All posts in the topic looking into groupserver (Short link)
Summary
- There are 27 posts — by 7 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Richard Waid at Apr 02 21:05 UTC
Hi Deryk,
> for a while I have been looking for a project that is similar to
> google groups, I think that Groupserver might be that project. So far
> I really like what I see. very polished, very easy to use.
> congratulations!
Thanks, Deryk. It's great to hear positive feedback!
> I am involved with a medium size non-profit group with about 5000
> members around the world. We want a system for our groups that
> combine email lists and web functions, it looks like groupserver does
> this well.
This is exactly the kind of organisation we are building GroupServer
for. There are lots of web customisation features that are possible but
perhaps not obvious in what you have seen, so please ask.
> We now have a custom built php/mysql database that we manage all of
> our member data in. I'm wondering if we could configure groupserver
> to interact/interface with our existing database to get email
> addresses/profiles from. how difficult would this be? any suggestions
> on if this is possible. We have programmers that could implement it,
> are any of you available for hire to do this kind of work?
Yes, this is exactly the kind of customisation/integration that we do.
The feasibility of the specific project you are thinking about will
depend a lot on what you want to achieve. GroupServer interacts very
closely with user data. For example, each group can have its own email
delivery settings, involving different email addresses. Synchronisation
between GroupServer and other systems is however one of our strategic
goals. We are currently working on a rebuild of our user data sub-system
using a relational database, which will facilitate this.
hello,
for a while I have been looking for a project that is similar to google groups,
I think that Groupserver might be that project. So far I really like what I
see. very polished, very easy to use. congratulations!
I am involved with a medium size non-profit group with about 5000 members
around the world. We want a system for our groups that combine email lists and
web functions, it looks like groupserver does this well.
We now have a custom built php/mysql database that we manage all of our member
data in. I'm wondering if we could configure groupserver to interact/interface
with our existing database to get email addresses/profiles from. how difficult
would this be? any suggestions on if this is possible. We have programmers that
could implement it, are any of you available for hire to do this kind of work?
hello again,
I'm back from some travelling and looking into Groupserver again. So far
everything looks great. I have a few issues that I hope you can address.
1. On e-democracy.org it seems that in certain groups, such as minneapolis,
there are performance problems, pages take a while to load, as do editing
settings. I noticeded this also on onlinegroups.net. we are thinking of running
groupserver on our own server with about 100 lists, for about 2000 users, with
a medium amount of traffic. at what point will we run into performance
problems?
2. I am concerned at the lack of interest in what seems to be such a great
product. maybe it is just due to lack of marketing. This forum is very low
volume, looking at your groupserver website there are no active groups other
than the ones you directly sponsor (this could be because of your aggressive
pricing model)
3. the last release of groupserver is over a year ago, is it still in
development, when is version 1 coming out.
If we choose groupserver then we would love to help support improvements to the
codebase, either by additions we make, or by supporting your work on it.
Hi Deryk,
> 1. On e-democracy.org it seems that in certain groups, such as
> minneapolis, there are performance problems, pages take a while to
> load, as do editing settings. I noticeded this also on
> onlinegroups.net. we are thinking of running groupserver on our own
> server with about 100 lists, for about 2000 users, with a medium
> amount of traffic. at what point will we run into performance
> problems?
We are in the process of improving our measurement of trends in
page-load times. There are various factors that impact performance
temporarily and we are gradually identifying and eliminating them.
The server requirements for your site will depend on the sizes of your
groups, and on what you mean by "moderate" but this does not sound
busier than the E-Democracy.Org forums site. There are various factors
that determine server-load. The biggest factor, however, is currently
"deliveries", ie the number of posts multiplied by the number of
members, in a group. A large number of busy small groups is much less
demanding than a small number of busy large groups.
That said, we are currently working on the last two of a series of
infrastructure rebuilds that will significantly increase performance.
