New blog - call for volunteers

Question

From the discussion over on this post, and from discussions with regular contributors in chat etc., it looks like we have a yes to go ahead with a new blog.

Discussion on platform is split - so I'm open to suggestions from people who can implement/manage/run a platform that is secure enough for our purposes.

@Xander - you suggested you may be able to set it up, with @inv3nt3d helping. That would be really helpful. We probably want no more than 4 admins - that worked well previously - and a couple should probably be from the moderator team. I'm more than happy to be one again, but would like volunteers, as it can be a bit onerous chasing folks for content :-)

SE have said they can provide the data dump from the existing blog, so we can start off from that content.

Then we just need contributors and editors.

So please leave posts below with what role you may be interested in, and if it is as a contributor, your thoughts for some topics you'd like to cover .

Answer 1

I am willing to help in whatever way necessary. I hosted my own technology-centric blog for a few years, but closed it down due to no traffic and the cost associated with it. I haven't written about security outside of SE, but I do have some chops as far as producing content is concerned (in my own opinion, the traffic on my personal blog may indicate otherwise...)

That being said, I would be more than happy to moderate/edit/produce content.

As far as the content that I could produce:

• Something along the lines of explaining technical concepts in a way the general public could understand,
• Opinion pieces concerning the on-goings in the InfoSec community
• I think would be neat to profile some of the members of this community. Ask how they got into InfoSec, what their areas of expertise are, whats in their toolbox, maybe even a walk-through of their methods (depending on what exactly their area of expertise is)
• Features that are written weekly, even if its just something as simple as a "This week in InfoSec", would be a fantastic idea, and one that I'm absolutely willing to put the time into.

Also, I am more than happy to assist setting up the Wordpress site. Just let me know, either on here, or if you would like somewhere to directly contact me, that can be easily arranged.

Answer 2

I'm willing to help with edits/content. Since we want to continue on Wordpress I just can't be an admin, I have absolutely zero experience with the admin of a Wordpress site. And very little experience with PHP. (But see the second part of the post for the git idea.)

I did write a handful (4-5) of seminars on GnuPG and another handful (2-3) about fiddling with memory (more-or-less reverse engineering). That said, I'm not a native speaker. I do use English as my main language for the past decade but sometimes I may still miss a subjective meaning of a phrase. On the other hand, I do not have bad English habits (e.g. your vs. you're) because I did not grow up in an English speaking country.

Should be good enough for an editor.

Git

I'll take Andre Borie's point about github pages and extend it here.

Two things about Wordpress worry me:

1. We will likely need to create a new set of users and then link them to sec.SE in some way. So we will know who a person on the blog is on sec.SE.

2. Wordpress is famous for screwing up page revisions, and searching who exactly performed an edit is painful.

Both of these things can be solved by using a github repository. We already have an official field where we can add the link between SE and gihub (OK, it is on the SO profile but that is still SE), therefore we have the link between accounts.

The revision control of a git repo will allow us to know exactly when something was edited and by whom. Moreover, we can allow specific people (the editors) to be in charge of approving pull requests.

This isn't to say that the presentation of the blog cannot be on Wordpress, it only means that Wordpress should not be responsible for authenticating the contributors or keeping the post history. Instead, the bulk of work is managed in the git repository.

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My personal blog takes its content from a git repository (it still has a database, but that only keeps more volatile things). Yet, that blog runs on Django (python), so it has an easy integration with git.

Answer 3

Sorry for completely missing this post for 12 days, but yes, I am still interested in assisting and willing to commit time to it.

Personally, I'm happy enough with Wordpress. It's what we used here, it's what I use for my personal blogs, and I've migrated blogs to it before. In its current form with auto-updates, its secure enough IMO as long as the plug-ins are carefully controlled. If the majority can demonstrate that another platform can significantly better meet our needs, however, I'm happy to work with something else as well.