MCS:Site

Overview

Mozilla Community Website is a set of webtools that should help setting up a new website.

The components are prepared in Logo style - you can choose any set of components and combine it with any other set of components. For example, you may use forum system according to MCS, but use your own wiki.

MCS should deliver full experience by using MCS Installer, but allow users to compose component on their own.

Basic components are:

CMS

CMS (Content Management System) is a core of each website. It's the place for static pages, articles, news, blog posts, account system etc.

WordPress is a blog software. Wikipedia has some info about WordPress on the WordPress article on Wikipedia

Two different kinds of CMS's are offered:

Wordpress

WordPress is an open source leading blogging system that can be used to easily set up a modern, easy to use website platform. With WordPress users can maintain a simple website with intuitive admin panel, write news, manage static websites and accounts, provide RSS feeds and use extensions to add new features. This option is targeted at users working on simple community websites.

Drupal

Drupal is a powerful CMS system that offers more features for the cost of simplicity. Users can use Drupal to set up a website with almost any component of a website possible - forums, news platforms, calendars, galleries etc. Drupal offers much more possibilities but requires a bit more experience and maintainence. This option is targeted at users working on major community portals.

MCS is not compatible with Drupal 7.x!

Forum

Forum is a center piece of the ecosystem of the community. Place where people brainstorm ideas, meet, talk about the topics covered by community. It is the vital part of each community system especially for newcomers.

MCS offers two different kinds of forums depending on your needs and scale of your project

phpBB

phpBB is the most popular forum system in the world. It's easy to use and intuitive and is widely used accross our current communities.

punBB

punBB is an option for those who find phpBB to slow. punBB has less features and extensions but is reported to be faster and more secure. At the moment we offer punBB as an alternative for those not satisfied with phpBB.

Wiki

Wiki is a central database of your community. Place where all ideas, papers, logs and drafts can be easily edited by the group of people.

MCS is offering MediaWiki as a wiki solution for community website.

Planet

Planet is an easy blog aggregator that can be used to present all blog activity in the scope of the project by either its members or media.

Planet is especially important for outsiders who want to stay in touch with the community and know what's going on beyond official news.

MCS is offering PlanetPlanet as a planet solution for community website.

Approach

The website should offer unified look across the tools thanks to Mozilla Community Theme and several features like Single Sign On and OpenID support.

On top of that MCS will provide set of extensions that will allow to customize the website according to usual needs of communities (forum Search-for-duplicates-before-send extension) and blending community website with Mozilla websites (SUMO box, MDC box etc).

Use of each of the component will be optional and community website maintainer will choose which one to enable depending on the target, scale and resources available in the community.

Licensing

We recommend using Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License v3.0 license for the whole content of your website, and MPL license for all code examples.

An example footer may look like this: "Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License v3.0 or any later version."