733174 - [Blogzilla] apply to Mozilla Labs

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Websites Graveyard :: blog.mozilla.org, defect)

Description

[mcbmoz]

Opening to apply One Mozilla blog theme to http://blog.mozilla.com/labs

Note: This *might* be a brand new blog

Owners/Editors: David A.

Deadline: March 29, 2012

(Valerie, if it's decided that Mozilla Labs, should be a category inside of blog.mozilla.com instead, please close this bug as wontfix - thanks!)

Comment 1

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Note: we're not creating a new blog, but moving an existing one onto the centralized blog platform as requested.

Comment 2

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I'd like to understand the implications of category vs. separate blog.

Comment 3

[mcbmoz]

Separate blog pros:
-keep historical comments (these can be moved, but it can be a hassle)

Blogging in a dedicated category on blog.mozilla.com pros (you will have a vanity url: blog.mozilla.org/labs):
-increased traffic/visibility (it's harder for journalists, etc. to track down separate blogs)
-ongoing seo optimizations
-leverage a universal taxonomy & show up in related content queries
-built-in l10n
-ongoing optimizations and design updates
-reduce resources needed to maintain a separate wordpress site

Comment 4

[David Ascher (:davida)]

My vote is for a category under the main blog w/ the vanity url.

Comment 5

[Valerie Ponell]

+1 on rolling this one up into the main blog. There's great interest in Labs projects and we should give it as much visibility as possible.

Comment 6

[Ben (:bensternthal)]

Reading the above it looks like David and Valerie are on-board with the following

Vanity URLs

http://blog.mozilla.com/labs 
http://blog.mozilla.org/labs

Blog Lives In Dedicated Category Under The Main Blog
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/category/labs

Can you add what the next steps are and how we should co-ordinate?

Comment 7

[Jake Maul [:jakem]]

The vanity URL is easy... just a few days ago we set up a scheme for doing this. It's documented here: https://mana.mozilla.org/wiki/display/websites/blog.mozilla.com#blogmozillacom-InternalRedirects. Anyone with Editor or higher access on the main blog should be able to do this.

However, I wouldn't set up the vanity URL until the category is actually created and doesn't 404. :) I'd want to defer to mcbmoz or Valerie on setting that up (I can technically do it, but it would be better handled by an actual stakeholder in the main blog).

Comment 8

[Ben (:bensternthal)]

Jake -> noted and agreed. I'll get in touch with Valerie to figure out how this will work and how we will co-ordinate.

Comment 10

[mcbmoz]

Jake,

Can you create this blog: blog.mozilla.com/labs

editors: DAscher, Havi, Todd Simpson
admin: Vponell, CBrodigan

Push with Blogzilla theme, and I'll work with Havi from there.

Deadline: March 29, 2012

Thanks!

Comment 11

[Valerie Ponell]

Hi everyone,

per Chrissie's note above (comment 10) we decided to create a standalone blog for Labs - I talked to Ben over email about this and he is also fine with us taking this way. Would be great if we could get this set-up before the end of the month. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks,

Valerie

Comment 12

[Ben (:bensternthal)]

I also wanted to note a point that David brought up.

We should consider if it makes sense to just re-skin the existing site.

In that scenario we would apply one mozilla, do a little cleanup and change some urls.

Jake if you want to discuss our options outside of bugzilla comments please ping me.

Comment 13

[Jake Maul [:jakem]]

If this is a real standalone blog and not just a category on the main blog, then we can import posts from the existing one fairly easily.

As far as reskinning the existing one... I'm okay with that too. However I believe there were artificial restrictions placed on the One Mozilla theme, specifically against doing something like this. The idea being that only official blogs should use it, and official blogs should all be at the same place to reduce any possible confusion.

I will go ahead and make the new blog at blog.mozilla.com/labs. If we ultimately decide to re-skin the existing site instead, that's not a problem- we can simply remove the new one.

Comment 14

[Ben (:bensternthal)]

I think the new blog might be the best way to go... this helps us to de-couple the work on the new blog and the launch of the new site that will replace mozillalabs.com

Let's also do the import. There are 500 or so posts and doing this manually... well Havi and I would need a lot of coffee.

Also we do not have comments on the existing site.

... as always many thanks.

Comment 15

[Jake Maul [:jakem]]

This blog is created and the users assigned... with 2 small changes:

1) Havi is temporarily an Administrator.
2) Ben Sternthal is an Editor (not in the original list).

Both changes are to assist in the transition, and are likely to be temporary.

No theme is currently applied, so it shows up as a blank page. This is intentional, to let you get some content in place before going "live".

The WP Importer plugin is enabled, so you can export from the old blog and import into this one fairly trivially.


I believe there is no more work for IT on this, at least for a little while. I'm going to close this bug out. Please re-open if I've overlooked something, or if this bug has another purpose beyond IT work.

Comment 16

[Rebecca Billings [:rbillings]]

Verified blog is created, pushed to prod, displays correctly. No testing was done on blog functionality.