PostNuke

The pnCorps consists of people who have many different abilities. Everyone has something to offer us, from the new webmaster, to the experienced professional and the seasoned coder.

As the PostNuke .8 release approaches, we aim to improve all aspects of PostNuke, ranging from bringing together comprehensive documentation, to testing the new release, when it reaches that stage.

We are also looking for comments and suggestions on PostNuke as it is at the moment. If you would like to contribute to these discussions, then please head over to our project page on the NOC: http://noc.postnuke.com/projects/pncorps/ and take a look at the forums

Would you like to help out at PostNuke?

If you are interested in what the pnCorps has to offer, and would like to get involved, then please e-mail hammerhead AT postnuke DOT com with the following information:

1. What name are you known by in the pnCommunity?
2. Which team(s) would you be interested in joining – Support, Documentation or Communication?
3. What is your experience with PostNuke? (Remember we are interested in everybody)
4. How much time could you contribute in a week?

It would also be helpful if you could sign up at the NOC, http://noc.postnuke.com, and include your username there in the e-mail, I can then add you to the pnCorps group straight away.

What are you interested in helping with, and would you like to join any of the three teams – Documentation, Support or Communication

• 316 K e-book quality PDF


• 740 K print quality PDF

Comments would be cool, either here or at TecfaSeed.
I posted this to pnDocs because it could provide ideas to teachers using PN
- Happy reading :) - Daniel Kaspar Schneider

Footnote: 1

What module(s) are you working on?

I help Øivind out a little with PagEd - he does some great work - and fast too !

I sent a few patches to Jason Judge, the creator of another great module called feproc (FormExpress Processor) - and as he didn't have an itch any more, he asked if I would like to take over maintainership, and so I have done, and released a few new versions with some features/fixes I needed myself :)

Other than that, I have made a small(!) addition to the FAQ module, that I hope will get in the PostNuke core soon - which makes the FAQ module require that you enter en email address, and emails the admin of the site, whenever someone enters a FAQ - they are both downloadable from my site http://VirkPaaNettet.dk. I've been trying to find out if it will be
included in the PostNuke core - cause if it does, I'd gladly add admin-options to the code, so one can select/deselect these additions - but no sense in doing this, if it's just going to be a bigger patch, for me to maintain seperately from the core of the FAQ module.

I also translate (or am working on a translation - delayed due to different reasons :) for PagEd, FormExpress, feproc and pncommerce when I get the time (and PostKart - available at my site, but you all know what happened to PostKart).

Basically, I don't like to re-invent the wheel - I'd rather improve it :) - and I always see if my suggested changes sit well (enough to be included in the main tree) with the maintainers of whatever I want to change/enhance a bit - as I don't want to be stuck maintaining patches that will never get in the real source. If I do make patches, I make them as small as possible, so that it's less of a fuzz to merge, each time the original source gets updated.

What is your real-life job?

I'm an Open Source and Security Consultant, and I have recently started a managed (ie. Only I mess with the source-code, and ensure it actually works - fixing problems, reporting them to the authors and adding features as my customers see fit) PostNuke hosting service, called http://VirkPaaNettet.dk My reasoning for doing this, was that I had used postnuke for more than a year, and was happy with it, so I figured that others could use this too and started it. My hope is that, if this becomes a success, I will contribute a percentage of my profit as donations to the maintainers of the FOSS that I heavily depend on, and if money allows, also sponsor whatever improvements my customers need.

I don't like to spend time, writing html for my site when I don't need to - I'm lazy, which I believe everybody should be. Less wars, better code :)

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

Well, my first real PostNuke site, was http://EnableIT.dk (original design, by a friend of mine, who'se a pro designer :) - and as you may be able to see, the pages are just the usual articles, with a few annoying things hacked away. This way to create pages, isn't very pretty IMHO, but then I found PagEd, which made me realize that with PN and PagEd I had a combination that could be used by everybody, even my own mom (and she does use it, for her up-and-coming company site :) - and started http://VirkPaaNettet.dk

When did you start working on your own module?

Well, I haven't written any modules of my own (only themes, like the one for EnableIT), I don't think I'm going to need to write my own module, anytime soon either, unless a customer wants to pay for it, as this is one of PostNuke's greatest strengths, the wealth of modules.

What is your development like?

I improve/fix where I need to and help out if I can and have the commitment to do so (I have to select my battles, as there are so many).

Do other people help you? How do you work together?

In regards to modules that I work on, I work via Instant-messaging with Øivind on the PagEd module.

I get great help from google, and people on different mailinglists, to which I'd like to extent a big THANK YOU, for lending me some time. I try to give back, by helping back on these lists, and on the lists of my local LUG (SSLUG), of which I'm a boardmember.

How big is the impact of the community on your development?

Well - google and mailinglists (and forums) are a big help. I'm hoping more people realise how great a module feproc is, and start using it :) If anybody is using it - do tell - I'd also like to build up the ToDo list, and people are more than welcome to submit patches ;)

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

The main thing I'd like is performance improvements in PostNuke - but until then, I'm going to up the performance with squid-2.5-reverse-proxy-patched.

The biggest issue there, is I can't seem to find anyone who can tell me why the POSTNUKESID is needed for anonymous users (and I haven't prioritized it enought to dig through and find out myself) - as I don't like that every page sends a cookie to my clients. the POSTNUKESID thing, should be deselectable - I can't see it's use for anything but polls, and
the poll module should set that cookie IMHO (by telling PN to do so - which needs to be possible - Xaraya has this feature now).

