[pydotorg-www] project plan (python.org and navigation)
A.M. Kuchling
amk at amk.ca
Mon Apr 26 20:05:54 CEST 2010
On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 06:08:33PM +0200, Paul Boddie wrote:
> gathering together again. Certainly, any discussions about the changes as
> they happened are important in order to review what was done, what people
> didn't like, what people probably still don't like, and to avoid making any
> similar mistakes again.
I disagree about the importance of history, because IMHO it makes us
prone to the sunk-cost fallacy. "Someone put a lot of effort into
this document/script/module, so we need to keep it" -- but what really
matters is whether the document/whatever is still relevant in the future.
I could summarize the python.org history (chronology may be slightly off):
* first web site in early 90s -- people had to log in to a particular
machine at CNRI to edit the HTML files.
* ht2html script written by Barry Warsaw; would wrap page content in
a stock template. (Sound familiar?)
* CVS repository introduced; we could commit a change on our desktop
machine and a hook would magically make it appear on the live
server. Sharp!
* A few generations of different templating styles (
e.g. the dashed-line graphic w/ different colors for different sections,
the blue sidebars (http://www6.uniovi.es/python/Mirrors.html).
* Site moved from a CNRI server to XS4ALL's donated hosting.
* Tim Parkin & Pollenation's redesign, which introduced XHTML
compliance and validity, and the Pyramid script; ht2html went away.
* Pyramid rewritten by me to rebuild fewer pages when you only edited
one thing.
And that's where we are. But I don't know if any of that matters at
all; it explains past decisions, but those decisions were made in a
different world.
--amk
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