Indymedia needs YOU

The global indymedia network is the work of hundreds of volunteers on many different levels, from the people who read the articles are speak to other people about what they read, the reporters who post their photos, video or first hand accounts, to the admins who check posts for breech of open posting guidelines, and the techies maintain the servers and develop the software....

The global indymedia network in general needs more techies and the UK collective in particular is badly in need of more coders so that it can contribute to the global development of the program used by the IMC UK site.

There are only a handful of programs being used by IMCs around the world. They include the now unsupported 'active', the newer 'sf-active', 'dadaIMC', 'MIR', 'Drupal', and the new kid on the block 'Oscailt'.

IMC UK originally used 'active' but migrated to MIR in 2002 in order to facilitate regionalisation of the project. MIR is an Open-Source content management system based on java / tomcat Servlet-engine and postgresql database. Other Indymedia websites that currently run using Mir include: Germany, Netherlands, Euskal Herria, Bolivia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Poland, Ambaziona (Africa), Brazil, Rogue, Portland, Beirut (Lebanon), San Diego, Seattle, Milwaukee, India, Romania, Armenia, Burma, United States, Galiza, Chile, Ottawa, FTAA, Biotech, and the global site.

It is really important that the UK network has people who can directly contribute to the developer pool of MIR coders since many of the proposals made for improving the site simple can not move forward rapidly when it is left to the limited number of coders who are working with so many other sites.

A similar situation exists with some of the global infrastructure sites such as radio.indymedia.org and video.indymedia.org. Both have very few developers active on the projects which means that adoption of new technologies can be slow and integration of the services into local IMCs is a long way from reaching it's potential. The video site uses PHP, MySQL, Pear and Smarty and could really do with more developers. The radio site runs an ICECAST streaming server and the sf-active codebase but ideas for new approaches would probably be most welcomed.

This is basically a call for increased active involvement in the technical aspects of indymedia at all levels. Even if you can't code Java applets for the MIR codebase you might be able to do CSS style sheets and templates for regional collectives and so free up some of the existing techies so that they have more time to work on learning postgres or whatever and joining the MIR coders.

If you know about media RSS, PHP, Java, MySQL or postgres and have some time to spare for indymedia. Please get in touch with the tech lists and your local IMC collective (see contacts).

http://lists.indymedia.org/#Tech

See also...
Bad time for indymedia servers

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/335999.html

rampART hacklab report

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/335993.html

01010100 10110100

Additions

thank you!

17.03.2006 19:02

We reposted this on san diego indymedia also, as its very well writen and timely!

One more see also link:

MIR needs and feature requests

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/MirNeedsAndRequests

lotu5
Homepage: http://sdhacklab.org

Helpful starting points

17.03.2006 20:44

For those non-tech people who may want to start developing their skills..

start here

http://www.openicdl.org.za/courseware.html#releasecourseware

This is 'the' manual people may tell you to read

http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

then this is pretty good

http://www.linuxcommand.org/

Non-tech

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

Other useful things for new people

18.03.2006 11:58

If you were wondering what this HTML stuff is have a look at this

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/article.php/3478141

then to find out a bit about how the internet works

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm

If you want help choosing which linux to use try this;

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php?lang=en

or my personal recommendation is this;

http://plugintolinux.ca/simplymepis_review.shtml

once you have a linux system installed and you have had a play to get used to it you could have a look at

http://www.phpbuilder.com/getit/

all of the software we use at indymedia is

http://www.opensource.org/

non-tech

I can code

19.03.2006 01:28

And I can bake a cake too. Don't feel like baking a cake for your admin's to piss on though. You know that thing about opposing power structures that we all signed up for ? Never get the impression you've become a power structure yourself ?

tech

swear box

20.03.2006 12:36

I recant and apologise, I was just in a shitty mood when I said that. All I meant is a bit more training in consistent workgroup administration for your admins would pay dividends too, the same rules apply as to successful corporate group-working. If I'm not doing anything more worthwhile in 6 months I'll either donate this PC or volunteer to code if you can tolerate my bitchy comments - a bad attitude isn't a big deal when it's just me and my PC - except on forums. Last night someone gave me a £100 'to do whatever I want with'. Rather than drugs, drinks, prostitutes or paying off debt I suspect they meant give it to be redistributed to genuine activists, so I'll stick £20 in your bank account as a more sincere apology. Not exactly the Carnegie trust, more of a swear-box contribution.

Just as a general aside, most techies I know are surprised how IM rarely seem to leverage the talents and code at sourceforge and seem to cause problems for yourselves by reinventing the wheel, or rather developing a cart-wheel into a racing car wheel. The best open-source coders contribute to sourceforge, and its always easier to cut'n'paste and recompile the top app's there than having potential activists sitting coding collaboratively.

tech

...

21.03.2006 09:11

must be so strapped for support they can't even open e-mails.

tried

Where did you write to?

21.03.2006 10:53

I checked the imc-uk-tech list mentioned above but couldn't find any mail that mighthave been you responding to the call out for more techies. (

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-tech/2006-March/date.html)

So what mailing list did you write to?

Imc-uk has over a dozen lists; and that's not including the dozen or so more from the region, all of which have at least one, sometimes three or more.

imc-uk General list of indymedia uk
Imc-uk-contact Incoming mail to contact imc-uk, privately archived
Imc-uk-evidence List for people to send evidence-photos video statements etc of police arrests in the UK.
Imc-uk-features Middle column features for Indymedia UK
imc-uk-legal A list for discussing UK legal issues
imc-uk-mir-access MIR Administrative list, IMC-UK
Imc-uk-network Communication list for the UK network
Imc-uk-outreach List for the uk outreach subgroup
Imc-uk-process processes ,structures, transparency & big questions
Imc-uk-radio Radio list for IMC-UK
Imc-uk-reports Incoming reports for the uk
mc-uk-tech List of the UK tech
imc-uk-tech-mirror IMC UK Mirror Sys Admin
Imc-uk-useability [no description available]
Imc-uk-video uk indymedia video subgroup list

And then there are the international lists of which their are over a thousand. Of those, UK imc people are often subscribed to or regularly read several depending on their interests and roles. eg.new-imc, imc-communication, imc-legal, imc-photos, imc-print, imc-process, imc-radio, imc-video, imc-tech, imc-sysadmin, imc-mic-coders, etc etc etc

So, as you can see. If you wrote th=o the wrong list it might take forever until you got a reply and yes, dealing with email is a burden.

no channel hopping

Ahah!

21.03.2006 13:18

I sent it to the wrong addy- resent to tech. Thanks for the time & info!

It may be worth posting the tech list e-mail address since total beginners may be even more baffled than I was?

:-)

trying again