austraLasia #2016
BOSCONET goes Web 2.0, becomes a CMS - and simplifies
ROME: 30th December 2007 -- Bosconet, the oldest web site in the Congregation (1991), and now the East Asia-Oceania Region website has transformed, to keep up with fast-moving trends in the world wide web scene. It needs to be known and acknowledged that although a 'regional' website, it is supported in every real sense by the Australia-Pacific province - server costs and webmaster alike!
Bosconet has been, for the past 15 years, what is known as 'Web 1.0', a one-way web site.
What you will see now, if you go to www.bosconet.aust.com is a bi-directional 'Web 2.0' site and a Content Management System or CMS. In simple terms this means that an individual may 'write' to the website, groups within the region may come into existence and maintain their own sections and, perhaps more importantly for most, navigation and searching is immensely improved. For the user, the latest change is dramatic - to look at and to work with.
Allowing people to write anything on a website could court immediate disaster. For a year the austraLasia comments page (a 'Boscowiki' as I called it) was totally open. It was the only open page on the entire website. For 99% of the time it did well, but every now and again it underwent major vandalism (today there are computers completely dedicated to the task of finding such 'open' pages and filling them with rubbish - or worse). Sometimes I had to clean that page up after cyber-vandalism and even entirely resurrect it. But the plus side was that over a period of twelve months, many people in the region overcame their fear of 'writing' to a website, something that a few years ago would have been unthinkable.
The 'old' Bosconet still exists and there are links to a number of its pages still, but you only see it when a link leads to it. It will take some months to convert across to the new style. Indeed, Bosconet-wiki, as we might now call it in its interim conversion, sits inside Bosconet, but presents as today's Bosconet.
Can you write to it? Theoretically yes, anyone, and practically yes - if you have a password. For obvious reasons I would want to protect most pages and structures from modification, but a group within the region (there are several lining up for this) may be given a 'Group' set of pages and can administer that for their own purposes (always connected to the building up of the Region or the Congregation). That group determines how those pages run and look, who modifies them, even who may read them.
One page remains open to all austraLasia readers, though it will ask for a password. Give it what it asks for! Give it 20eao02 (hopefully a memorable item, but it will be repeated on each news item). The only thing I ask is that you do not give this to non-readers of the e-letter. If they receive it by email, then they will have the means of entry, otherwise....no. Should this simple approach fail for any reason, we will introduce a login system with individual username/pw. For the moment let's keep it simple. (The same p/w should work for the 'sandbox' to practise in).
The revamped Bosconet-wiki makes the updating tasks so much simpler. I can do in seconds what it once took minutes or hours to do - and so can you. It requires a very basic kind of markup (signs like '', ''', %, spaces between paragraphs) placed strategically, but the 'edit' page allows you to do most of this by clicking on buttons like in any word processor. There are many CMS approaches out there, but I know of very few using wiki technology. Experience tells me that this is by far the simplest and most adaptable approach for our purposes. If you have good reason to want to edit a particular page, other than the 'open' one referred to above, please ask at bosconet@gmail.com for a password. And please, if you find problems, or loopholes in security - let me know!
Tomorrow - a look at the last twelve months of austraLasia. JBF
Click here to comment on this item. You will need to enter 20eao02 when asked for a password.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
BOSCONET goes Web 2.0, becomes a CMS - and simplifies
ROME: 30th December 2007 -- Bosconet, the oldest web site in the Congregation (1991), and now the East Asia-Oceania Region website has transformed, to keep up with fast-moving trends in the world wide web scene. It needs to be known and acknowledged that although a 'regional' website, it is supported in every real sense by the Australia-Pacific province - server costs and webmaster alike!
Bosconet has been, for the past 15 years, what is known as 'Web 1.0', a one-way web site.
What you will see now, if you go to www.bosconet.aust.com is a bi-directional 'Web 2.0' site and a Content Management System or CMS. In simple terms this means that an individual may 'write' to the website, groups within the region may come into existence and maintain their own sections and, perhaps more importantly for most, navigation and searching is immensely improved. For the user, the latest change is dramatic - to look at and to work with.
Allowing people to write anything on a website could court immediate disaster. For a year the austraLasia comments page (a 'Boscowiki' as I called it) was totally open. It was the only open page on the entire website. For 99% of the time it did well, but every now and again it underwent major vandalism (today there are computers completely dedicated to the task of finding such 'open' pages and filling them with rubbish - or worse). Sometimes I had to clean that page up after cyber-vandalism and even entirely resurrect it. But the plus side was that over a period of twelve months, many people in the region overcame their fear of 'writing' to a website, something that a few years ago would have been unthinkable.
The 'old' Bosconet still exists and there are links to a number of its pages still, but you only see it when a link leads to it. It will take some months to convert across to the new style. Indeed, Bosconet-wiki, as we might now call it in its interim conversion, sits inside Bosconet, but presents as today's Bosconet.
Can you write to it? Theoretically yes, anyone, and practically yes - if you have a password. For obvious reasons I would want to protect most pages and structures from modification, but a group within the region (there are several lining up for this) may be given a 'Group' set of pages and can administer that for their own purposes (always connected to the building up of the Region or the Congregation). That group determines how those pages run and look, who modifies them, even who may read them.
One page remains open to all austraLasia readers, though it will ask for a password. Give it what it asks for! Give it 20eao02 (hopefully a memorable item, but it will be repeated on each news item). The only thing I ask is that you do not give this to non-readers of the e-letter. If they receive it by email, then they will have the means of entry, otherwise....no. Should this simple approach fail for any reason, we will introduce a login system with individual username/pw. For the moment let's keep it simple. (The same p/w should work for the 'sandbox' to practise in).
The revamped Bosconet-wiki makes the updating tasks so much simpler. I can do in seconds what it once took minutes or hours to do - and so can you. It requires a very basic kind of markup (signs like '', ''', %, spaces between paragraphs) placed strategically, but the 'edit' page allows you to do most of this by clicking on buttons like in any word processor. There are many CMS approaches out there, but I know of very few using wiki technology. Experience tells me that this is by far the simplest and most adaptable approach for our purposes. If you have good reason to want to edit a particular page, other than the 'open' one referred to above, please ask at bosconet@gmail.com for a password. And please, if you find problems, or loopholes in security - let me know!
Tomorrow - a look at the last twelve months of austraLasia. JBF
Click here to comment on this item. You will need to enter 20eao02 when asked for a password.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
