About

NVUSA is a series of “notecards” or posts about the nonviolence idea in America.

New

As of New Year 2010 we have adopted the K2 theme and we are converting the “posts” of our pre-1970 historical archive into “pages” that are children of the “Leaves of Peace” page. This allows us to “date” the pages via page titles (1832), etc. and sort them by title chronologically. It would still be better if WordPress could accomodate freedom in date-stamping, but the overall benefits of WordPress still outweigh this unfulfilled wish (updated Jan. 23, 2010).

Two WordPress plugins have proved invaluable for converting our historical archive.

• p2pConverter by Brian Goad enables a one-click conversion of a post into a page
• Xavin’s List Subpages by Jonathan ‘Xavin’ Spence enables use of an elegant line of code in the page editor (not the page template) that lists subpages with options that follow the pattern of “wp_list_pages”

Considering Umbraco and Joomla

For a day or so we considered two alternative frameworks for this project: Umbraco and Joomla. Umbraco is an open-source framework that operates on a Microsoft platform. It looks intriguing, and we wouldn’t mind the time it takes to climb a learning curve. But the Microsoft platform for all its charms is difficult to trust as an open-source environment.

We also experimented with a Joomla framework. Joomla has more of an “authentic CMS” feel to it. And we were enjoying the logic of it all. For starters, Joomla articles accepted our antique dates. But two things convinced us to come back to WordPress. First, we found that the Joomla community was making enthusiastic use of a WordPress module (I hope module is the right term) with high praise for how easy it is to set up and use. Second, we discovered that Joomla “articles” which are the functional equivalents of WordPress “posts” and “pages” do not allow for application of multiple categories per article. “That’s just the way it is,” explained one Joomla savant.

Meanwhile

Until we convert the historical archive to pages, you will find the “posts”narranged in chronological order, with the most recent events and persons appearing at the home page. Under the “Archive” links, entries will roughly match their years of occurrence as far back as 1970.  Then, owing to the default structure of modern computing, dates prior to 1972 have all been mapped onto January 1st, 1970, roughly in chronological order.

What we said Before

After poking around for several years in search of a database platform for NonviolenceUSA, at last the decision is wordpress.

The search for a publishing platform has led me through the thickets of XML, where I learnd how to DTD, schema, TEI, and DocBook–where I studied XSLT, and even turned a little homemade model website with dynamic pages.  Thanks Altova and oXygen!  But here’s the ultimate truth: you want XML?  Hit the RSS feed.

For the time being, the focus will be on data import, with minimal attention to design. The initial pass will focus on getting the old info into the database, with hope that entries will later grow into more full-bodied resources.

Comments, suggestions? gmosesx at gmail dot com