[site-engine-dev] The story so far...

[MJ Ray]

Right, I'll start posting here and others will join us later.  Feel
free to comment:

The system is composed of five core parts: the discussion system, the
publishing system, the user registrations, the section editor and the
ad server.

The discussion system was using an nntp server as the backing store in
the original versions, as it's basically an optimised database for
discussions and it gives easy access to people using newsreaders if
you choose.  The other sections will use schemeql to talk to a
database.

The discussion system has been present in my web site for years now,
so that's the first section I tried.  I had a working discussion
system in mzscheme running as a CGI.  However, when I tried to connect
it to the database (for user verification before they can post a
comment), that introduced a large start-up time, so I've been trying
to move it to run inside the PLT webserver without success.  This is
because it needs to use mzscheme's units, which I still haven't quite
understood properly it seems.  That's why there's no code on the
project site yet: I've started rewriting it from scratch again, so
that it works.

For the other parts, there is no working code, although there is a
sketchy design on the paper in front of me.  Basically, each part has
show (a single item), list (a number of items in a table of
contents-style thing), submit! (add an item), chooser (present a list
of items for administration) and choose! (update that list).  The
specifics of how they work varies, but for example, in the discussion
system, show returns a reader comment, list returns a summary list of
comments, submit! adds a comment and chooser/choose! allows the admin
to remove illegal comments.

Please, ask me more questions, as after a page, I start rambling.