[Server-devel] EduBlog Revised Project Plan

[Tarun Pondicherry]

Martin Langhoff wrote:
> Hi Greg!
>
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
> <gregmsmi at cisco.com> wrote:
>   
>> Thanks to Wad and Martin for uncovering the OS problem!
>>     
>
> Yes - that's a pretty important thing. And leads into a second thing
> that is tricky - if you want Edublog to work on both infrastructures
> (Ceibal's school server and the standard XS) we need some
> coordination. Otherwise you'll end up with htings that work only on
> one.
>
>   
>> 1 - Tarun gets the three main GUI pages proto-typed and posted for
>> comment. Focus on Apache + PHP then XML/RPC call from EduBlog to Blog
>> host. Don't worry about the DB right now.
>>     
> If you go down this path you are turning your back on my
> recommendations. I can't really help much, and it will be *much*
> harder to get it on the XS.
>
> You are doing some fantastic thinking on the product side of Edublog -
> perhaps you could get the programmers discussing the technical aspects
> on this list, with me directly? I am more than happy to mentor and
> help.
>   
Well, I suppose I am the main programmer for this right now =). I'm 
fairly new and interning, so your help and guidance is much appreciated!

I think Greg only wants the prototype GUI to get feedback from users and 
have a testbed for the main portion of the code to post to other blog 
sites on the internet. Its mostly an independent API so I see no reason 
that just plopping it from the prototype GUI into Moodle's blog 
facilities should pose much of a difficulty. It just lets us get user 
feedback faster.

>> Purpose
>> - This will prove the concept of taking an Internet tool (blogger.com)
>> and making it usable by kids and manageable by teachers. It will also
>> show how to build a "web app" for deployment on  the XS.
>> And here you have your XS architect telling you: you don't write new
>> web apps for the XS. To build a "web app" you add take something that
>> exists, is secure, scalable, solid, maintainable, etc, and you extend
>> it or tweak it.
>>     
I thought the plan is, indeed, to tweak a little bit of client side code 
to make Moodle blog easier to use and add the features to post to 
internet blog sites. I think the three pages just serve to augment the 
front end, so kids can go directly there and not have to log into 
Moodle, etc. Aside from the simple front end, and the scripts to post to 
internet blog sites, everything else uses existing code.
> Want it *really* easy? Turn this plan into
>
>  - install moodle (trivial!)
>  - read through the code of the blog facility
>  - add a "forward blog post" feature to moodle's blog (there, you are
> ready for early deployments)
>  - simplify UI a bit (which we have to do anyway)
>   
>  - profit!
>
> the "forward blog post" feature, if well done, can get integrated
> upstream. And it's a simple thing - all the needed facilities are in
> place, at most we'll need an additional column in a table.
>
> One of the most common rookie programmer errors is to write your own
> thing. Easy to get started, impossible to reach the goals. Don't makeadd
> this mistake - what we want here is to reach the goal. The "easy
> start" is only apparently easy.
>   
Having made that mistake before, I agree with you completely!

I propose to approach this in the following manner:
1) Prototype the 3 pages quickly so we can get feedback. Backend will 
use Moodle's blog facility (hope it has a clean API so I don't have to 
deal with altering the tables directly).
2) Finish the script for one internet blog site, taking care to make the 
API easy so other blog sites can be added without too much confusion
3) Stick it into Moodle
4) Modify the Moodle UI so it basically does the same thing as the 
prototyped pages and looks the same

Do you think that is a good approach?

Thanks,
Tarun
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