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#231550 - 25/08/2004 15:34 automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages?
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Our research group has some hand-built pages that suck. They're awful. They actively get in the way of recruiting. It's time to do something about it. We all seem to agree that we want a database-based solution, but we're afraid that if we hire "just anyone" to do it, we'll get back a steaming pile of dung.

Of course, as researchers, our main output is research papers plus the occasional software release. That means a key feature of any site would be an easy way to say "here's the PDF of a paper and enough information to populate a BibTeX entry". Just like that, the link should magically show up on the home page of the appropriate research group(s) and in-line on the personal web pages of the authors, all nicely cross-linked and indexed. We'd probably also want some variant of a Wiki or a Slashdot-esque announcement system to be able to say what's up as well.

So, what's the right way to build this web site? It's unclear what I'm supposed to Google for to find tools like this. I know another research group here on campus hired an undergrad who built them most of what I said, but that student is gone, and it's unclear how that code will age over time. Thoughts?

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#231551 - 25/08/2004 16:30 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: DWallach]
trs24
old hand

Registered: 20/03/2002
Posts: 729
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
I would sugest either PHPNuke or Movable Type. They are both great publishing/content management systems and they both allow for a lot of customization. Oh, and they are both free.
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#231552 - 25/08/2004 16:33 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: trs24]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I've gotten an in-house recommendation for Zope / Plone. Any experience with this? Thoughts on one versus the other?

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#231553 - 25/08/2004 17:46 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: DWallach]
trs24
old hand

Registered: 20/03/2002
Posts: 729
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Quote:
Any experience with this? Thoughts on one versus the other?

I've never worked with either - so I can only speak for MT and PHPNuke, but they both look to be the same kind of thing. Plone/Zope look interesting mostly because of the fact that they say it can run on windows or linux.
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#231554 - 27/08/2004 16:31 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: trs24]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
I wouldn't touch PHPNuke with a 500,000 foot barge pole. It's the buggiest piece of PHP code I've ever come across. Because of all this poorly written code, there are numerous security holes and issues and this includes the latest releases.

The main issues seem to be poor checking of user supplied input which is then directly put into a SQL query without any escaping of the strings. This includes variables passed by the client and also cookies stored on the client.

If you do decide to use it then be prepared for immensive amounts of patching. I have the misfortune of having to host a couple PHPNuke sites for some people. Every few months I have to do a mass security hole fixed up as they've been hacked. YMMV.

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#231555 - 28/08/2004 03:57 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: tman]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Quote:
I wouldn't touch PHPNuke with a 500,000 foot barge pole. It's the buggiest piece of PHP code I've ever come across. Because of all this poorly written code, there are numerous security holes and issues and this includes the latest releases.


*whistles innocently*

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#231556 - 28/08/2004 07:40 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: drakino]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
*cough*

The reason why I'm so opposed to PHPNuke is that I'm currently hosting two fairly popular UK PHPNuke based sites and it's a constant thing of patching and repairing security holes. Every week I can guarantee at least 1 person will try to break in.

The main issue I have is that the users I'm hosting the sites for, aren't programmers at all and can't handle anything to do with code. This means it gets left up to me...

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#231557 - 28/08/2004 08:53 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: DWallach]
David
addict

Registered: 05/05/2000
Posts: 623
Loc: Cambridge
I've had very limited experience with Zope (and Plone) - a client of mine uses Zope as a basis for an enterprise web app and loves it, he did find it had a lot to get your head around at first, but said it's one of those things that you just look at and think, 'yes, this is how it should be done'.

I setup a basic Plone site when I was considering using it for a client, it is very powerful and elegant, but (as an intermediate-level PHP coder) I also found the sheer complexity of it intimidating.

I get the impression that Zope is coded by professionals who think about things like scalability and security, whereas solutions like PHPNuke are written by hackers who are interested in cool features and buzzwords rather than whether it's done right.

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#231558 - 28/08/2004 09:58 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: David]
ricin
veteran

Registered: 19/06/2000
Posts: 1495
Loc: US: CA
Just a quick note; Zope & Plone are actually written in Python, not PHP.

Anyway, I would also recommend going with Zope/Plone and staying far, far away from PHPNuke.

If you do want to go with a PHP solution, I would check out drupal.
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#231559 - 28/08/2004 11:56 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: ricin]
David
addict

Registered: 05/05/2000
Posts: 623
Loc: Cambridge
Just a quick note; Zope & Plone are actually written in Python, not PHP.

Oh, yeah, I didn't mean to imply that Zope was written in PHP, just that I was approaching it as someone with a background in PHP.

