Difference between revisions of "Topsoil"
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[[Image:Topsoil.png|300px|left]] | [[Image:Topsoil.png|300px|left]] | ||
| − | Topsoil is a new tool | + | Topsoil is a new tool that will allow you to take your old static webpages and transform them into a dynamic, informationally rooted website. If your website were a tree and you were the gardener, topsoil would be the rich loam that you could depend on to keep your tree flourishing and connected to the growing web. |
The idea of a webmaster is obsolete. Webmastered sites are like vases of cut flowers: the only way to keep them fresh is to continually buy more flowers. What is the point of paying someone for flowers you can grow with less effort yourself? | The idea of a webmaster is obsolete. Webmastered sites are like vases of cut flowers: the only way to keep them fresh is to continually buy more flowers. What is the point of paying someone for flowers you can grow with less effort yourself? | ||
Imagine instead a community garden. The joy of gardening is getting your hands dirty, working with the earth to create new life within the world that you live in. The topsoil gives you a rich base for your site to grow in, and the community provides the tools and helping hands you need to care for the plants that you love. | Imagine instead a community garden. The joy of gardening is getting your hands dirty, working with the earth to create new life within the world that you live in. The topsoil gives you a rich base for your site to grow in, and the community provides the tools and helping hands you need to care for the plants that you love. | ||
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| + | The idea behind topsoil is that there is grass and there are trees. Grass refers to the AboutUs commons, i.e. stuff that belongs to everyone. Trees, on the other hand, are external websites that AboutUs hosts in a special way. Users can have their websites slurped in by AboutUs so that it gets wiki-ized. A big edit button appears on every hosted page so that the user can easily edit pages the wiki way. Also, the AboutUs commons becomes available under the user's domain name and the user's branding and styling can be applied to the commons so that the look stays coherent. | ||
* Grass is the AboutUs commons | * Grass is the AboutUs commons | ||
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<br style="clear:both"> | <br style="clear:both"> | ||
| − | * [[OfflineEditing]] | + | * [[OfflineEditing]] ... Ability to edit web pages when not connected to the Internet. A program running locally on the user's machine will record all edits. The edits will be sent to the server when the user goes online. |
| − | * Indexing | + | * [[Indexing]] |
** [http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ solr] is an indexing thingie built by the CNET guys on top of Lucene (built by Xerox PARC guy and others) | ** [http://lucene.apache.org/solr/ solr] is an indexing thingie built by the CNET guys on top of Lucene (built by Xerox PARC guy and others) | ||
** [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolRuby SolRuby] | ** [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolRuby SolRuby] | ||
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** [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Flare Flare] | ** [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Flare Flare] | ||
* [[SimultaneousEditing]] | * [[SimultaneousEditing]] | ||
| − | * [[WYWIWYG]] ... | + | * [[WYWIWYG]] ... so that editing a web page is a trivial matter |
* [[Distributed]] | * [[Distributed]] | ||
* [[Bedrock]] ... the server infrastructure | * [[Bedrock]] ... the server infrastructure | ||
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So what if you used Solr to index your topsoil "database"? It scales big and this solr-ruby Gem is sweet. Just stream the new topsoil records through Solr and then use Solr to look stuff up. Might be just what the doctor ordered. | So what if you used Solr to index your topsoil "database"? It scales big and this solr-ruby Gem is sweet. Just stream the new topsoil records through Solr and then use Solr to look stuff up. Might be just what the doctor ordered. | ||
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Revision as of 22:33, 1 June 2007
Topsoil is a new tool that will allow you to take your old static webpages and transform them into a dynamic, informationally rooted website. If your website were a tree and you were the gardener, topsoil would be the rich loam that you could depend on to keep your tree flourishing and connected to the growing web.
The idea of a webmaster is obsolete. Webmastered sites are like vases of cut flowers: the only way to keep them fresh is to continually buy more flowers. What is the point of paying someone for flowers you can grow with less effort yourself?
Imagine instead a community garden. The joy of gardening is getting your hands dirty, working with the earth to create new life within the world that you live in. The topsoil gives you a rich base for your site to grow in, and the community provides the tools and helping hands you need to care for the plants that you love.
The idea behind topsoil is that there is grass and there are trees. Grass refers to the AboutUs commons, i.e. stuff that belongs to everyone. Trees, on the other hand, are external websites that AboutUs hosts in a special way. Users can have their websites slurped in by AboutUs so that it gets wiki-ized. A big edit button appears on every hosted page so that the user can easily edit pages the wiki way. Also, the AboutUs commons becomes available under the user's domain name and the user's branding and styling can be applied to the commons so that the look stays coherent.
- Grass is the AboutUs commons
- Trees are websites that target a specific audience
- Signal to Noise ... Filter Recent Changes
- Branding ... your own url, your own skin
- Easy linking with the commons
- OfflineEditing ... Ability to edit web pages when not connected to the Internet. A program running locally on the user's machine will record all edits. The edits will be sent to the server when the user goes online.
- Indexing
- SimultaneousEditing
- WYWIWYG ... so that editing a web page is a trivial matter
- Distributed
- Bedrock ... the server infrastructure
So your topsoil database is append only. You never update anything. But you'd like to index that thing so you can find things later right?
So I'm sitting in a presentation on Solr this awesome indexing thingie . And this guy's created a Ruby Gem called solor-ruby. Very nice.
So what if you used Solr to index your topsoil "database"? It scales big and this solr-ruby Gem is sweet. Just stream the new topsoil records through Solr and then use Solr to look stuff up. Might be just what the doctor ordered.
Discussion
This is great! Any ideas about what changes we'll be seeing in the next few weeks and which will take months? Thanks! TedErnst
Next
- Plan the migration
- Linking and create page fully working
- Crawling ... ruby webspider
- Formatting buttons working
- Double click or edit button on transclusions
