While reading a post about members of the MozDev opening a new venture called MozSource, which focuses on custom Mozilla projects for commercial purposes, I noticed a link to Nvu, an open source WYSIWYG web site editor based off o the Mozilla Composer. One of the programs I felt I could not live without on Linux is FrontPage. While Nvu is no FrontPage, it is usable for simple sites and is start in the right direction!

Another thing I found out in the past week (actually found out a while ago but was reinforced this week) is that open source does not always mean Open Source all the time. The open source projects I have explored in the past always provide the source code along with the latest test builds. This is not always the case!

For some time now, I have kept an eye out for a decent open source portal system. My first choice was Rainbow portal since it was written in C#. That was a complete no-go due to restrictive licensing, I wanted an portal with no strings. I explored some others but found them either only partially there or lacking in functionality.

At this point in my search, I finally decided to look at DotNetNuke, which I have put off since it is in VB.NET and I absolutely loathe anything that using the BASIC syntax. Well, the licensing was a perfect fit as well as much of the functionality. It is a bit bulky for my tastes, but for the most part it would fit the bill. Of course a few features that I would consider a must, is not available in the current version. It is promised in their new super-duper version 3.0 that was supposed to be released in "beta" on November 1, 2004. Nope, no release and no other dates have been posted. Some speculate it will be in a few weeks.

This was a shock for me, since it is an open source project I would have thought the absolutely latest code would be available that others may use, explore or even fix issues, but this sadly is not the case. You must wait for them to release the beta. This I do not understand. Many issues in the current version have simply been put off as "that will be fixed in 3.0". Well, if they are only working on releasing a beta, who knows how long it will be to have code that is ready for production. Even more so, since there is only a small core team of developers working on it while others sit on their hands waiting.

Edit: As of Jan 1, 2005, DNN now has source code available and it looks like it is heading to the first release canidate sometime in within a month.  Nice to see it coming along!

This has frosted me a bit since I do not want to work with their current version as it is missing some must have features that are supposed to be implemented in the new version. One of these features is clean URLs view url rewriting. I looked into this but when I found that in the source of the current version they have 471 locations that use a "Response.Redirect" on a string they have built in that location, I did not feel like making a minimum of 471 modifications not to mention side effects.

Well, you cannot plan for the new version if you do not have at least a buggy alpha, pre-alpha (whatever they have) version to research how things work. So, everyone is just left hanging on an open source project.

My refresher on "open source not always available source" is the new version of CommunityServer at CommunityServer.com. They just released their first beta version but without any source code. They said the source code would not be provided for the beta. Again, this is something that I do not understand. Some at DotNetNuke say it is that people will flood them with issues and keep them to busy to perform the work. All they have to do is put up a big disclaimer saying the code is beta, alpha or whatever and are not accepting any comments. Done..

The main focus of CommunityServer V1 is supposed to be the integration of Blogs, Forums and Gallery. From the visual side of things (which is all we have to work with without any source code), there appears to be very little integration. The only thing I could see that was integrated was the administration of the three. This result does not even look like a beta as there is a lot of functionality missing. If they had provided the source code people could have at least tweaked it to something more usable while waiting for future releases.

Edit: These are two open source projects that I have researched over the last few months.  There appears to be many more than hold on to their source code until certian milestones.  I prefer the projects that just let it all hang out there for people use if they wish to risk it.

It would be a lot nicer if everyone that runs Open Source projects would simply keep all changes available to the public to use at their own risk. At least you have material to evaluate instead of a promise of a future release.

Even we old dogs can still learn some new tricks .  This last week I posted a message in the CodeProject.com lounge about the relevance of adding RSS feeds to my sites.  While it was not a large number of replies, it was enough that insisted RSS was here to stay and worth the effort.

After a few days pounding around the net, I found a slew of information about RSS feeds, even an article from Forbes that called 2004 they year of RSS.  Once I began to look it seemed like the majority of major sites had RSS feeds and quite a number of smaller ones.

Quite some time ago (a year or more) I tried an RSS client and subscribed to a few feeds.  Nothing tremendously exciting and I did not need more things taking up my time each day.  From what I saw, it is simply a method to obtain news headlines.  There was a big opps!

Once I paid attention, I found that RSS feeds are not just for news headlines.  It is a simple polling method of anonymous subscriptions.  Any site that would like to keep visitors coming back when they make changes should look into adding RSS to their sites.  It is simple to do for the most part, and can even add and updated manually if you do not have many changes every day.

I cannot tell you the number of times I found and interesting site that I would bookmark or put a link in a folder and at a later time end up delete them without even checking back.  It is time pressed world today and I for one seldom find the time to keep up with many web sites.

Now when I find a site (or blog) of interest, I simply add them to a folder in my RSS client.  Some day in the future when they update their site, I will get the notice and actually be able to check back with them.

The other main name is "aggregation"!  Since the RSS client checks for updates, I can easily monitor hundreds of sites and keep up with what is going on, in a fraction of the time I would spend visiting a handful of the sites.  There is no way I could keep up with all this information if I had to view it from one site and a time when I had the time to check.  That RSS client stays running in the background and even has a popup panel that displays when new notifications come in.

From a web developer's perspective, RSS can be a huge traffic increase to your site when you post updates.  You might have hundreds or thousands of people monitoring your RSS feed that never come to your site until they find something of interest.  While that can be a draw back in the terms of pages views, it can actually mean an increase since many more people can keep up with your site than would have otherwise.

Not only can a web developer generate more traffic from their current visitors, there are many sites that syndicate RSS feeds.  Kind of a search engine for news feeds.  One site has of 200,000 RSS feeds listed.  This is a tremendous opportunity for greater exposure to your web site.

After implementing RSS on several of my sites and browsing a ton of blogs and feed sites, I finally took the plunge to start my own blog.  I now see value and community that I did not see before.  It was not that I have been blind, but I just did not stick my nose out there enough to see what has been going on now for quite some time.  I believe that RSS feeds are as important to web sites as HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

If you have not got your feet wet with RSS yet, simple search Yahoo or any search engine for "RSS Tutorials" and you should find a ton of information.  If you want to just throw together a quick RSS feed and get it going, you can also view the tip I post at:

http://hintsandtips.com/ShowPost/271/hat.aspx

To be continued in Part 2.