anybody changed anything in my modules, I'd like to get it. Feedback is far to rare.

Thank you for the information.

I have always found this a shame, especially because this site was for a part a reason for me to learn computers/internet/programming. (My very first site, 7 years ago, was a Julia Roberts fansite as well, it later changed to JRO) On top of that, it was just a waste of my #1 google & yahoo ranking which I have invested months, if not years, into - which resulted into a stable daily 1500 visitors and a mailinglist of 25K+. And as if that was not enough, there were still the fans that kept mailing me asking if the site would get updated again - I did feel really bad about that point.

After 5 years of running JuliaRobertsOnline.com (JRO) in a static format, it was time to take action. Beginning of this year, I run into Postnuke and successfully used it for one of my other projects (www.arubastation.com). Having seen what it can do, logically I quickly realized that this would be THE solution for JRO as well. Sure it has its flaws here and there (which CMS doesn't?), but nothing one can not master or 'bypass'. And so begin of this month I put my hands on it and as of last week, the site is back live again at

http://www.juliarobertsonline.com

I'm still working out some issues and a lot has to be added, but so far I'm happy with the result. Both design- as technically wise. Adding or updating content takes maybe 1/10th of the time it used to and at least now I can pull the (registered) visitors back to the site.

The site now gets approx 2500-4000 visitors a day and performance wise behaves just fine so far. We'll see what will happen when the database gets bigger ;) because we are getting approx. 30 to 50 new members daily :)

A special thank you goes out to my wonderful girlfriend, which helps me out with the content and without who the site would still be the way it used to be...

YAPNS!

Stepan Hluchan,
JuliaRobertsOnline.com
(stepan at 3amp dot com)

Footnote: 1

Nuke Search is a little different. Instead of pasting a link on your site, which you can do through the affiliate section if you wish, and having people click it to vote for you, you bid a certain amount to have your site listed higher in the rankings. This stops Nuke Admins from clicking their link a hundred times raising their sites rank artificially.

It is no cost to post your site on Nuke Search, you will always be listed. Down the road if you find the service valuable to you, you may always deposit a small amount to bid for higher rankings, banners for your site or even adwords.

The first 1000 people over the next 3 months will receive $50.00 of virtual cash to use for bids. This should last a very long time and get people bidding for placement, it really is very fun.

Please cut and paste this code MiMtvzhZ when signing up and you will receive the $50.00 of credit.

You can access Nuke Search at http://nukesearch.com.

Please visit and tell us what we are missing in the way of Nuke forks and also to help test the search engine script in development!

Enjoy!

The Zamboozle Team

Footnote: 1

What are you working on?

My work can be divided into 2 categories:

• Add-ons, mainly integration modules for existing web-applications which are not (yet) PostNuke enabled.
  
  My aim is not to fully integrate other applications but to enable single signon. I hate logging on multiple times so the reason is obvious. In addition, most of the time I add one or more sideblocks for PN. I have created integration modules for:
  
  Owl- a document management system There is a PN enabled version called NukeOwl but unfortunately this is no longer maintained. This module comes with a sideblock.
  
  Coppermine- a slick photo gallery. Again comes with a sideblock. By now there is a fully integrated version devlopped by phpNuke developers and I have adjusted my side block to fit in this solution. Having seen my integration for coppermine, I received a request if I could do similar for another gallery called 4images. This one is available also with a sideblock.
  
  Mantis- a bugtracker application was actually on of the first modules I created. Recently added a sideblock.
  
  phProjekt- again upon request. This one comes with multiple sideblocks and also includes Mantis integration within phProjekt.
  
  Looking for a nice knowledgebase, I stumbled across Mindmeld. Although a kind of integration with PN was available, I did not like the way it was done. Created my own version including a sideblock.
  
  phpGedView also created upon request. I have some interest in genealogy and am using TNG myself.
  
  Netjuke was one of the latest. I had been checking out various jukeboxes but neither fitted my needs till I found Netjuke. Still think this is was of the best around. Also comes with a sideblock.
  
  Already some time ago, someone asked for integration of Moodle. Once I found the time for it, things moved quickly. Moodle is a socalled LMS (Learning Management System) and looks very good. Once i made this available, I received a request for ATutor, another LMS. This one has been released shortly (seemd to me a good idea to offer 2 options to the PN community).
  
  In the pipeline are updates for various of the above mentioned modules and also a new one will be released shortly for Zentrack, another bugtracker.
  
  As part of the add-ons, I also created some Blocks. NukeOwl latest doc blocks. When I started with NukeOwl there only was one block which did not meet my requirements, so I added one. NewsScroller, one of the most downloaded on my site. I just did not like all that news on the frontpage and wanted to have a scrolling block. Recently have extended this with ability of scrolling Admin-messages & rss-feeds.



