Salam all,
Maybe some of you know Linux4arab.com, it is one of the old Arab sites about Linux. And it is continuing to provide Latest Linux News in Arabic, and latest News about Arab Lugs. Unfortunetly, The site does not have news about the Egyption LUG, and in my opinion, the Egyption LUG is one of best LUGs along with the Saudi one..

I would like to ask those who can give the time for it in this forum to volunteer time and efforts to feed Linux4Arab with News about the Egyption LUG, and I will be happy to have it posted :)

Beside that, I am looking for Expert Linux Users who are willing to help me running the site. I need News editors, FAQ Section maintainers, Review Section Maintainers, and so.. The site is a community site, and efforts put into it will help raise awarness in the Arab world about Linux and Open Source..

The site have a good number of visits, around 80 thousands last month, and a 100 thousands is expected this month..

Thank you all

Linux Egypt news are always published in the anouncement forum.

so instead of manualy entering the enteries twice I think the best thing to do would be to use an rss feed which can be hooked directly to Linux4arab, it would be a good idea for other LUGs to do this too.

good luck with the other tasks.

cheers,
Alaa

Wel.. Linux Egypt RSS feed is nice.. but it is not what I am asking about.. Linux Egypt site have alot of news going all the time, some of the news are not related directly to activities and programs held by Linux Egypt. What I would like is to have one box for all LUGs News in the Linux4Arab pages. not a Box for each LUG.. as anyhow each LUG have a Max 1-2 activites per month.. So having one Box is better.. I will create a section for LUG news once someone from Egypt is willing to take reporting the Egypt LUG news.. I will find someone for the Jordanian Group, and for the Saudi Group .. and little stepts at a time we will have all LUGs united in this effort..

It may be considered as a first Step for making a Arab LUG site (That is for Real)

>Wel.. Linux Egypt RSS feed is nice.. but it is not what I am asking about..
>Linux Egypt site have alot of news going all the time, some of the news
>are not related directly to activities and programs held by Linux Egypt.

sorry I don't understand what we are talking about here, can you give an example of a news thingie happening in Linux-Egypt not directly related to the activities and programs so I can understand what we are discussing??


> What I would like is to have one box for all LUGs News in the Linux4Arab
>pages. not a Box for each LUG.. as anyhow each LUG have a Max 1-2
>activites per month.. So having one Box is better..

sure and one box is possible, if each lug had a similar rss feed all you need is to agregate these feeds sorting by date not by feed.

if not then we certainly can come up with code that will inject the new rss headlines from the Linux-Egypt feed into your one box.

rss was specificaly made for needs like this, and it'll make life much easier.


>It may be considered as a first Step for making a Arab LUG site (That is for
>Real)

you may want to tell us about what you precieve are the goals of such a pan-ara lug, I know this was dicussed before on Arabeyes but I doubt Linux-Egypt members tracked the conversation.

cheers,
Alaa

BTW to clarify things, we are talking about http://www.linux4arab.com, there is no .org domain and the .net domain points at something else.

cheers,
Alaa

Originally posted by alaa
sorry I don't understand what we are talking about here, can you give an example of a news thingie happening in Linux-Egypt not directly related to the activities and programs so I can understand what we are discussing??


The Linux-Egypt main page have other Nwes beside the Linux-Egypt LUG News.. For example, there is an announcment about the Mozilla Contest, and news about the Saudi Event, and so.. Those news pieces are already posted in Linux4Arab .. and having them repeated is not a nice idea.. if you can give me an RSS file that contains only Linux-Egypt announcments I will be thankful. O do not want the RSS for the main page news. As some news are cross posted and that will cause duplication.

sure and one box is possible, if each lug had a similar rss feed all you need is to agregate these feeds sorting by date not by feed.

Not all LUGs use CMS, and not all LUGs have Sites in the first time.. So maybe the RSS file for all the LUG news can be hosted in Linux4Arab.

if not then we certainly can come up with code that will inject the new rss headlines from the Linux-Egypt feed into your one box.
rss was specificaly made for needs like this, and it'll make life much easier.

I agree.. Let's see if that is possible, to combine RSS feed with News Headlines from the site.

>It may be considered as a first Step for making a Arab LUG site (That is for
>Real)

you may want to tell us about what you precieve are the goals of such a pan-ara lug, I know this was dicussed before on Arabeyes but I doubt Linux-Egypt members tracked the conversation.

