[isf-wifidog] Re : Re: Re : Re: WifiDog v2 development update?

Sam 4 Avr 17:32:00 EDT 2009

Sorry and in (2), by "your CMS" I mean the CMS that's built into  
WifiDog. It's been one of the biggest issues for us, since its close  
to impossible for our guys to use, and is completely impossible for  
our hotspot owners to use. It was very powerful internally, but the UI  
needs to completely mask all of the sophisticated technology, and at  
this point, its probably not worth any additional work to make it more  
usable, since a bunch of other CMSes are available.

Dana Spiegel
Executive Director, NYCwireless
dana at nycwireless.net
+1 917 402 0422

-------------------
NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and  
enables the growth of free, public wireless networks
-------------------

On Apr 4, 2009, at 5:20 PM, Dana Spiegel wrote:

> I think its worthwhile to explain what we are looking for:
>
> 1) We don't really care about the gateway software, and would be happy
> to use anything that can run on Pyramid Linux
> 2) We don't want to use any of your CMS software. We either want a
> standard CMS (like Wordpress-I despise drupal, actually), or better
> our own home-assembled one based on Django components
> 3) In the longer term, we need a *more usable* administrative tool,
> especially one that can provide easy to understand reports (which the
> current one doesn't really provide - I'd be happy to spec this out)
> 4) We must continue to have authentication, and we need a way to pass
> the user and their location to our CMS/other software. My
> understanding is that the faceless mechanism that was the original v2
> proposal would actually offload this to the CMS directly, and users
> would really have a login into the wifidog server, but that there'd be
> a way of externally "authenticating" a user using a callback of sorts,
> so that we can restrict access to the internet at large until the user
> actually logs into whatever CMS we run.
>
> Beyond this, we've had a lot of headaches with PostgreSQL, and the PHP
> code is very difficult to adjust without spending a lot of time on the
> documentation.
>
> I think that if we do (4) above, most of my headaches go away, and I
> can live with things as they are. I'd also like to have some form of
> REST interface for getting at the node usage data, and a REST
> interface for querying the real-time activity as well.
>
> If we slim down the WifiDog server to be (4) -- with the REST
> interface we can even get rid of just about any of (3) since this can
> be built externally -- then we would be incredibly pleased.
>
>
> Dana Spiegel
> Executive Director, NYCwireless
> dana at nycwireless.net
> +1 917 402 0422
>
> -------------------
> NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and
> enables the growth of free, public wireless networks
> -------------------
>
> On Apr 4, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Gabe Sawhney wrote:
>
>> Hi -- I'm from Wireless Toronto.
>>
>> My dream is for us here to be running our network on a platform
>> that'll accommodate the WRT54G investment that our venue partners  
>> have
>> already made, as well as allow us to manage the (probably) ROBIN- 
>> based
>> routers that we'll start deploying.  We're a culture-focused group,  
>> so
>> portal pages and content -- and consequently, a server -- are
>> necessary components.  I would like a little more intelligence on the
>> gateway side, so that users are still able to get online if the  
>> router
>> can't find the server.  I'm also interested in stepping away from an
>> authentication model, and move towards one of (bandwidth) accounting.
>> (Whereby users are only required to authenticate if they cross a
>> bandwidth usage threshold.)  This approach would improve the  
>> usability
>> of our network (giving us a distinct advantage over commercial  
>> WISPs),
>> it would reduce support requests, maybe make building out a mesh
>> easier, and make our network finally not-totally-annoying for users  
>> on
>> mobile devices.
>>
>> I picture this dream platform being easier to achieve by building on
>> top of the soon-to-be-released (this summer?) open-mesh/orangemesh
>> system, rather than from the existing WifiDog code.  There are other
>> options I haven't looked into, but it seems to me that the openmesh
>> project has good momentum, and is a comparatively new system which  
>> has
>> been designed with usability on the admin side in mind.  I'm totally
>> open to other possibilities.  I know others have requirements that  
>> are
>> different than ours, but I'd love for us to be collaborating to  
>> figure
>> out what are the core features that we could all use and can work
>> together to build.
>>
>> Dana: Are you committed to sticking with wifidog for the festival in
>> the fall, or would you consider using orangemesh, or something else?
>>
>> Gabe
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Richard Lussier
>> <richard.lussier at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> bruno.remy at videotron.ca wrote:
>>>> I'm not a programmer, as Alexis said, but i'would like to share  
>>>> with
>>>> you the mind of every programmers involving around Wifidog's
>>>> development in IleSansFil (Montreal) and ZAP Québec (Quebec city) .
>>>> This sounds like this :
>>>>
>>>> "The time of tracking bugs and/or patch actual Php code is over !
>>>> It's time consuming, and fixing bugs is a too-small step.
>>>> The dynamic has changed :
>>>> Wifidog needs to be rewriting from scratch, with buildt-in or  
>>>> radius
>>>> or openId or ldap authentification, and with CMS content (like
>>>> Wordpress or Drupal).
>>>> The brainstorming is open ! ;-)"
>>>>
>>>> Bruno
>>>>
>>>> ----- Message d'origine -----
>>>> De: Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net>
>>>> Date: Samedi, 4 Avril 2009, 11:28
>>>> Objet: Re: [isf-wifidog] Re : Re:  WifiDog v2 development update?
>>>> À: Jean-Philippe Menil <jean-philippe.menil at univ-nantes.fr>
>>>> Cc: WiFiDog Captive Portal <wifidog at listes.ilesansfil.org>
>>>>
>>>>> Previously Jean-Philippe Menil wrote:
>>>>>> I think the idea of a forum would be great,
>>>>>> too many people use the bug tracker in wrong way.
>>>>>> And not so many use the mailing list.
>>>>>
>>>>> FWIW I find forums painful to use. If wifidog development moves
>>>>> away
>>>>> from the mailinglist to a forum most likely I will stop paying
>>>>> attention. There reasonable services that provide a forum
>>>>> interface for
>>>>> mailinglists such as nabble or gmane; perhaps they are  
>>>>> interesting.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have no interest in working on the wifidog portal since I use
>>>>> my own
>>>>> portal, but I can help with the gateway if needed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Wichert.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net>    It is
>>>>> simple to make things.
>>>>> http://www.wiggy.net/                   It is hard to make things
>>>> simple.
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> WiFiDog mailing list
>>>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
>>>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> WiFiDog mailing list
>>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
>>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
>>> Hi list,
>>> I am involved a lot in operations at ISF.
>>> What Bruno says is what I also understant of the situation in our
>>> area.
>>> We are convinced that the modular approach is the way to go, so  
>>> every
>>> need can be covered without imposing it to other.
>>> Also to permit to evolve with more ease.
>>> There are probably (I am not a coder either) lots of things that are
>>> great in what has been made, so let's not throw away the baby with
>>> the
>>> tub water (a french expression :-) ).
>>> Sylvain Carle expressed the desire to lead the project among our
>>> groups
>>> in Québec area, I would like to ear what he has to say.
>>> Richard
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WiFiDog mailing list
>>> WiFiDog at listes.ilesansfil.org
>>> http://listes.ilesansfil.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wifidog
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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