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
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
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Hide the following 6 comments
Other useful things for new people
18.03.2006 11:58
then to find out a bit about how the internet works
If you want help choosing which linux to use try this;
or my personal recommendation is this;
once you have a linux system installed and you have had a play to get used to it you could have a look at
all of the software we use at indymedia is
non-tech
I can code
19.03.2006 01:28
tech
swear box
20.03.2006 12:36
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
tried
Where did you write to?
21.03.2006 10:53
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
It may be worth posting the tech list e-mail address since total beginners may be even more baffled than I was?
:-)
trying again