greetings, and a question

A forum for new users, and for old users to greet the new ones
spartlan
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greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Hello,

I'm not brand new to the site but I'm still pretty new. I would like to offer to volunteer to help with the site. What is needed? I'm happy to do anything. I am a former Adobe software engineer (graphics group) so I'm technical but not familiar with wiki sites. I'm sure I can figure it out.

My choir is currently rehearsing Mozart's Litaniae Laurentanae KV 195 and I looked for a Sibelius file here (for practice) but there isn't one available. I would be happy to add one if this would be helpful. If I were to add one, which edition of the CPDL scores available is best to use as the source?

Thanks.
CHGiffen
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by CHGiffen »

Hi Susan,

The only edition of the Litaniae by Mozart is one by Michael Gibson (with keyboard reduction of the orchestral score). It's a good edition, though. If you want the full orchestral score, then you'll find it scanned at IMSLP.

There are plenty of things you could do for us at the ChoralWiki, and learning the ropes is not difficult. We are ALWAYS looking for volunteer help here! Newly posted scores often need the text added or links provided to the corresponding text page (if there are multiple scores with the same text). Also, pages for newly posted scores need to be checked for any obvious mistakes from the submission process. As you become familiar with things, you'll notice more and more that you can do to help. When in doubt or you have questions, don't be afraid to contact any of the Admins.

Thanks for your generous offer of help. And I like your Ave verum corpus and Magnificat settings!
Charles H. Giffen
CPDL Board of Directors Chair
Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Thanks Chuck. I guess I'll jump in and start browsing through new submissions, as I have time, to complete the admin tasks you listed.

As for the Mozart, our choir has a printed score. I was hoping to download a Sibelius file because I have Sibelius and can turn down the other parts to practice with my part prominent if I have the file.

What I was really asking is whether submitting Sibelius files is desired for score submissions that do not currently have them. Is this a good way to contribute or are the typical admin tasks higher priority?

Thanks.

P.S. I'm glad you like Magnificat and Ave Verum Corpus settings :).
carlos
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by carlos »

Hi Susan!
spartlan wrote:What I was really asking is whether submitting Sibelius files is desired for score submissions that do not currently have them. Is this a good way to contribute or are the typical admin tasks higher priority?
Your Sibelius files are most welcome, but since not everyone has Sibelius on their computers, it's desirable to also upload a PDF generated from the Sibelius source file. A MIDI would also be nice, but is not mandatory. Such a set of files will be treated as a new edition when submitted to CPDL.
choralia
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by choralia »

Thank you Susan for willing to help! :)

If you have software background with graphics skills, I would propose to revise the ChoralWiki's main page from various viewpoints:

1) look and feel. We can probably make it more attractive for our users;

2) language localization. The current language localization system for the main page is probably not optimized, as it was conceived before some modifications were introduced. If look and feel are revised, the localization system will probably have to be optimized for the new structure as well;

3) interaction among users. We can probably introduce features that facilitate the interaction among users and between users and CPDL administrators. For example, the latest active subjects on the forums might be shown in a frame so that users may more easily interact through these forums (this is just an example, there are probably much better ideas to consider);

4) rendering time. The main page currently takes quite a long time to be displayed (around 2 seconds on our fastest servers, around 6 seconds on the slower ones), and this is likely caused by the extensive use of templates, nested templates, and dynamic contents (which also prevent that the main page can be cached, so it is always rendered from scratch every time it is invoked). There is probably some room for optimization from this viewpoint, too.

I leave the floor to other admins to comment about my proposal.

Regarding Mozart's KV195, please note that rehearsal aids are already available on my website. They are based on a Carus Verlag urtext edition published in 1990. Maybe you can save some time using my materials, and then devote more time to our main page... :roll:

Max
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Hi Max,

These all sound like great ideas for improving the site but I am probably not the best candidate. My graphics work at Adobe was very much "under the hood." Think of isolating a matrix transformation error in the Bézier rendering code while processing the bottom curve of a Times Roman lowercase letter 't' at specific resolutions. The graphics engine was a binary -- a dynamically loaded run-time library -- for products like Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop etc. I do not have professional desktop application or web development experience/skills. I did research browsers at one point -- built Mozilla (FireFox) from scratch on Linux and wrote this paper (maiden name) describing its architecture -- and I created my own web site using Dreamweaver so I'm somewhat familiar with how sites are constructed, but I would need to look up specifics of html, xml, css, php, js, etc.

Is there a way I can load cpdl.org into Dreamweaver in read-only mode so that I can study the Main Page elements?

Can you be more specific about what you mean by "optimized" re: language localization? I see the links to other languages but it looks like only the Main Page is translated (and only partially). Did you mean that the Main Page should be fully translated or that all of the site should be available in multiple languages?

I love the idea of adding more visual interest and opportunities for interaction. ChoralNet.org has quite a few frames on the main page for forums, news, classified and blog posts.

What about a blog? I enjoy blogging. We could feature composers from different eras/styles, short bios, interviews with users & site admins and so on. It would be a great way to build community and add images and video content (high quality choirs performing pieces) with the latest posts featured on the main page for enhanced visual interest. Weekly blog posting provides "news" that makes a site more interesting.

As for the slow loading, yes, so many nested templates/links to resolve. I tried a chrome wiki add on but cdpl.org didn't load any faster. Is this a general problem with wiki sites? Are the scripts, pages, images & docs loaded from multiple servers?

