BV dictionary
BV, BW, forum, wiki, otrs, html - you have absolutely no idea what all this means? Here are some answers for those who were not born with a laptop in their hands :-)
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BV - BeVolunteer
BeVolunteer is the name of this organisation. It was registered as non-profit association in Rennes, France, in November 2006 after a long history of volunteer evolution. As an official organisation we have our statutes and the Board of Directors and General Assembly as its official organs.
BW - BeWelcome
BeWelcome is a project to connect travellers with local people and to exchange hospitality. This is achieved through accomodating travellers, show them the city, meet for drinks, exchange experiences, make it easier for foreign people to find social connections in a new environment. BeWelcome addresses leisure and business travellers, exchange students and local communities. BeWelcome is currently the main project of BeVolunteer.
the forum
In the forum, people express themselves. If you have a great idea on how the world, or the website should run, that's the place to let everyone know. That's also the place where you will find what has already been discussed in the past, and possibly solved. Be sure to check if what you want to say has not already been thoroughly discussed before.
the wiki
You're in it. It's like a user manual that explains anything you need to know. The cool part is that any volunteer can write into it. So it is supposed to be a very up-to-date manual.
otrs (OTRS)
OTRS (Open source Ticket Request System) is a piece of software running here. The idea is to use a professional ticketing system to answer user questions and to quickly resolve problems. The offical OTRS site can be found here.
Trac
Trac is a project management system the developers use to keep track of bugs/feature requests/code changes/documentation,... It is composed of a bug tracker and a wiki. Most content can be read and changed by everybody. trac
BW-Rox
The software that powers the BeWelcome.org website is called BW-Rox. It is open source and released under the GPL 2 license.
php, html and co.
- ALPHA WebSite
- A website where run a specific version of the code of the bewelcome website, mature but not yet fully tested. Since this version can have bug and is connected to all or part of real data, to acces the ALPHA site, a password is required. Ask the SD coordinator for it.
- Server
- A system (computer, machine..) that stores and produces data that will be used by clients. For instance, in a shopping website, the database of available products and registered customers is stored on a server (usually a bunch of computers and harddrives), and the data is sent to the clients in form of documents in html format, that are dynamically created on the server. The programs that produce these html documents are often written in php, or other server-side languages.
- Client, client software, browser, user agent.
- The user's computer, that is connected to the server via a network (internet). For instance, when you use your web browser in a shopping website, then your local machine is called the client, and the web browser is the client software. The client gets files in different formats (html, css, javascript, multimedia), and uses that information to render viewable pages. The result can be different, depending on your browser.
- PHP
- PHP is the programming language used for the BeWelcome system (and for many other websites on the internet). It is available at php.net. PHP runs on the server, to dynamically produce webpages in html format, from raw data stored in a database. These webpages are sent to the users' client engines.
- HTML
- Hypertext markup language, the most common way to structure text on webpages (i. e. defining headlines, paragraphs), more info at Wikipedia.
- XHTML
- Extensible HyperText Markup Language, at first hand the same as HTML, but because XHTML needs to be wellformed it is more flexible and opens more options, more info at Wikipedia.
- XML
- Extensible Markup Language, could be called "the mother of all markup languages". The main idea is sharing structured data across different systems. Extensible means users are allowed to define their own tags. More info at [Wikipedia
- CSS
- Cascading Style Sheets, while (X)HTML is giving structure to data, CSS is defining the presentation (i. e. colors, fonts, size, position). More info at Wikipedia.
- Javascript
- In contrast to php, javascript is usually run on the client software, which means, in your web browser.
- GPL
- GNU General Public License, a very common free software license, more info at Wikipedia
- GNU
- An recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix", a free software, mass collaboration project, more info at Wikipedia
- SVN
- Subversion, a revision control system (the command line client tool for Subversion is named svn), more info at Wikipedia
MailMan
MailMan is a piece of Open Source software to manage various BeVolunteer and BeWelcome mailinglists.
Cross-network dictionary
This bit here attempts to clarify relationships between concepts used in HC and CS
- Abuse(BV/HC) - Safety(CS)
- Taking care of members' misuse of the service, be it in the real world or online
- Forum(BV/HC) - Groups(CS)
- CS does not have a forum but uses a group system built by Casey, resembling Tribe.net groups (an online community originally spawned in SF Bay Area where Casey had been active prior to CS)
- Leadership Team(CS)
- Shorthand: LT, often used by past CS volunteers on casual communications. Group of 12 people hand-picked by Casey to originally help out with site management tasks, then transformed into a Leadership Circle, later term changed to Leadership Team, with ultimate say on all CS matters and much more access on the site than a normal user. Old term: Admin
- Local Volunteer(BV/HC) - Ambassador(CS)
- Members who are active in their local area and actively try to create and enforce community spirit by organizing meetings or greeting new members. CS has 4 different types of Ambassadors each with different set of responsibilities (the higher you are in the hierarchy the more responsibility and access you have on the site, and Global Ambassadors can perform some of the tasks on couchsurfing admins were able to perform
- New Features(BV) - Brainstorm(CS)
- Since CS has no reliable cross-site communication and no established process in making new feature ideas by members or volunteers into a reality, the Brainstorm group is almost the only one where such ponderings happen (but often turns into bitterness due to lack of other well enough established places about things like organizational issues)
- Support Team(BV/HC) - Member Services(CS)
- Support team takes care of non-abuse issues members have within the network. On CS this includes areas such as Contact Us Questions (CUQ) or bug reporting.
- This article is a stub (Ébauche, esbozo, beginnetje, ..). You can help by expanding it.
