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diff --git a/colophon.md b/colophon.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..08712c38 --- /dev/null +++ b/colophon.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +[[!meta title="Colophon"]] + +## Ikiwiki + +The EmacsConf site is actually a wiki, editable by anyone on the +planet. The pages are written in markdown, and converted to HTML +using the [ikiwiki](//ikiwiki.info) wiki compiler. + +You are welcome and encouraged to help improve the site. Please see +the [instructions on how to edit the wiki|editing]. + +## Oddmuse + +The EmacsConf site during 2019 was built on the awesome +[Oddmuse](//oddmuse.org) wiki software, available under GPLv3+. + +It used a number of [extensions](//oddmuse.org/wiki/Module) to add +additional useful features. Most notably, we used the +[Namespaces](//oddmuse.org/wiki/Namespaces_Extension) module to allow +creation of what are in effect sub-wikis for each conference year. + +As nice as Oddmuse is, we found the lack of proper nested pages rather +limiting for our use-case, and have since switched to using ikiwiki +for this wiki. + +## Discourse + +For EmacsConf 2015 we started self-hosting a Discourse instance at +[discourse.emacsconf.org](//discourse.emacsconf.org). But as years +went by, it became something of a maintenance burden, as the current +organizers were interested in maintaining production Ruby software, +and the previous volunteers having moved on to other adventures in +life. Also, the VPS that hosted our Discourse instance and was kept +running all of these years could potentially go offline at any time. + +For EmacsConf 2019 onward, as an effort to simplify our infrastructure +and minimize the number systems we have to manage (so we could better +focus on the main pieces of software needed for running a conference +using only free software), I decided to retire our Discourse instance. +A traditional mailing list plus our IRC channel have since taken +Discourse's place as the means of communication for EmacsConf +organizers, volunteers, and participants; covering most if not all the +use-cases we had for the forum. + +- Mailing list: [emacsconf-discuss](//lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacsconf-discuss) on gnu.org +- IRC channel: `#emacsconf` on `irc.freenode.net` + +To preserve old Discourse discussions, I created a read-only archive +of the forums using [HTTrack](//www.httrack.com) like so: + +``` +httrack http://discourse.emacsconf.org -O discourse.emacsconf.org \ + -x -o -M10000000 -N100 -I0 --user-agent "Googlebot" +grep -rl index-2 discourse.emacsconf.org | xargs sed -i 's/index-2/index/g' +mv discourse.emacsconf.org/index{-2,}.html +``` + +The read-only archive of the old Discourse forum is accessible at the +old address, [discourse.emacsconf.org](//discourse.emacsconf.org). |