Weekly Report 2013-07-28

Completed Work

1. Created additional documentation: using virtualenv and pythonbrew
2. Pursuant to central authentication for all ACL-related websites
   1. Started coding a login system that can be shared with all sites that uses last week's database
   2. Read through the source code for MediaWiki's AuthDrupal extension and Drupal's MediaWiki Auth module. This is a pair of extensions to MediaWiki and Drupal, respectively, that automatically log a user in to a particular MediaWiki site if that user is logged in to a particular Drupal site - i.e. it lets MediaWiki piggyback on Drupal's authentication system. For the following reasons, the idea behind this is not to use these extensions in their current form, but rather to modify them to work with the central auth system under construction mentioned in (1).
      1. The MediaWiki side of this bridge is no longer maintained. (However, reading through the code gives me a good overview of how to hook into MediaWiki's authentication system.)
      2. The setup between these two extensions requires the username to be the same (modulo some capitalization conventions) for both Drupal and MediaWiki, and we already have a lot of existing accounts on the various MediaWiki sites and the Poral.
      3. We may, in the future, wish to support websites with authentication requirements that are powered by frameworks other than Drupal and MediaWiki.

      So, the plan is to learn from the sourcecode how to hook into the authentication systems for Drupal and MediaWiki, and then to modify the code to allow authentication through the central system. Please let me know if this is not wanted.

Agenda for Coming Week

1. Finish central auth system.
2. Make as much progress as possible on integration with Drupal and MediaWiki.
3. Continue work on upgrade of Portal to Drupal 7
4. Continue work on newly-suggested style changes for new site. These include (in order of suggested priority):
   1. Feature upcoming conference "graphically" (through interactive Google map) on the front page and organize conferences by "importance."
   2. Meta tags/SEO keyword inclusion to ensure the site shows up in appropriate searches
5. Create sitemap.xml file

Long-term/Ongoing Tasks

1. Upgrade Portal to Drupal 7 - which mainly involves rewrites of custom modules