Re: Moving to a new PEAR website

On 2011-05-03 03:50, Christian Weiske wrote:

Hello Michael,

I propose we replace the existing website at pear.php.net with the new site. Of course the new site is missing several important features, but I think we can move over without them, provided we still make the old site available. The features we would lose are: - docbook documentation integration - phpdocumentor integration - pepr - bug tracker These can all be added to the new site later on. It currently functions quite well without them.

I am totally against moving pear.php.net away. Totally. It will break everything, even if we have rewrite rules. What's the benefit apart from "immediate PEAR2 launch"? Losing bug tracker and documentation is not something that I would want. PEAR2 is also different from PEAR, something that should not be covered. "Breaking everything" is an overreaction :P

We won't actually lose anything as the existing site would be available at old.pear.php.net. The plan is also to add those features to the PEAR2WEb site. It's not there now but that doesn't mean it will never be there.

Raising visibility for PEAR2 - I'd like that. Replace the PEAR front page with a fat (half of the page) PEAR2 button, and another fat pyrus button. Add a highlighted PEAR2 link in the pear.php.net main menu. I think this is a good idea regardless of whether or not the site moves. I'm not sure it will actually provide the exposure PEAR2 needs, but it will help. Who will work on stuff like this for pearweb? As you may have gathered, I am not keen to work on it. ;)

The next thing would be to integrate pear2 docs into pear2.php.net, then add pepr, bug tracker (except we use the github one) - but it should be linked/integrated nevertheless. Again, this is a great a plan regardless of whether we switch the sites.

All this, but I'm against moving pear.php.net away. Cool, it's good to get feedback.

One issue I see is that people don't know where to look for packages now. This could be solved by making pear2 a channel aggregator for pear2 and pear1 packages, or by introducing a standalone packages.php.net website that is the channel aggregator. It would just provide search/listings/ratings for packages. People don't know to go to pear2.php.net for anything so making it a channel aggregator is probably not the solution to this problem.

Introducing another website that just does channel aggregation will reduce our focus and create more work. It's a good idea, but unless PEAR decides to abandon hosted packages, and just provide solid packaging tools it's someone else's project. Cheers, Mike