Re: [GMG-Devel] What does it do?

[Laura Arjona]

Hi all
Following Joar's example, below you can find some braindump from the
user's / sysadmin's perspectives.

I realized that in mediagoblin.org you can find 3 blocks:
* Run it
* Use it
* Join us

Shouldn't it be Use it, Run it, Join us? I know that you devs and
hackers began all this, but I like to think that the project now is
"more mainstream" :)

On the other side, "Join us" links to join.html. Maybe creating a page
for  "Use it" and other page with "Run it" may help? This is how I
focused my "braindump" below, but of course it's only a suggestion.

I'll try to attend the monthly meeting, but I'm not sure that I can,
so I feel shy to ask to put this "website rethinking" in the agenda.
During this summer I can put workforce in this (the website), but I
have no experience in website design and specially in the "aesthetic
part" I am terrible... #iloveplaintext So maybe I can be at other
people's command?
Cheers!
Laura Arjona

== BEGIN BRAINDUMP ========================================

What is Mediagoblin

===============================================

* Use it! Visiting and Publishing in Mediagoblin sites
* Run it! Setting up your Mediagoblin site
* Join us! Hacking and improving Mediagoblin

* Use it! Visiting and Publishing in Mediagoblin sites
=======================================================

A site running Mediagoblin is a place where you can find media content
of many types: videos, music, photos, PDF documents, 3D schemas...
You can browse content by author, collection, tags.. and display it
inside the browser. You can download the original files (yes,
fullsize!) and each media content clearly shows its license so you can
be sure what you can do with it. You can also write comments about
each content starting or joining the conversation :)

Some Mediagoblin sites allow you to create an account and publish your
own content in an easy way.

Why publishing my stuff in a Mediagoblin site?
===============================================

* All your content in one place
It's possible to publish different types of media content in the same
place. For example, a teacher may publish the PDF of his research
papers, along with the slides that she used to present the paper in a
conference, along with the video of that presentation. A 3D designer
may publish her 3d schemas along with some photos of the physical
prototype, a video explaining how it works... Musicians can publish
their lyrics or chords together with their audio tracks and concert
videos, etc.

* Free software
The Mediagoblin software has a free software license. This means that
the individual, organization or company that hosts a Mediagoblin site
publishes the source code, so you (or anybody) can audit that the site
really does what they say that it does with your stuff. 'Free
software' also means that you can always get a copy of the software
and setup a website that looks and works the same (or you can hire
somebody to set it up for you).

* Take our tour and learn other advantages of using Mediagoblin!!

* Or visit some Mediagoblin sites:
+ Public sites (where you can sign up and publish your content)
+ Personal sites (people that have setup a Mediagoblin site by themselves)

* Run it! Setting up your Mediagoblin site
===========================================

Mediagoblin is free software! You can download and setup your own
site, so your data is under your control: you decide how your site
looks and works, the filesize limitations, etc. Mediagoblin supports
many content types (audio, video, text, 3D schemas, PDF, Open
Documents, and more coming!).
It offers simplicity for the users to upload their stuff, while not
needing too much design, configuration, or sysadmin work.

A Mediagoblin site does not have many hardware or system requirements
to run. It is designed to scale up and down. It is also designed to
support federation in a near future, so your instance can communicate
with other and your users don't need to create accounts in every
place.

Check out our step-by-step guide to installing MediaGoblin on your own
server or learn more about its architecture (link to Joar's writing).

You'll be not alone building and maintaining your MediaGoblin site! A
vibrant and friendly community of people brings help, support, recipes
etc. and you an also contribute your experience!

* Join us! Hacking and improving Mediagoblin
===========================================
same as in mediagoblin.org


== END BRAINDUMP ========================================

2013/7/4 Joar Wandborg <address@hidden>:
> MediaGoblin is a python WSGI application and an AMQP task processor.
>
> # The WSGI application...
>
>  runs as one or several processes and can be coupled with an HTTP server
> either directly or via an intermediate FCGI layer.
>
> The WSGI application serves dynamic content over HTTP and is backed by any
> SQL server supported by SQLAlchemy in theory, only PostgreSQL and SQLite can
> be verified to work out of the box by me personally.
>
> The content types currently supported, off the top of my head: video, audio,
> images, 3D models, 'ASCII'/unicode art.
>
> # The AMQP task processor
>
>  can be launched in two ways: Either inside the WSGI application, where it
> will process all tasks synchronously, thus blocking the WSGI application
> process and/or thread until processing and saving of processed files are
> finished - Or as a separate process, fetching tasks to process from an
> intermediate entity (the broker).
>
> The task processor processes media such as images, video, audio, 3D models
> and creates web-compatible files that are shown on the detail page for the
> content.
>
> --
>
> I started writing this up on my cellphone while commuting. I thought it
> might be good to finish it. Fixes, additions and elaborations are welcome.
> Feels a bit like it should be on the wikipedia page but not perhaps to this
> detail. One flaw is that I very much focused on the application structure
> whereas I almost completely left out any information usable for 'users'.
>
> On 06/25/2013 09:49 AM, Mike Gran wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've read over your website a couple of times and I don't think
>> it really explains what your project does.
>>
>> It says "MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform
>> that anyone  can run.  You can think of it as a decentralized
>> alternative to  Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.
>>
>> Then on the "take the tour" page it says it shares media, does
>> comments, and has a clean look.
>>
>> While I've figured it out now, the following questions weren't
>> obvious from the descriptions...
>>
>> Is the point that you give it pictures and it makes webpages with
>> comment boxes?  How it is different from hosting a blog and
>> putting pictures in a blog, then?
>>
>> How do you give it pictures?  Does it look for pictures on your
>> computer?
>>
>> Does it have a standalone webserver in it? or do you have to
>> somehow set it up to run in Apache, like you would if you downloaded
>> a blogging engine?
>>
>> Anyway, just FYI that it seems like some remedial information is
>> missing.
>>
>> -Mike
>> _______________________________________________
>> devel mailing list
>> address@hidden
>> http://lists.mediagoblin.org/listinfo/devel
>>
>
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