EPICModernization

EPIC Modernization Requirements Document V 0.1

The Eclipse Plugin Central (EPIC) is a popular and successful resource for the Eclipse community. It lists over 1100 Eclipse based products and drives thousands of click-thrus per month to some of the top rated products. Unfortunately, EPIC is hosted on an older content management system (CMS), so it is difficult to maintain and update. Therefore, we are starting a project to modernize EPIC and re-host it on a more modern updated CMS.

This document is to capture and prioritize all of the requirements for a new EPIC. The goal is to finalize the requirement by the end of March and begin implementation shortly thereafter.

Below is a draft version of the document. We encourage people to submit their suggestions for this bugzilla entry. We will update the document based on the input from many sources.

Goals

• Dramatically increase the usability of through improved navigation and graphic design.
• Make it easier for solution providers to manage their product entries.
• Provide better linkage between EPIC site and the vendors’ update sites.
• Host EPIC on a new content management system.

Requirements

Navigation

• Tag Cloud
  • Need the ability to tag products and navigate via a tag cloud
  • Products should be able to have multiple tags and product owners should be able to select and define tags for their products.
• Markets and Categories
  • A Market is a special type of tag that identifies that type of offering, ex. Tools, Middleware (Runtime), RCP, Training/Consulting. This will allow the catelog to be customized to a specific set of technology. Overtime more Markets could be added.
  • A Category is a grouping within a Market that characterizes the features of offering, ex: GUI Builders, Testing Tools, Logging, etc.
  • A product needs to be able to be in multiple categories. O
  • PEN ITEM: Should we limit the number of categories to avoid potential abuse? I would suggest we limit to 3-5
  • OPEN ITEM: Can a product be in more than one market? I would suggest we limit to 1.

• Search and Filters
  • A user should be able to search for a product within a category, market or across the entire site.
  • Advanced search should allow a user to filter the search results. Filers should be available for license type, Eclipse version supported, date range on update

• Other Navigation
  • Allow cross linking to other similar products by the same vendor and/or category
  • Allow cross linking to Eclipse Live content

Management and Administration

• Remove the moderation queue for plugin / service listing updates.
• Host the click thru reports for member plugins on EPIC itself allowing for realtime data.
• Allow plugins to upload their plugin image icons directly to the server.

Social Networking

• Voting
  • We should allow a product to be voted up or down, similar to digg. Remove the vote 1-10 system in place now.
  • Need to allow people to add a 'vote' graphic onto their site.
  • Votes should age, so votes expire after ### days or categorize the votes by time to provide rankings for "this week"/"this month"/"this year" similar to the way YouTube and others social sites do.

• Reviews
  • Users should be able to add reviews for a product. Users must login before they can leave a review.

• Flag as Out of Date
  • A user should be able to flag a product as being out of date. The user would need to specify the reason. The flag will generate an e-mail to the product provider. The product provider can remove flags on their products. This allows the product provider to moderate their own content.
  • A product that has more than 5 out of date flags will be given lower priority in listing and visually be tagged with 'Out of date'.

Update Sites

• Integrate a p2-compatible catalog for the product listings and provide an electronic feed for that catalog
• Can a list of favorite products be used to aggregate a personal catalog for an individual

CMS Issues

• Current thinking is to host EPIC and Live on a single shared Drupal install.
• We should integrate sign-on with existing Buzilla accounts
• The current install of PostNuke places a large load on the database. We should be sending SELECT queries to the slave and INSERT/UPDATE queries to the master.

Support for Training and Service Providers

• Need to be able to search/tag by geography and expertise
• Training calendar for Eclipse public courses

Migration Requirements

• Plugin information should be migrated to new EPIC without requiring intervention from plugin owner.
• Username and password information should be migrated to the new site. We should try to delete any usernames that aren't being used.
  • (Gunnar) Q: Should EPIC get rid of it's own password storge and use the global Eclipse.org login?
  • (Gunnar) Support for additional authentication sources (eg. OpenID) should be added.

Naming

• We should consider referring to 'products' or 'projects' and not plugins, since a lot of the solutions listed on EPIC are not actual plugins.
• Should we rename Eclipse Plugin Central to something more generic; maybe Eclipse Solution Center?

Other Ideas

• I think it would be interesting to show what Eclipse projects are used in the different products.
• Should Eclipse Live and EPIC be merged into a single entity?