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
.
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