Thanks for the choralia link :). As it turns out our choir is already using choralia for practice (I shared the link several weeks ago). The choralia practice files are great but it's still nice to have Sibelius for tricky parts because you can slow down the tempo.

-Susan
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Carlos, okay, I'll keep Sibelius file submissions in mind.
choralia
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by choralia »

spartlan wrote:Is there a way I can load cpdl.org into Dreamweaver in read-only mode so that I can study the Main Page elements?
I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with Dreamweaver at all.
spartlan wrote:Did you mean that the Main Page should be fully translated or that all of the site should be available in multiple languages?
Just the main page. It seems that the current structure is a little bit tricky to be fully translated (this is why it is translated only partially).
spartlan wrote:What about a blog? I enjoy blogging.
One of the problems with blogs is that somebody should regularly take care of them. Maybe we need someone who enjoys blogging :roll: . I'm quite asocial by nature, so I wouldn't be able to evaluate ideas for these purposes. I can just help to implement them from an IT viewpoint.
spartlan wrote:Is this a general problem with wiki sites?
Yes, but only if templates are used too extensively. Templates tend to slow down the wikis a lot.
spartlan wrote:Are the scripts, pages, images & docs loaded from multiple servers?
No, they aren't. We have multiple servers for load balancing and site diversity reasons, however when you connect to a certain server all elements are retrieved from it.
spartlan wrote:The choralia practice files are great but it's still nice to have Sibelius for tricky parts because you can slow down the tempo.
You can slow down, speed up, transpose, change levels of the various voices at will with the Choralia VS files. Please read the VS manual for details. You can also slow down mp3 files if you use the appropriate mp3 players (see the mp3 manual for details).

Max
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

choralia wrote: I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with Dreamweaver at all.
Dreamweaver is Adobe's web site builder application (acquired via the Macromedia merger). It can load a site from a remote URL and copy all of its elements to a local PC or allow access to the elements on the site itself. The site is probably too large for a local copy. Is it possible to obtain temporary login permission to access the site on the server? I'm not sure if there's a way to force access to be "read-only" from the server side. From within Dreamweaver you can inspect elements without making changes on the live site, but you have to be careful.
choralia wrote: One of the problems with blogs is that somebody should regularly take care of them. Maybe we need someone who enjoys blogging :roll: . I'm quite asocial by nature, so I wouldn't be able to evaluate ideas for these purposes. I can just help to implement them from an IT viewpoint.
I'd be happy to manage the blog but would need help figuring out how to link the feed to the main page.
choralia wrote: You can slow down, speed up, transpose, change levels of the various voices at will with the Choralia VS files. Please read the VS manual for details. You can also slow down mp3 files if you use the appropriate mp3 players (see the mp3 manual for details).
Great! I'll check out the manual.

-Susan
choralia
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by choralia »

spartlan wrote:Is it possible to obtain temporary login permission to access the site on the server?
Public access using http protocol is read-only for everybody and requires no login. If Dreamweaver connects via http, you shouldn't need any special access. If Dreamweaver requires to connect through other protocols (e.g., FTP), I can configure a read-only access for you. Please let me know what kind of access is required.
spartlan wrote:I'd be happy to manage the blog but would need help figuring out how to link the feed to the main page.
I'm not sure whether the blog is the ideal solution. Maybe other admins/users may suggest better alternatives.

A specific MediaWiki extension is installed already on the wiki to support iframes, so in principle one can "inject" any external website inside a wiki page. Probably specific MediaWiki extensions exist to link blog feeds. Let's first decide whether a blog is the most desirable alternative to increase users' interaction, though.

Max
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Hi Max,

Yes, I do need to connect via FTP using Dreamweaver. This is the info I need to set up a testing server:

Server model: (PHP MySQL, ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript, ASP.NET C#, ASP.NET VB, ColdFusion, JSP or None)
FTP Host:
FTP Host directory: (folder on the server mapped to site’s domain name)
Login:
Password:
URL prefix: (location of site's root folder on testing server)

The blog may not be the best idea. It really depends on what is of interest to users.

-Susan
choralia
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by choralia »

Our servers are based on the popular LAMP environment: Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP.

I'll configure a read-only FTP access to one of our mirrors, and I'll provide the remaining information to you via PM.

Max
vaarky
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by vaarky »

Thanks for your enthusiasm. With regard to a blog, I think fresh content would be very welcome, but I'm not convinced that it needs to be in blog format necessarily. We have these forums, and I'm wondering if it can be done within this structure, maybe a section under General Discussions, rather than fracturing things so there's an additional place for people to check. Especially if combining this with a "Hot Topics in the Forums" window on the main CPDL.org page. This will also provide a bit of an indicator about the nature of user interest before deciding about bigger steps. Would posting new content here in the forums be workable?
spartlan
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by spartlan »

Hi Vaarky, the forums could certainly be a place for a new blog-like forum featuring fresh content. As for what that content should be, I was wondering if we can use data to gauge interest. Are there site stats available showing which pages/forums are most visited, length of time spent, etc?

Maybe if we came up with a list of suggested topics we could ask users to rank them in terms of interest?
vaarky
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Re: greetings, and a question

Post by vaarky »

Max or one of the other folks can best answer about stats, and surveying users is also a possibility. Since we don't push announcements often, we may want to work in some additional CPDL-related questions. I'm familiar with Google forms and would be glad to work on a survey together if you like.
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