> 2. I am concerned at the lack of interest in what seems to be such a
> great product. maybe it is just due to lack of marketing. This forum
> is very low volume, looking at your groupserver website there are no
> active groups other than the ones you directly sponsor (this could be
> because of your aggressive pricing model)
Apart from E-Democracy.Org, most of the sites running on GroupServer are
not highly visible because they have mainly private groups. Most of the
development input has been in the form of funding from individual
clients, rather than community development. Yes, it is a great product,
but the released version is not yet sufficiently mature to support
widespread community development. The next release will be!
> 3. the last release of groupserver is over a year ago, is it still in
> development, when is version 1 coming out.
Yes, the version available for download on this site is out of date. We
are planning a new release this year, but do not have a firm date. If
you want to set up an installation, we could help you get the latest
version going. It is _vastly_ superior to the currently available one.
Let us know if you'd like more details about that.
> If we choose groupserver then we would love to help support
> improvements to the codebase, either by additions we make, or by
> supporting your work on it.
That's great. I'd be happy to discuss your planned project further.
with regards,
On Mon, 2007-06-11 at 17:47 +1200, Dan Randow wrote:
> > 1. On e-democracy.org it seems that in certain groups, such as
> > minneapolis, there are performance problems, pages take a while to
> > load, as do editing settings. I noticeded this also on
> > onlinegroups.net. we are thinking of running groupserver on our own
> > server with about 100 lists, for about 2000 users, with a medium
> > amount of traffic. at what point will we run into performance
> > problems?
Interesting I haven't noticed performance problems on the MPLS part of the
site,
apart from the members page which really needs a bit of a rebuild in terms of
limiting the
number of users per page. Just walking through it now, the time-to-first-byte
is 2s at the maximum
for me, even in larger pages (one had 48 posts). Having said that, we will
continue to
improve performance. We are working our way to a position where we can cache
things more heavily.
(actually, the group homepage for MPLS seems to take longer than it should, I
would need to profile
it to figure that one out)
Hi Dan -
I would be interested in downloading and testing out the _vastyl_
superior version of GroupServer. Is it available for checkout from a
version control repository?
Hi,
The performance issues were mainly in the admin pages, sometime pages
would take 10 seconds to load. The discussion forum pages were fine.
Michael,
> I would be interested in downloading and testing out the _vastyl_
> superior version of GroupServer. Is it available for checkout from a
> version control repository?
I wish I had better news, but unfortunately, it's not. We are planning
to package it into a new release but unfortunately can not provide an
ETA for that. It would be possible for us to assist you to get an
installation of your own working, but we'd be best to discuss how to
achieve that in the context of your particular requirements.
Further to this, even when GroupServer is available via a public
repository, that will only get us part-way there. The environment that
GroupServer requires is a large part of the challenge. The configuration
of PostgresQL, Apache, and Postfix (at least) are very specific and
critical to the installation. When we complete a release package for
GroupServer, it will include detailed documentation of this.
On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 04:45 +1200, Deryk Wenaus wrote:
> Dan,
>
> What database does groupserver run on?
Sorry, not Dan, but I'll chime in here. GroupServer runs on two
databases:
1) ZODB - Zope Object Database and
2) PostgreSQL
At the moment we are storing content, users and metadata for files in
the ZODB. In 2 weeks time we hope to have shifted the users to Postgres,
and the metadata for the files shortly after that. That will leave us
with just the content in the ZODB (which is what it excels at).
Hello ,
i am coming here after having received a notification from Deryk.
This is a very nice piece of software that you developed.
i was wondering how many people are working on this project ?
