[ros-dev] Portal Site (A little long)

[Rick Langschultz]

I know I haven't really contributed much/or any code to the ReactOS project
but I think that the voting portion of the decisions should be online based.
If ReactOS provided a portal site for developers, contributers, and testers
the ReactOS project would be more likely to retain votes partially because
email and IRC are not always accessible on machines, or can often times fail
to transmit. There is no telling when I get disconnected from IRC because of
some of the programs I run on my personal computer. I also feel that ReactOS
is doing a fine job with the development but a portal system that uses
authentication would provide a more than stable platform for developing
ideas and knowledge that will drive it's development force.

Here is what I propose:

Change the overall background of the site. Add a portal system that allows
users to login and logoff when they see fit. Because portals are becoming
increasingly popular with businesses ReactOS can use an Access Control
Manager to decide what specific users can do on the portal. It would also
allow users to upload debug reports into a database or a file that can be
viewed or downloaded.

A driver resource directive can also be added for testing. With a small or
large forum site to allow users to post comments and reports of what they
have found to work, and not work for them. Then the information can be
mailed out in the form of "There is a new patch for the via (insert model
number here) chipset please download it". This would accomplish many things,
greater productivity in email reading. There is often times I can not sit
and read 300 emails about a debug report.

A personal inventory system: when users set up ReactOS on their personal
machines they can click on boxes to allow personalized profiles to be shared
about their test machines. If a user uses a 64bit machine with 256mb of ram
and a via (something) chipset customized emails with driver updates and
patches can be sent to them.

Sure the site is great not. I just think it could be better given what other
operating system companies employ on their respective websites.

Tell me what you all think. I would love to hear the feedback on this one!!!

If you would like I could start on such a site and donate it as part of the
Tax free project that you are working on. It would have to be html, php, and
mysql or xml files. Thanks for reading this!!!