Development/New website

The Shift Linux website is a very important part of our Linux distribution, as it is the first thing people will see when they find us out. We need to have an amazing website that really emphasizes what the distro can do, and also allows for proper admin functions, so that those in charge can easily add a news article, edit a news article, or work on our about page. It also needs to integrate all of the features, so that once a user is logged in, they can do all that they are allowed to do.

Base

Our new website is based on a framework developed by DaveLegg, which makes the code cleaner, more efficient, and easier to write. This has allowed for several things to happen:

• Everything works like it should. Cookies are set the right way, so any section can have access to user information
• Everything is integrated. This framework uses a plugin system, so that every section has complete access to the functions of another section. There's also a very good theme system in place, so our website is uniform all over.
• It's fast. DaveLegg outdid himself here: rendering goes 10 times faster than the Neowin front page, because of the way plugins and skins are handled.

Implementation

With the exception of the wiki, everything is integrated into the framework. The wiki is a special case, however, because it is based on MediaWiki, and we really don't have time to code our own wiki. We're trying to work around this right now. Also, it doesn't completely fit into the new style yet, because we had some things hard coded in (like colors) that need to be changed before we go to the white-on-dark-blue for the main content area.

News

Our news page has proper admin functions built in, so our admins can add news articles (by clicking a + sign at the top right of the screen), or edit/delete items via a small control panel below each article.

About

Our about script is much the same as the news script, which is much better than what we had before (I'm pretty sure we had a hard coded HTML file before).

Download

This has not been coded yet, so we'll tell you about it later ;)

Art

The art site is in the process of being recoded from the ground up. Included are multiple file uploads, a proper rating system the prohibits cheating, and editing (!).

Wiki

The wiki went in on the night of October 19, the night before this writing, so it's a bit sketchy right now. However, we have big plans.