891260 - Replace www.bugzilla.org's template-based build system with a real content management system

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Participation Infrastructure :: MCWS, task)

Description

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

This is more of an investigative bug at this point, to solicit feedback from Mozilla IT about what they're willing to let us run, etc.  Eventually this will become a project request, with work being done by Bugzilla Project developers in a staging environment, but needing support from webops and appsec before deploying.

Right now, the www.bugzilla.org website lives in CVS, using the Perl Template Toolkit templating engine and has cron scripts that periodically check out from CVS and build the site.  Among other things, this presents a high barrier-to-entry for getting people to keep the website up-to-date.

Converting the site to using a CMS of some sort will allow updates to be easily made to the site, allow different people to have responsibility for different sections of the time, give us a real news feed, and possibly provide other features for the site.  When I asked in #systems I was told Wordpress would probably be IT's tool of choice for this, and if you concur, that works for me.

This will require serving changes on the IT side, as the site is currently served as a static website (from two different colos last time I looked) with the site content being pushed out to the webheads from the server where the build scripts run.

The documentation directory will likely need to remain built via the scripts.

There are at least two pages on the site which will likely require custom plugins to be written (thus the need for appsec review) ... the support vendor directory and the installation list.  The vendor directory is currently a cgi script running on lists.bugzilla.org which talks to a mysql database, and is embedded in the main site via ajax calls.  The installation list is a fairly complex TT template which would probably also be better served by database support.

We may now commence thoughts from the peanut gallery. :)

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Sounds like a fine idea to me. 

The vendor directory changes rarely enough that it could probably be a static file; the only dynamic bit is the need to randomize the list order. 

The installation list is also generated from a static file but we could evaluate possible ways to change that too. Although I confess I haven't managed to update it since May 2012! It's been on my ToDo list that long... The trouble is that it's an effort to evaluate whether someone is genuine or just looking for SEO - even though we ad "rel=nofollow" to all links where the Bugzilla is not public.

Gerv

Comment 2

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

This has nothing to do with "Bugzilla the software," this is a website request (likely wordpress).  I still see no comment from IT on whether they're willing to host this or not.  Given our lack of access to logs for this site (bug 632795 which is over 2 years old now) maybe we should just move this to a community server and not even have it on the managed IT infrastructure.  But then you wouldn't be able to keep our wordpress up-to-date. :)

Comment 3

[Jason Crowe [:jd]]

We could pop this onto the generic cluster and then treat it like any other Wordpress site we manage. This would mean we would upgrade the base app and plugins as needed. We would not be interested in user or spam management or really anything that could be done through the web portal.

The issue with logs would remain. We are working on a logstash project that should help in that regard. Additionally any mozilla employes (ops or devs) can have login access to web servers to read logs but there is currently no way to grant this access to community members. That is also a decision / discussion beyond my pay grade (I am the lowly messenger here).

This route also would mean that any plugins you wish to use that we do not have deployed somewhere already would be subject to a sec review (and if you don’t know those tend take from months to years depending on complexity). Also these plugins can not be installed through the web portal given the clustered nature of this platform.

There are a few other options, a community VM or the up and coming pass (if and when it clears the sec review) are both viable. The issue as justdave stated is that these would require someone outside of IT to deploy and upgrade. The only question I might have going this route is surrounding uptime and availability, that is to say that these options would be single instance versus cluster behind load balancers etc.

These are the options I see and I think that my team would be happy to help get this going down any of these paths. Just let us know what you think of the options and if we can answer any additional questions.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

justdave needs to make a call here.

Gerv

Comment 5

[David Weir (satdav)]

I think the community side would be better but regarding the logs can you not give contributors it vie a code ldap

Comment 6

[Andre Klapper]

David Weir: I have problems to parse your last sentence. Could you fix spelling and punctuation, please?

Comment 7

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

This might be a good candidate for inclusion under https://wiki.mozilla.org/IT/Community#Modules and something that group could spin up and maintain/manage. 

I don't think this negates doing reviews on plugins but might be a good entry level app for Community volunteers to manage.

Thoughts?

Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I'd be happy to see Community IT maintaining the site for the Bugzilla team :-) But justdave needs to make the call.

Gerv

Comment 9

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I kinda like the idea, too.  The Bugzilla project feels like it gets more site hosting support from Mozilla than other "Mozilla" projects of similar structure, and it's likely because I work here (haven't specifically asked for it, but nobody sees a reason to kick us out since I'm around to deal with it).  Community IT does feel like the right kind of home for it.

Comment 10

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

As for site structure, given all the discussion on this bug so far I do think Wordpress is the right platform for the site going forward.  I'll have to try to get something mocked up before we go forward.

Comment 11

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

Okay, we have a WordPress staging site on the community multihost:

http://bugzilla.wpms.communitysysadmins.org/

I've got admin access there and can add others as needed.

Nothing there yet, but it's a start. :)

Comment 12

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

Admin site is missing SSL. Do not login until there's a valid SSL certificate for this site.

Comment 13

[Tanner Filip [:tanner]]

We have a self-signed certificate on https://bugzilla.wpms.communitysysadmins.org/ now.

Comment 14

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

This really needs to be a legit certificate or at the very least one signed by Mozilla.

Comment 15

[Tanner Filip [:tanner]]

(In reply to matthew zeier [:mrz] from comment #14)
> This really needs to be a legit certificate or at the very least one signed
> by Mozilla.

Filed bug 1001970.

Comment 16

[Sean Rich [:srich]]

Dave/Mark, WebOps is starting an extensive clean-up of existing bugs in the WebOps component.  Will you help us reduce our queue length by moving this out of the WebOps component if this is going to reside outside the prod hosted WP cluster - on a community hosted platform, for example?  Let me know how I can help.

Comment 17

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

Yeah, looks like this will be hosted on community IT. Moving to the (hopefully) correct place.

Comment 18

[Tanner Filip [:tanner]]

Moving over to new Community IT components.

Comment 19

[matthew zeier [:mrz]]

@justdave - is this even a priority?

Comment 20

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

It's pretty low priority--although there are two open questions on the blocker bug (bug 1002889) that our contributor is looking for answers to.

Comment 21

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

So having done a lot of stuff with WordPress recently (including writing a few new plugins for other organizations), it occurs to me that the existing "Links" mechanism in WordPress combined with one of the existing plugins that adds link ordering for the link display would probably work just fine for the installation list.

Comment 22

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk move of bugs

Comment 23

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I think maybe we still want to do this, but MoCo no longer hosts any of our stuff, so there's nothing for Mozilla to do here anymore. We'll figure out our own hosting if we do it.