SoC cross site publication

(Return to the main idea page for the Google Summer of Code)

Overview

Develop an Alerting and Cross Site Publication API that can be used among trusted sites. There would be two modes which can both be enabled or not (i: Peer to Peer, ii: Hub based distribution)

Sites would need to subscribe to remote sites (Peers) and be approved. They would have the ability to query the remote sites for the types of alerts or publishing services available. Source site would need to approve all requests unless alert service was setup as public.

Each alert or publish event would have a number of rules once an update is available. The Rules need to be flexible or extendable but initially for alerts, it may be to publish the alert on the site in an alert area, or send an email to the site admin. Option to be published automatic or moderated per source. So I may want to publish alerts from Geeklog.net automatically but moderate them from other sites I have setup.

Use Cases

- Geeklog.net setup as hub where security updates can be broadcasted to all subscribing sites.
- Plugin Developers can use the service to send out update notices. The plugin Editor could pull developer sites and request the latest version
- A ring of community sites may want to send out lost-pet alerts or crime alerts.
- Service could be used to push spam site updates to a hub and then subscribers get updates automatically

Flexible rules or options will make this a more valuable service.

- Announcements on siteA are picked up by SiteB and published to Topic ABC.
  The SiteB's story indicates that it was originally published on SiteA by John Hanover.
- Announcements on SiteA are picked up by SiteC.
  An email alert is sent to site Admin to approve before publishing.

More details or ideas

Content could be pulled from remote site but cached with a configurable expiry age. Source site can at any time send out an update event which clears the cache.

Content can also be setup to be published and saved locally on the remote site. The source site can still send out an update event but admin would need to approve update. This may be usefull for GL community sites to share announcements and have then published automatically on their local sites.