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#231560 - 30/08/2004 20:06 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: tman]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
I wouldn't touch PHPNuke with a 500,000 foot barge pole. It's the buggiest piece of PHP code I've ever come across. Because of all this poorly written code, there are numerous security holes and issues and this includes the latest releases.


Thanks for maybe saving me some hours of research. I looked at PHP-Nuke, but the main thing that made me nervous was the "one guy" aspect -- seemed like it all revolved around one developer. We know where that goes...."Ummmm, yeah I was going to fix that but...."

I can't cope with forking my limited neurons to Python, so I'm going to look at that PHP Drupal.
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Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#231561 - 30/08/2004 21:30 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: jimhogan]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Yeah. The one man thing isn't good. He has said that he will do a big rewrite of PHP Nuke to make it secure etc.. This was ages and ages ago and nothing has happened since. Thats not the main problem however, to make it "secure" he's going to encode it with the Zend Optimiser which means you won't have any source code access at all...

The relevant post is here

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#231562 - 01/09/2004 00:30 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: ricin]
ricin
veteran

Registered: 19/06/2000
Posts: 1495
Loc: US: CA
While reading Kevin Rose's page I noticed a few more blog/CMS type systems mentioned, both written in PHP.

Don't know if they'll fit your needs, but...

WordPress
&
pMachine

Edit: Oh, and if you read the comments, there are links to others as well.
Edit (again): Wow. Mambo is a nice one (check out the demo site).


Edited by ricin (01/09/2004 00:45)
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#231563 - 03/09/2004 13:11 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: DWallach]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
but we're afraid that if we hire "just anyone" to do it, we'll get back a steaming pile of dung.


I'm in charge of the steaming pile of dung here, and the list of things I have had dropped on the To-Do list is in the same ballpark as what you are looking to do. Publications/bibliography on line, automatic generation of CVs from a database, a library catalog, things like that along with much improved self-pub/blogging.

Ten at a time, I brought up every entry on http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ and scanned for those that met some basic criteria: Apache, PHP, LDAP capability and free/cheap. I narrowed the field to 10 and have installed just about every one. I am currenty leaning toward Mambo.

Now to the point of my post: One feature on the list of desirables is the ability to "time shift" our intranet in some areas -- pick a certain date and be able to see what particular version of a changeable policy was in effect on that date (like degree requirements)

Any bright ideas on how to implement this? Several of the CMSes include some degree of versioning, but I'm not aware that they would do this. PostgreSQL includes a "time-travel" feature but I think any other web time shifting would be DIY.

Anybody?
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Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#231564 - 03/09/2004 13:23 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: jimhogan]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
Any bright ideas on how to implement ... time shifting


Sure. Set up a cron-job that uses recursive wget and snapshots your entire website every night. Push it as plain HTML to /archive/yyyymmdd/

It's not particularly slick, but it'll almost certainly work with whichever CMS you choose to use.
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#231565 - 03/09/2004 20:56 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: jimhogan]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
So, it turns out that Rice has an internal project to do more or less what I wanted. It's built in Microsoft ASP, which is unfortunately, but it does seem to work pretty well. I'm trying to twist some arms into getting this rolled out more widely. If you want, I can try to hook you up with our own developers and maybe you can compare notes. Here's the front of the web site: http://cmc.rice.edu/Default.aspx

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#231566 - 04/09/2004 14:11 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: Roger]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
Sure. Set up a cron-job that uses recursive wget and snapshots your entire website every night. Push it as plain HTML to /archive/yyyymmdd/


I would be concerned about bloat, but I may do something like this. I could probably make it conditional for different branches -- only archive it is a page changed, then use whatever perl script to update a "previous versions" index page.

Now I have *another* question (I never run out!). Is there a tool out there that will analyze PHP code for vulnerabilities like SQL injection? Does the analyzer in Zend do this? My concern is that I am pulling in various PHP applets in from various projects/authors and have inherited some others and haven't the skill to check these in a timely fashion myself. I've Googled a bit, but maybe I am not using the right terms.

Also, I have to say that after installing about 8-9 CMS in the past week, the one that looks most promising to my casual view is PostNuke I don't know that their fork from PHP-Nuke has fixed all of the aforementioned security problems, but I can hope!
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Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#231567 - 04/09/2004 14:15 Re: automatic generation and maintenance of academic web pages? [Re: DWallach]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
So, it turns out that Rice has an internal project to do more or less what I wanted.


I took a look. That has a lot of crossover with an offering that the main university computing folks provide here (which is quite good). Overall, given the list of what the department wants, though (and some of the communication functionality *I* want) I think we'll pull a lot of this together internally. On the subject of PostNuke, I see signs of successful LDAP+phpBB integration. Me want.
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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