• New modules
  Feedback module was one of the first, it was just not available so it had to be made (my very first one).
  
  pnChangeLog is the other full module I have created. It allows one to keep track of changes of various objects. This time again, I could not find something that fitted my needs. One of the things I am thinking about is a survey module where you can weigh the answers, save them in between.

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

As soon as i was able to have a broadband internet connection, I wanted to setup my own webserver. I started testing the various CMS systems (alhough having very little
knowledge of this platform) and found that PN was relative easy to use, a lot of modules were available and was having a very rich usergroup.


When did you start working on your own module?

Although a lot is available, there is always something missing. Just for fun, I created a Feedback module and that really was the start. In search of modules i wanted, I also found that there is lot's of good software around although not always postnuked. That's where i started creating the integration modules. The NewsScroller-block was something I wanted to have for my site, so it had to be made. The first true module is my pnVhangeLog module which is still being further developed.


What is your development like?

Given my daily work, there is not much time left. So i work on things I "need", in some cases upon request. The help is actually coming out of the community, there are always people available to help in testing and giving proper feedback. I do not use any specific tools apart from coffee, tabac & music.


What is the biggest difficulty in your development?

Time and knowledge, there are more & more new developments which are difficult to keep up with due to my time constraints.

What features should the Postnuke .8 core have to simplify your work?

Well i just hope all the new things are very well documented so I do not need to discover everything by myself. Apart from that, performance increases are what i am hoping for. Certainly development of a "standard" bridge function for modules of other nuke related cms would be very nice.

Which route will Postnuke/your module in your opinion go in the future?

Well my modules will follow the core progress so smarty/pnRender will be the things that I will have to look into.

What should users of your module regard? What is the weakest/strongest point in your module?

Documentation is as always the hardest part.

Anything else you always wanted to say about Postnuke/your module?

Working together is always we should look at. A good sample is the recent developments around the Coppermine gallery. This standalone gallery had a phpNuked version (fully integrated) and there was pnCPG( single signon for Postnuke). Now the phpNuke port is also suitable for Postnuke. Although most of the work was done by the phpNuke team, at least there was communication from both sides. That is the way forward !

Thank you very much for the interview.

More info on Cas Nuy's work: http://www.nuy.info

Footnote: 1

Footnote: 1

Most of us know these laws will not work. We know they won’t stop spam because so much of it is already illicit, offshore, or untraceable. Unfortunately for us, the politicians know more about passing laws than they do about spam so, one way or another, the politicians are going to get involved and that means we can’t do nothing.

If it is inevitable that email is going to be micromanaged by government, we must push for the most reasonable regulation possible. In this case, that means pushing for the federal law which, while no panacea, puts much less burden on the innocent web site operators and is preferable to laws such as California’s SB-186 and the copycat laws that will follow.

Why is the California law so scary? There are many reasons. California is ripe with opportunistic trial lawyers who make their careers extracting money from legitimate concerns. Just as we know the hard core spammers will be unfazed, we know that we, the honest ones, will be the ones’ who foot the bill.

California's definition of spam is vague and arbitrary. In California’s law, there is no threshold. A single unrequested email sent to a single recipient meets California's definition of spam and the new law gives the recipient the right to sue the sender for $1,000 per incident.

This is something we need to be concerned with because our PostNuke sites are full of traps.

If someone visits your website and sends an email to their friend via the Recommend Us module or decides to send this story to a friend, you’d be liable for $1,000 each email because it’s coming from your server and you have no permission from the recipient! If you’re subscribing users to newsletters, chances are tens, if not thousands of your newsletters will meet the definition of spam under SB-186. If you send out a weekly newsletter to 1,000 people who you can’t prove specifically requested each and every newsletter, you could be liable for each incident which, in this case, would add up to a sobering $52 million per year! If you notify users when someone responds to a forum, you might be liable. If one of your users uses someone’s real email address for their fake address you might be liable for spam received by the owner. Same goes for those innocent Registration and Lost Password transactions, which send email without verifying who is actually requesting the email?

So how can we you protect ourselves? If California's law and the expected copycat laws aren’t preempted, we can’t. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never been to California because SB-186 not only covers all email sent to California residents, but also email accessed from California computers or billed to a California address. That could include anyone and, even if you could go through all your users and pick out the accounts that appear to have a California nexus, you only have to miss one to feel the hurt.

Regardless of your integrity, that one user with the hotmail account you missed could cost you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars! So please get involved. Review the alternatives and I’m sure you will want to join me in (holding our noses and) urging President Bush to sign the federal CAN-SPAM act.