Technical requirements - volunteers & platforms

Introduction

Technical volunteers can either have specialized or a wide spectrum of individual skills. At this stage of our development we are still very small, so for now we only require a few good men that can perform a wide range of tasks. In general anyone with a technical background and the strong desire to learn will be able to assist in the developments of our Vani sites. We welcome anyone who has an interest in assisting to create this dynamic platform for Srila Prabhupada’s teachings to be spread in a very professional and high tech environment to contact us for possible involvement.

We are running mainly a series of wikis, with the same software developed by the creators of Wikipedia. It is a html/javascript/php/mysql environment. A very typical setup in today's websites. This means that we require volunteers from any level of technical knowledge, from content managers, to web designers, to programmers, to server administrators.

Ideally we could use experts on any of these platforms but in these technologies, integration requires knowledge of more than one of them and could benefit us in the overall and as individuals. Whether you are an expert looking to help a great cause, the spreading of spiritual knowledge for the benefit of mankind, or a beginner/medium programmer or designer who wants to expand his/her base knowledge and expertise in the association of spiritually and intellectually inclined people, we will be more than happy to accept your offering and participation.

Generally speaking we are looking for:

- Graphic designers

   Knowledge of photoshop, web and off line publishing required.
   Branding is something we are interested on for our project to grow and be very successful.
   You can design posters, flyers, business cards and anything related to promotion and could help the Web designers on improving our websites' "looks and feel."
   

- Web designers

   Knowledge of Html/JavaScript/Css would be ideal.
   The designers are in charge of layout and the "looks" of the sites. (Css preferably)
   The wikis are very customizable and no specific knowledge of Mediawiki design/programming is necessary.
     

- Web developers/programmers

   Knowledge of JavaScript (jQuery or Prototype libraries is a plus) and PHP.
   MySql is a plus for building custom databases/tables for statistics, suggest tables, our future Vanictionary, etc.
  

The Mediawiki software has been built in PHP and has numerous extensions that can be installed to extend functionality of the sites. We have some of these installed to implement various things as semantics, programming functions, etc.
   We are currently developing mostly in JavaScript (jQuery) to accomplish most of the dynamic functionality inside the pages e.g.: highlighting, statistics (Ajax), compiling tools, etc.

   We envision having more features develop in this way and we are also looking at the future of the other petals in which we can use the latest technologies and other platforms depending on the need.

For example Vanimedia will be an interactive and exciting way to associate with Srila Prabhupada through his audio, video and pictures. For this petal we'll need to implement galleries and media management software and Mediawiki is not designed for such tasks. We are looking into implementing growing and successful CMS's like Drupal to make our development dynamic, current and easy to customize.

   We also need to implement a blog/forum system for our Vaniseva site, in which volunteers will be able to communicate between each other and the rest of the community on the different aspects and stages of the Vanipedia project.
  

- Server/Systems Admin

   Familiarity with Linux administration: backups, logs, cron jobs, ssh, svn(for developers) and user management.
   Application servers: Apache, php,  mysql databases.
   Security: Firewalls, tripwire, snort
   Webmaster duties: Hosting services, dns, domain names. (We are currently using slicehost hosting with Linux/Ubuntu OS.)
   Mediawiki installation and config knowledge is not required but it will be one of the duties.
  

Overall we welcome everyone with the desire and enthusiasm to serve, learn and teach others. We started from scratch by taxing our brains on how to implement current technologies to the task we have embarked ourselves in, and so far we are doing great. We have learned a lot from this experience and you can do too. Do not be afraid to approach us if you feel you don't fulfill most of the requirements for a specific duty. We are actually wearing many hats and we enjoy learning and giving others the opportunity to work and learn with us.

We have taken the path of OpenSource very seriously because it gives the opportunity to engage the work of brilliant and expert people in the spread of the highest philosophy for the betterment and advancement of society, which is also the motto of OpenSource.

Collaboration is the keyword and this is the most exciting aspect of Vanipedia, and thus most of the software we use is Free. Our main goal is the spreading of Krishna consciousness so we don't waste time in building our own models or software but we use what we know is reliable and successful in the world today and "piggy back" ourselves with those who have spent the time and resources to build great systems. We are very thankful for their efforts and we assure them that they will be benefited a thousand times by their support and collaboration to this project which is the highest altruism for mankind.

Hare Krishna!

==The nature of the different sites of Vanipedia

Vanisource

• Wiki based

• This site is nearly finished and does not need very much more input.

Vaniquotes

• Wiki based

• This site is in development and the needs are:

Vanipedia

• Wiki based

• This site needs a lot of development

The needs are:

web designer who can help give both style and organization of content