I don't know much about Python other then seeing a demo online. It gave me the
impression that Python enables you to develop quickly while picking your nose.
i guess if we were adopting this software and wanted to adapt it to our need ,
we would be required to learn python right ? are there any other options ? We
have at the moment a PHP/mysql online application that manages a member
directory. I would like to integrate our existing system with groupserver (for
instance: people would become members automatically of various groups in
groupserver according to specific criterias in our member data, some would
become admin for lists according to their staff position , people would
register through a different system, login/password would be stored in a ldap
server etc...). is that something that you think is reasonable ? do you provide
some kind of documentation for that kind of process ? Ideally , i would imagine
using PHP to interact with the back end of groupserver , tweaking the interface
a bit while letting groupserver talk to our mailing server.
thank you for your time and greetings from Germany
Bernard Spigolo
can i edit a post after it has been sent ?
Bernard
Bernard,
There are five people working on GroupServer, though not all full-time. We also
have some input into the requirements definition, interface design and
beta-testing processes from customers, and other members of the GroupServer
community.
Yes, some Python ability is required to customise GroupServer, but there is
much you can do by simply configuring it. This depends on your requirements.
Integration with LDAP, as well as with other applications is possible, but we
do not have any implementations of that, as yet. GroupServer always talks to a
mail server. It is closely integrated with Postfix. If you explain your
requirements more fully, we will be able to tell you more about what is
feasible.
with regards
hi Dan and Bernard,
I think a big issue for us is how we would integrate our members
database (mysql) with the groupserver setup. In a previous post
richard mentioned that you are in the process of migrating user data
to PostgreSQL. Would it be possible for us to add or remove users
from groups using our own php scripts, accessing the PostgreSQL
database directly? or is there another way to accomplish this?
On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 18:29 -0700, Deryk Wenaus wrote:
> hi Dan and Bernard,
>
> I think a big issue for us is how we would integrate our members
> database (mysql) with the groupserver setup. In a previous post
> richard mentioned that you are in the process of migrating user data
> to PostgreSQL. Would it be possible for us to add or remove users
> from groups using our own php scripts, accessing the PostgreSQL
> database directly? or is there another way to accomplish this?
Yes, that would be a possibility.
hello ,
i have another question. do you guys know Sympa ? if yes how would you compare
it with groupserver ? The more i use groupserver , and the more i appreciate
it.
As an admin I was trying to edit a user's email in groupserver but I couldn't.
Is there a way to do this?
Hi Deryk,
> As an admin I was trying to edit a user's email in groupserver but I
> couldn't. Is there a way to do this?
With ZMI (Zope management interface) access, yes you can. We have not
enabled this through the web interface as it is impossible to do this in
such a way that it could be used for nefarious purposes.
On Sat, 2007-06-16 at 04:51 +1200, Deryk Wenaus wrote:
> As an admin I was trying to edit a user's email in groupserver but I
couldn't.
> Is there a way to do this?
Not from the standard administration interface, but it is possible from
the underlying ZMI (it is stored in the "Properties" tab of the user in
the "Contacts" folder). There are plans to make it possible for an admin
to change a user's email address if — and only if — the email address is
"bouncing", but not in the general case as it introduces *H*U*G*E*
security holes.
Hi Bernard,
I'm glad you are enjoying GroupServer!
> i have another question. do you guys know Sympa ? if yes how would
> you compare it with groupserver ? The more i use groupserver , and
> the more i appreciate it.
I am not closely familiar with Sympa, but from a quick review, my
impression is that Sympa is a sophisticated email list server. It has a
SOAP interface, which is a strength. It has web-based administration,
and a shared document repository, but no web archives interface of its
own, so is often implemented with MHonArc.
GroupServer is also a sophisticated email mailing list server, and it
has a mature integrated web interface, offering core functionality more
ore less equally as well via both interfaces. The web interface is built
on an expandable framework that has capabilities well beyond online
conversations and file-sharing. Examples include the "chat" feature, and
the survey feature (not currently implemented on a public site, but in
active use in at least one private site). The online groups can be
integrated into regular website structure, content and presentation.
With customisation and development, there is significant potential for
expanded or specialised functionality. While there is no published API,
some functionality can be accessed using GroupServer's http interface.
And a variety of web services could quickly be made available.
