Boat Database - Technical Help Needed

[oldgregg]

Hi everyone

Most of you will know that Dave @JanetAnne has taken on the Boat Database following Craig's sad passing.

I've been involved for quite a long time behind the scenes to work out what is needed to take the database forwards, and it was immediately apparent that the only feasible solution was to re-platform the database.

Much of the rest of this is aimed at a more technical audience, and I'm hoping someone might have the skills / experience to help spread the load.

Those of you with some technical knowledge will know that the existing site includes MediaWiki in the tech stack, however you may not realise that 90% of the site's functionality is bolted onto the side as essentially a proprietary application which isn't content managed. MediaWiki is a bit of a red herring, essentially.

In order to take the site forward so that it can be updated an maintained by a broader team of people, the data has to be taken out of the existing proprietary database, structured in a way so that it can be imported and then moved into a suitable CMS.

I have done a lot of the work to extract the data, cleansed a fair bit of it with help from others, and worked out an architecture and started to rebuild the site using the popular open-source CMS Drupal.

My main issue is time. This thing has eaten a lot of it and it's going to need quite a lot more to get to completion - That is a boat database which can be maintained, updated and moderated by others.

I have a very busy day job which demands a lot from me and which at times feels pretty much impossible, thanks to our good friends in the world of Private Equity, who take profitable businesses then remove all of the costly skills and experience inefficiencies and replace with people in another country who have no hope of doing the job, but look great on a balance sheet for a potential buyer. And the spreadsheet never lies, right?

Time is therefore not on my side, I have spent far too long on this with not enough to show and I really need to progress it so that the database continues to be of use to the boating world. 

If you have experience with Drupal or a similar enterprise CMS at a commercial level (Wordpress really isn't up to the job for this type of work, plus in my experience it gets hacked more than TicketMaster ) then I would love to hear from you.

[ZimbiIV]

Sorry but if you do not translate that to english, I cannot help.

paul

[Bikertov]

I've used Craft CMS, but only as a user / site owner and not a developer 

Also done a fair bit of data cleansing over the years, so could help a bit there if needed ?

[dom]

I've used/customised/modified a lot of CMSes to enterprise level and I think they all suck equally. Drupal seems just as prone to hacking as anything else. I know someone who specialises in keeping Wordpress sites secure, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly appropriate choice in this case.

Personally, I'd get the data into a SQL database (so it's safe and can be passed to pretty much any developer if anything goes wrong) on a PHP server. You can then create REST endpoints for fetching data (using React.js or similar), build a complete UI in PHP, or interact with it via pretty much any means you like.

I'd be quite interested in getting involved and have fairly extensive web experience but, having been victim of a private equity takeover myself, am currently between jobs and my situation could change at short notice.

Is there any code, data or scoping documentation you could share via Github or similar, just to give a better idea of how much work is required? Or could you provide a small excerpt of data I could experiment with?

[Wussername]

Gulp!

I wish you well.

[Hylander]

Thank you so much for maintaining Graig's site.      This site and its contents are priceless.       I also wish you all the best and hope this can be sorted.      Reading your words all I can is,  what a world we live in now.

[oldgregg]

11 hours ago, dom said:

I've used/customised/modified a lot of CMSes to enterprise level and I think they all suck equally. 

Well, I don't think I'd argue with you there.... Drupal has its pain points (which is why I'm where I am to a certain extent).

The Drupal / Wordpress comparison comes from our experience of running some sites for Croydon Council. We did their main Drupal site (I think it's still running almost ten years later) and in the three years we had the support contract, it never had any downtime due to exploits. 

They also wanted a number of Wordpress sites, which we built for them and also had on the three year contract. Those things went down about once every two weeks. The world and his dog knew how to exploit Wordpress.

[oldgregg]

11 hours ago, dom said:

I'd be quite interested in getting involved and have fairly extensive web experience but, having been victim of a private equity takeover myself, am currently between jobs and my situation could change at short notice.

Is there any code, data or scoping documentation you could share via Github or similar, just to give a better idea of how much work is required? Or could you provide a small excerpt of data I could experiment with?

Okay, cool. Yeah I mean a fresh pair of eyes on it would be very useful and actually going the route you've suggested would be good in terms of avoiding a particular monolithic tech stack.

[JanetAnne]

Think I'm going to stick to planks and ribs.... 

Oldgregg has absolute total free range over the tecky stuff and, reading the above, I know why!

 

[catcouk]

This is a super worthy cause and I really wish I had the skills to help you out. I can just about use Access but you are clearly waaaay past that level of database. I wish you every success and cannot thank you enough for keeping this amazing source of knowledge going!

[Broads01]

My background and current work weapon of choice is SQL Server and more recently building .Net UIs (VBA before that). Unfortunately I've no experience in the software you're using and I've done very little web stuff but I wish you all the best. 

[Yarloh]

The database was a great resource and I'd be happy to help with this project if I can.

I run a small software company that develops web based applications and we have lots of experience of Linux, PHP, SQL etc.

I might be able to help with hosting as well.

It would be good to get some details on what you currently have, where you're at and where you'd like to be.

If you think I can help please do get in touch.

 

[oldgregg]

I just wanted to update this to say thank you to everyone who has responded. I've spoken with some of you already and will be contacting others shortly.

Things have been busy this month as the project we've been on for the last 18 months has to be delivered in the next couple of weeks. I'm hoping for a brief breather but a lot of other work has piled up.