I've been quiet here since I've been working almost around the clock for the last two weeks with a few other people to get the new version of the PLJS website up. The old version, designed and maintained by Aras Mattis, was ambitious but featured what I believe to be the cardinal sin of web development: a content bottleneck at the position of webmaster. Aras wrote an ingeniuous system that used php to pull information from various flat text files to compile articles and introductions and the like. But it was idiosyncratic, and for anyone to submit new content, they would necessarily do it through him.

If the new PLJS site looks a little like lithchat, that's since it's using the same underlying framework, joomla!, though in a much, much cleaner install (with a great comments front end). Joomla! allows for a website where the dynamic content can be submitted by registered users. Any of a team of moderators can ok, edit, etc. the content from a web browser and publish the piece. No more editing flat files, etc.

Of course, this user-contributed schema has had little effect on lithchat—I still write 95% of the articles. But that could change. Over on PLJS.org, hopefully it will allow various LJSes to submit writeups of events and the like. Eventually, the site will also feature a forum, providing a chance for even more user-submitted content.

Furthermore, on PLJS.org you can read the PLJS article about kongresas. Enjoy!