What I am talking about here is not related to Arabeyes. I had been off Arabeyes for about 6 months now. But for sure Arabeyes may share the same goals.

Sometime Ago, In Gitex, I met with the president of the LUG of Saudi Arabia, and with people from the LUG of Jeddah, and UAE, and me from Jordan. We talked about having joined efforts for an Arab LUG... such joint effort is for several reasons:
1- Arab Lugs can help each other, for example the Saudi LUG had been present in Gitex in Dubai for 2 years now.. And they helped organize the Arabization Workshop in Egypt 3 years ago.
2- Help starting LUGs in countries without LUGs or with fairly new LUGs, such as Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and so.. Other LUGs can help with simple things such as sharing experiences, documents, CDs and so.. Or even by actrual presence. (ie. an experienced LUG member from Jordan can go to Syria to help them with a Workshop, An experienced LUG member from Syria can go to Lebanon, Saudi to Bahrain, and so on)

3- (least important) is to have a site for the Arab LUGs.. The site will contain things like the LUG Howto Translated to Arabic, to help those who want to start LUGS.. Will contain documents, papers and so to support LUGS (University Flyers, addressed letters to university profs, addressed letters to a sponsor) and other papers that can be reused. And beside all that, to contain latest News from All LUGs inthe Arab world. So that LUGs are easier to find in the Internet, and Arabs moving from an arab country to another will be able to contact local LUGs ..

Strong LUGs may not really appreciate or understand how will joining effords will help.. But smaller LUGs such as the ones in most Arab world will be really helped by such effort..

Linux4Arab.com will not host such effort... But will gladly help with it.. and I will help with it personaly.

As for why Linux4arab is a.com not a .org or .net :) it is because when the domain was registered 6-7 years ago, the .coms were easier to get, and less expensive I think :)

Take Care.. and thanks for your interest.

>The Linux-Egypt main page have other Nwes beside the Linux-Egypt LUG
>News.. For example, there is an announcment about the Mozilla Contest,
>and news about the Saudi Event, and so.. Those news pieces are already
>posted in Linux4Arab .. and having them repeated is not a nice idea.. if you
>can give me an RSS file that contains only Linux-Egypt announcments I will
>be thankful. O do not want the RSS for the main page news. As some news
>are cross posted and that will cause duplication.

aaaahh I see what you mean.
I thought you said we had other newsworthy stuff going that is not reported on the anouncements forum, but what you meant was we have non newsworthy stuff going on the anouncements forum :-)

ok this is a real problem that hampers my rss feed idea, there are possible hacks around this like defrentiating between the two types of anouncments through some keyword or rating category, or maybe even splitting the anounecments forum, it certainly needs thinking about.

of course if all major Arabic GNU/Linux sites adopt rss the problem could be reduced.
so for instance if we had a good central site for news that our members actualy frequent, we could just inject their rss feed for generic arabic news like the mozilla contest and only submit Linux-Egypt news.

we are having a similar discussion about software releases, but this kind of complex path may lead to nothing getting done :-)

>Not all LUGs use CMS, and not all LUGs have Sites in the first time.. So
>maybe the RSS file for all the LUG news can be hosted in Linux4Arab.

the beauty of rss is it is simple enough that manualy editing it would not be a problem, or having a small form application, so even if a LUG had no forum or CMS it is still doable.

>I agree.. Let's see if that is possible, to combine RSS feed with News
>Headlines from the site.

it is trivial, you just tell us how you want the info delivered, say specify a certain object or a certain function prototype in whatever language you use on Linux4arab.
then it'll be left to us to give you a first implementation, we have loads of web programmers here, I'm sure they're all eager to do it.


>What I am talking about here is not related to Arabeyes. I had been off
>Arabeyes for about 6 months now. But for sure Arabeyes may share the
>same goals.

nope Arabeyes don't share these goals at all, in fact if I remember correctly the dicussion in Arabeyes ended with the conclusion that an intra-lug effort is a good idea but it is outside of Arabeyes' scope

anyways things are slow here until the exam period is over, but expect some nice results from our upcoming meeting.

cheers,
Alaa

So ??
It seems people have forgot this post, so I am pumbing it up.