I’ve got to set up some web infrastructure that I can use for the next few years. I’m thinking about an IMAP frontend, some calendaring, a blog and a simple WIKI as a CMS (I know it’s not a CMS, but it’s all I need). Basically my choices are to go with the reliable, proven, fully-featured Plone or to go with the incomplete but cool Hula.
If I go with Hula I’ll have to write a blog extension in C or C#, but Hula is much more cooler than Plone. It looks like it’s going in a direction I want (easy-to-share personal information management) rather than Plone which is a CMS with the PIM stuff tacked on. Anyhow, I have to make the decision by this eveining…so any help is appreciated.
Hmm, any chance you could explain the Why? of all this.
Your opening sentence is ridiculously vague.
Aidan, what’s the purpose behind this? Why do you need a web “infrastructure”? What is the reason for doing so?
Reading over your post, I can’t see a single mention of why you need to do this. If there is no why, there should be no do.
Why? Well basically I need a place for disceminating course notes and hopefully annodex.net type linked movie/audio course notes. I also need a host for my GNU Arch and Subversion web frontends.
I want a calendar to share with my students so that they can easily schedule time to meet me. And I want a web frontend to my IMAP account (the Uni one is Outlook Web Access…which is useless).
So I’m going to use a Hula based wiki to structure my website, or the Plone CMS. The Hula or Plone webmail. The Hula calendar or the Plone one which is not as good (Hula will have CalDav soon with good Evolution integration).
So by choosing an “internet infrastructure” I get some common templating functions. Instead of trying to marry the look and feel of Mediawiki+Wordpress+Hula I’ll just use the wiki and blog software as part of the Hula/Plone infrastructure. Problem is that Hula dosn’t have blog software or a wiki yet.
Whatever infrastructure I choose is an investment and I won’t be changing it easily.
Now I understand what you are going for. I don’t see why you need a separate email server though. I get the feeling you just want to use Hula cause it looks cool( which in fairness it does).
You need version control frontend, wiki, blog, and courseware.
So , that established, lets look at options,
TRAC is a svn web front end with a bug tracker and a wiki built in. Its pretty cool
http://www.edgewall.com/trac/
You could use moodle for courseware support, it’ll handle the delivery of all your course material, your calendaring, class announcments, etc. It also has a builtin forum which is a good thing for students and teaching.
(moodle.org) Forums have proven to help students succeed in courses (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1008009).
So maybe TRAC plus moodle will cover most of your bases. I realise that you will still need a blog, but thats hardly troublesome.
Whatever you do, don’t get stuck looking for or writing the “All Singing All Dancing Solution”, If decomposition has taught us anything its that problems are best solved in pieces. If needs be afterward you can look at a unified login(*shudder*) and some links from TRAC to moodle and back again.
At least thats my thought anyways. Considering I have written a long comment, I may as well advertise my advice
http://tinyurl.com/9altd Point 2, Make sure you provide it all.
Also, another thing worth mentioning….
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/freesoftware/slides2wiki/