RodeWorks

So I show one of our faculty members the CommentPress article, and he loves it.  We are now working to implement a small test version with one of his spring classes, where they’ll be analyzing Shakespeare’s Hamlet and a Chekov play.  Here’s my installation model, and issues encountered so far:

1.  System-wise I’d like to secure the site behind Yale’s central authentication service (CAS), and even better find a way to integrate that with WordPress’ user authentication routines.  In concept it seems like it should be relatively easy.  In my scenario the user would authenticate through CAS and WordPress would capture their Yale NETID.  If the netid matches an existing user the system would auto-log them in — if it didn’t the system would check to see if the blog settings allow anyone to register themselves, and if so then auto create a user account for them.  Well the first problem is that WordPress doesn’t play very well with https addresses — but I’ve found a couple of ideas on how to resolve that and so will work through it.  And if I get that far I’m still looking for a Wordpress programmer to help with creating the CAS plug-in…

2.  I’d also like to establish the system using the multi-user version of Wordpress, also known as WordPress MU.  This would facilitate the future expansion for additional texts/scripts.  The multi-user version is nice, in that it facilitates the creation of a farm of blogs all sharing a common WordPress installation — makes updates, controlling security etc. much easier.  The only issue is that MU has some idiosyncrasies that make it different from WordPress.  Some themes and plug-ins don’t work (although in previous experiments I found most were OK) and it seems that it likes https even less than the main WordPress — but I haven’t given up yet!

3.  I’d also like to use the latest version of WordPress with as much security enabled as possible.  BUT CommentPress has some bug that is not allowing it work work with the latest WordPress.  It looks like a fix is on the way, so I think I’ll hold off and work on the WordPress https issue first:

CommentPress Unfortunately CommentPress 1.4 is not playing well with the latest version of WordPress (WP 2.3.1). In the meantime, things still run well in the 2.2 versions, which can be found here. Expect progress soon. — 11/5/07

So work continues!  It’ll sure be great once its all working!

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