Call for MacPorts documentation/site effort

[James Berry]

On May 10, 2007, at 3:43 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>> If there isn't, there should really be a Wiki page with all  
>> Portfile variables. Just the names would already be helpful,  
>> although it should obviously contain an explanation in the end.
>
> The documentation used to have that, or at least most of the useful  
> variables. We currently have no documentation, however.

I know all of us would love to see better documentation and a better  
experience on first arrival to the MacPorts site. Despite complaints  
from time to time, nobody has stepped up to the chore to really make  
things better.

Some resources:

	- We have an xml file containing all the documentation from the old  
site.

	- We hope to bring online soon a RoR app that will, among other  
things, provide listings of ports. One possibility would be to also  
use this as a server for the site front-end and other documentation,  
either to be served from statically generated pages or from the  
database.

	- We also have our WordPress site in all of its unglory, which we  
might hack on as needed.

	- Or something else.

	- Thomas Reifferscheid at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in  
germany has graciously offered some hosting and bandwidth for  
whatever services we need to host a site. Apple will likely also at  
some point have the resources to allow us to host more of our site at  
MacOSForge (they are currently trying to hire an admin for that site).

Some vision:

	- We need somebody with the vision, drive, and determination to fix  
the documentation end of things, including pursuing one of the  
options above. Portmgr would love to hear from you if you'd like to  
pull this off.

	- We really need a nicely designed front-presence that describes the  
project and gives access to ports and documentation. Our current  
front end does those things only marginally.

Volunteers?

James