Overview

Tools for the web site https://swib.org

Prerequisites on Ubuntu 22.04

To be able to process some packages have to be installed and the MAKEFILE has to be adjusted:

Perl:

# apt install libtypes-datetime-perl; apt install libhtml-template-perl; apt install libpath-tiny-perl; apt install libxml-libxml-perl; apt install libyaml-tiny-perl

Pandoc:

# apt install pandoc

Adjust pathes for Makefile:

# ln -s /usr/bin/pandoc  /usr/local/bin/pandoc

Adjust TEMPLATE_DIR to ~/git/swib.org/etc/pandoc_templates/

Process

• get_conftool_data.sh fetches the source data from the SWIB Conftool website.

• create_website.pl creates markdown files for each dynamic page and one turtle file

• make invokes Pandoc for converting .md to .html files

• sync_to_live.sh transfers the pages to the live website

• recreate_charts.sh creates participant statistics and charts for internal use

Configuration

Config variables are supplied by config.yaml - in particular the name of the current SWIB edition, which is used by all procedures.

Security / privacy

Password files (eg, .conftool_secret) and conftool source files, which contain personal data, are not added to Git (see /.gitignore).

Templates

create_website.pl creates the dynamic pages (programme, speakers), using HTML::Template templates in ./etc/html_tmpl. These pages include sidebar.md.inc, which in turn includes newsbox.md.inc.

Another level of template is applied for all (dynamic and static) pages, namely the etc/pandoc_tmpl/default.html5 template for the html output in the Pandoc convertsion. This template is used (in combination with a Pandoc variable set in the Makefile to create the navigation menu, with an indication of the current page.

Include files in Pandoc (partials), as they would be useful for the sidebar, work from v2.9 on. Unfortunately, CentOS 7 has only v2.7.3, and Ubuntu 20-04 has only v2.5. So with the software versions at ZBW, it is impossible to use one sidebar include file for static and dynamic pages. So all pages are generated via HTML::Template.

This means that the regular pages (linked in the menu) should not be changed in their html/*.md version, but only in ./etc/html_tmpl/*.md.tmpl!!

Connection between contributions and speakers

For creating the author links from the programme page to their speaker entry, the author email addresses in the "Presentation" are essential. Currently (SWIB22), for the the "Submitted by" form fields of the "Contributors Biography" are used.

TODO

Currently, this creates some confusion and additional work, since the internally saved "Sumitting Author" (by user ID) is not necessarily identical with the form fields "Submitted by". Additionally, when people add their co-authors, they are often not aware that they should supply the co-authors details in "Submitted by". Check for 2023, if other form settings and use of Conftool variables could improve the situation.

Empty author and abstract fields

Empty entries for abstracts (e.g., for "Closing") and authors (e.g., for "Lighning talks") are not allowed by Contftool. So a '.' in the abstract indicates that abstract output should be omitted, and '.' in the first firstname and lastname Author entries indicate, that author and organisation should be omitted for the contribution.

Deployment

This is how we build the website on hbz servers ATM.

Stage

A cron job is executing bin/update-swib-website.sh every 5 minutes on our test-metadaten-nrw server. This will pull changes from conftool and generate the static files in var/html, available at http://swib.test.metadaten.nrw/swib23/.

Check for modified files by cd git/swib.org/ and git status.

If markdown or other source files were changed you have to do git pull and execute bin/update-swib-website.sh manually (or wait for cron).

After changes pass review do git add git commit and git push then merge the feature branch into main.

Prod

All files in main should be up to date already. You only have to do git pull on metadaten-nrw.

Steps to create pages for a new conference

Preparation

• Upload new logos to https://github.com/swibcon/swib-orga

Publish CfP

• Update CfP text https://github.com/swibcon/swib-orga/blob/main/cfp.md
• Include CfP in homepage etc/html_tmpl/index.md.tmpl (remove homepage content of last conference)
• Replace full navigation by slimmed down one for cfp in etc/pandoc_templates/swibweb.html5
• Update "general information" text
• Build new pages using bin/make_plain.sh
• Update Rewrite swib.org -> swib.org/swib in Apache proxy server

Publish programme

• Add data in conftool
• Add homepage text in etc/html_tmpl/index.md.tmpl (remove CfP)
• Replace full navigation by slimmed down one for cfp in etc/pandoc_templates/swibweb.html5
• Update history page etc/html_tmpl/history.md.tmpl
• Build new pages using bin/update-swib-website.sh (you may want to run this by cron on test/staging server)