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

I think PN will stay popular. The smarty templating thing in .8 will be really good - and I see modules like pncommerce and others already making their modules ready to handle this. If PN manages to make it easy for people to change the module templates - or just switch between different output (I mean easy, like my mom can do it via the menus), it will have become truely great.

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

Not really, I've said enough :)
Only thing I'll say is a big THANK YOU to all the FOSS developers, thanks to you I may be able to feed my family with the money earned by my virkpaanettet.dk service, and ie. get paid to develop/improve FOSS programs - could life be any better than that (except for kids and a family of course :)

Thank you very much for you time.

You're welcome.

You haven't been able to reach the .com domain because of a problem origniating with one of the DNS name servers Harry is donating to the project. And because it's taking longer than expected to get the issues resolved we've come up with an interim solution. You can access the main PN sites using the following URL's:

http://news.postnuke.info
http://themes.postnuke.info
http://blocks.postnuke.info
http://forums.postnuke.info
http://mods.postnuke.info
http://support.postnuke.info

Please pass this info along to everyone in your network of PN people. :-) When the DNS issues are resolved the .info domains will still work but point to the .com addresses so this should be transparent.

Thanks for your patience and we hope to have PostNuke.com back up and running soon but I don't have an ETA. So we apologize and appreciate your understanding.

Also, thanks in advance for getting the word out about the new URL's while we work on the DNS problems.

To all the devs, you can also use CVS at cvs.postnuke.info

Footnote: 1

There were several delays in mobilizing the local electrical company because trees had to be cleared first, but by 12:15 EDT they had begun work. Service was restored at 15:40 EDT.

I would like to take this opportunity to express our deepest sympathy at the 17 deaths caused so far by this Hurricane in the USA and to thank the emergency services for their tireless work for the benefit of others.

CNN News Link

What module(s) are you working on?

I have written several modules myself that are publicly available including the Steel Knowledge Base, a simple database module and a task manager. I have also written some modules for work (our student technical support group uses PostNuke) and on a contract basis. My current project is a Reviews module that will include categories.

Where do you live?

East Berlin, PA.

What is your real-life job?

I coordinate technical support for the students at Gettysburg College, which means that I run our student helpdesk.

Tell me about your postnuke "career".

I looked at some of the other systems available and PN seemed to have the most documentation for programming modules available. I prefer to be able to find information on my own, rather than asking for help, and that didn't seem as likely with some of the other systems. The documentation that was available for PN at least gave me a starting point. PN also seemed to have a very active user community.

When did you start working on your own module?

I can't remember when I started my first module. Sometime during the 2002-2003 school year, I guess.

What is your development like? Do other people help you? How do you work together? How big is the impact of the community on your development?

Most of my development is done alone. I have been using DreamWeaver but will switch to something else once my development machine becomes linux. When I program at home I generally sit in the living room (wireless, yay) and watch TV at the same time. We have done some group projects with varying success. Our best approach so far has been to have one person develop (and document) the API functions and then have someone else work on the other areas. I am very concerned with interface consistency, so breaking things up too much becomes difficult. The community is a wonderful resource, although there aren't a lot of active module developers in the forums, so if you run into something really difficult, you might be out of luck.

What is the biggest difficulty in your development? And why? Is it a Postnuke inherent problem?

Time. I actually find that the PN environment makes some of the development work a lot easier. Once you understand the pnHTML functions a lot of the work becomes much less cumbersome. I wish I could use them in all of my web projects now.

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

I find the permissions system very hard to work within. It works well for module access, but if you want to have permissions on individual items that are dynamic, the permissions table could grow very rapidly to an unmanageable size. I could also benefit from functions to work with groups. I have written functions to determine if a person is a member of a group, for instance, but if that type of function was in the pnAPI, life would be much simpler.

Better support for html output. Some of the pnHTML commands don't support all of the parameters for the given tag. One example of this is that URL doesn't support a target, which means that if I want a link to open in a new windows, I have to output the html for the url manually. If you are going to implement functions to output html, it should be reasonable to make those functions fully support the given tag.

The security settings where someone gets logged out after x days. I think that this should be based on my last login. If I login to a site everyday, then I don't think that I should be asked to login every so often. If I don't visit a site for a while, then maybe.

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

I wish that users wouldn't complain about small bugs not being fixed in something that they are getting for free. I don't know if this is common amongst open source development or not. Also, I provide forums on my pages to discuss problems and just like the forums on postnuke.com, no one bothers to check for previous threads that might help them. And my forums
aren't even that big, most of them don't even go to a second page!

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

I really enjoy PostNuke. I use it on several sites and while I occaisonally have issues, it has made my life and work much better. Right now my biggest complaint is that there isn't a paypal donations button on the postnuke site. I would love to throw a few bucks towards the development efforts, even if no one is throwing any my way.


Thank you very much for you time.

No, thank you.

So what's keeping the developers so busy? PostNuke .8, which will be a major stepping stone to completing the Roadmap. The entire core, and all modules are being made 100% pnAPI compliant. New features will include database caching, short URLs and the legendary Xanthia theme engine to name just a few things you have to look forward to. Xanthia alone, will simply blow you away!

In the interim between now and the next .8 release candidate, we thought you'd appreciate a small taste of what's to come - So we're planning to release Xanthia as a module for PostNuke 0.726. This will give you an opportunity to see the immense potential it has. However, it will not include some of the features that will be present under PostNuke .8, like pnCache, and other things will function in a slightly more limited manner under 0.726. It will really give you a good idea of what to expect.

We feel this preview will give everyone, including theme developers a chance to become familiar with the system so it will be easier to adjust when we release .8

We expect to have Xanthia for PostNuke 0.726 available for download in about a 14 - 21 days.

Stay tuned.

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