Please, if you have corrections to or comments on any of these, please
post them.
hello Dan , thank you for taking the time to answer. i just got an email from someone who worked on sympa and who mentions that ZOPE is very greedy in ressources. i must also say that , by reading this article http://www.subzane.com/2006/08/21/why-zope-should-be-avoided/ that i am not very excited about Zope.
hey bernard, did you read the comments of that article, it doesn't seem like the guy who wrote the article was very well informed. plus, he started to delete comments on his own article. a few more articles I found: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/21/184222/896 http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/article.php/16229_3617276
On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 10:03 +1200, Bernard Spiegeleer wrote: > thank you for taking the time to answer. > i just got an email from someone who worked on sympa and who mentions > that ZOPE is very greedy in ressources. > > i must also say that , by reading this article > http://www.subzane.com/2006/08/21/why-zope-should-be-avoided/ that i am > not very excited about Zope. I'd have to say that I agree with *some* of that analysis. There is a lot of poor documentation. But then, comparing it with PHP is rather pointless, because PHP isn't a web framework as such, it's basically a language with significant web development features. (As opposed to Zope which is written in a *real* language). Does the Zope documentation suck? Yes. The community part of it is complete and utter rubbish. Not only does it have an active community, it is an expanding community, particularly when you consider that Plone is, in fact, Zope. I have no idea where he came up with the idea that most of the information is in German -- I've pretty much never come across any German information. I know there *is* an active German community, but I don't see it regularly. The very fact that he mentions writing code using forms and submit buttons suggests that he's about 3 years behind the state of play. The Zope Database ... well. Where do I start on that one. Suffice to say that basically *every* sentence is incorrect. We operate databases that regularly hit 4-6GB in size, I have *never* seen corruption, it's completely incorrect to talk about 'virtual files', if you remove a user the objects are still accessible and it's *totally* incorrect to talk about it being incompatible with new versions of Zope. There are a number of different backends for ZODB. As for installation... well, I personally find it extremely easy to install. You untar a file, run a script and visit it on port 8080. No amount of documentation can assist someone who doesn't seem to follow instructions. At *best* his analysis applies to Zope 2. That was state of the art for Zope about 3 years ago. If we were to do it all again would I still use Zope? Maybe, Maybe Not. There are a number of good python frameworks available now, and I would need to look at them hard. Having said that, Zope enabled us to go a long way in a short period of time. And Zope 3 is almost an entirely different world ... the parts of our code that are Zope 3 like are like night and day compared with the Zope 2 code. Even with the crappy documentation. One day I'll document why I like Zope 3, even though the documentation isn't fantastic (actually, the documentation for it *is* quite good now, it's just that isn't non-obvious as to where it's documented :)). Would I use PHP, ever? No.
I just want to add to this ... do I find Zope frustrating at times? Yes.
But I have never found a system that I *didn't* find frustrating at
times.
So knowing what you know now. If you had to start over and build this
the way you wanted would you use zope?
Hi, this is my first post while I await for someone to respond to my request
for an installation package. I'm just walking around looking at the features
and one question that comes to mind is what sort of platform is this site
running on top off? I'm likely to end up installing on 1 or 2 DELL 2950
systems with 8GB of RAM that are already moderately loaded. One supporting a
couple dozen Apache Vhosts, a dozen CVS and SVN repositories, and FTP. So I'm
wondering about performance issues. I'm guessing that potentially several dozen
simulataneous users of this product would be added on.
It should be fine on that configuration. Obviously it depends exactly what your load will be, but we've certainly run it on pretty modest hardware before. The upcoming release (yes, it's coming!) is a lot faster than the previous release, and the previous release wasn't that bad. Will keep you posted on when the release will be made, but it shouldn't be too far away now. We will probably be looking for a few pre-release testers in GroupServer Devel soon: http://groupserver.org/groups/development Best regards, Richard Waid Technical Lead http://onlinegroups.net