Forum OpenACS Development: Re: New Directory of OpenACS Sites

Is the purpose of this package to promote OpenACS or the underlying technologies like dynamic-types and AJAX? It seems to me that most of the information you wish to collect is available to the APM, and the submission could be nearly or completely automatic. Maybe it would be nice to create an OpenACS package which could self advertise local information, so that when it changes you get automatic updates. Then your websites-db could consist of links to these sites and pull in the data.

At any rate, it would be helpful to step through the process of data collection that you expect site developers to use to provide this information to you. The easier it is, the more likely it will be used. Updates will be important, because over several years you may have so many changes that are not reflected in your list that new potential developers will discover your link rot, and get the wrong idea.

It looks like Miguel made a similar comment on the wiki two days ago. The additional suggestions that I see don't really reflect what I was thinking.

Most important is that the directory remain up-to-date. It is a big red flag to find a list that has old links. The only way to ensure this is to have local sites publish information, which can be grabbed on occasion.

Second, it seems like it would be better to create a new package to collect and publish the info, otherwise sites will need to update their APM for the new functionality. The new package will probably develop more rapidly than the APM. Also, information will probably come from more places than APM, and the package might depend upon non-core packages, which the developer might not want to install just to get the necessary APM package. Maybe the design of the websites-db package would satisfy the collect/update/publish functions.

Third, a separate package would run at OpenACS.org to grab the published data and make it available to promote the listed sites and the usefulness of OpenACS.