What works for us and IT lessons learned

Transcription

1 What works for us and IT lessons learned Ģirts Ziemelis Latvian Country Tourism Association Lauku Ceļotājs , Kernaves Bajoryne International Workshop on ICT in Rural Tourism

2 LC IT Project History 1993 clean start no IT structure, no real RT knowledge 1995 MS Access based reservation system 1998 First static version of web site hosted by ISP 2000 Online connection to internet, own server, dynamic accommodation information web site 2002 Shift to use only OS server side tools and environments Green Certificate, web mail, CRM, back office tools, etc ORTIS information and reservation system Quality system Build your website CMS for accommodation owners learn.traveller.lv - RT training and research materials Information system enhancements (worth seeing, countryside bounty, tours, maps, etc.)

3 Our approach to software Build key software systems: Information and reservation system Specialized systems (payments, quality) Try to use existing open source tools, if they fit Use commercial software otherwise

4 Development vs. Integration vs Commercial

5 Back Office Software Linux everywhere File server (Mirrored disks and Samba) Mail server (Postfix+spamassasin+amavis) Mysql database Backup (rdiff-backup) Apache web server (with php support) Tomcat servlet container (java)

6 Back Office Software lessons learned Linux is perfect on the server side stable, fast and flexible Completelly free, unless support needed (not likelly) It is possible to host web server using office connection then dedicated server hosting (cheap optical office connections available) Selecting best package from available alternatives takes time (rdiff-backup vs Amanda vs rsync vs...) Tip use mainstream server oriented distributions (Ubuntu server, debian, suse, etc ). Some distributions are NOT server oriented and/or take too much time to maintain (gentoo, etc) Consider open source software license when selecting packages (Mysql vs PostgreSQL) Alternative cloud. Might cost less, but tradeof - flexibility

7 Front Office Software Windows desktop Office software (LibreOffice for commercial, MS Office for projects and pivot tables) Commercial accounting system Commercial mapping software Adobe web design/publishing software, but some good experience with open source Scribus

8 Front Office Software - lessons learned Libre/OpenOffice can be used for commercial documents and spreadsheets For simple desktop publishing needs Scribus, Inkscape and Gimp work OK There is no alternative to professional desktop publishing (Abobe Suite) EU project spreadsheets,pp presentations and pivot tables still make MS Office mandatory Several softwares Windows only (Accounting, LV maps, etc) Virtualization can resolve some of the Linux desktop pains (VirtualBox/VMWare), but not all.

9 Marketing Software Mailing list manager (currently DADA Mail, but phplist seems actually better) Web statistics (Google analytics + awstats) Social networks (Facebook & Twitter - only links on our page) Accommodation owner site Build your own site (custom built CMS)

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11 Marketing Software - lessons learned Mailing list managers work very well do not use mails with BCC. Option to unsubscribe from your mailing list is very important. Very carefully select technologies, when building custom software. Wrong selection will cost in maintenance. Local web statistics package will complement google analytics (pages not found, file downloads, etc) Social networks how to deal with them?

12 Training and research publications Learning materials/research documents on macies.celotajs.lv published as: PDF documents exported from LibreOffice/MS Office PDF documents created by designer (Adobe InDesign) Docbook generated documents Printed publications on PDF documents created by designer (Adobe InDesign) Documents published using Flash page flip engine

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14 Publication - lessons learned Publication and research materials draw a lot of search engine traffic (lots of keywords and publications are valued high, when indexed by search engines) Most (all) page flip engines cost money. Only exception we found older version of MegaZine. Drawback it is not as nice and feature complete as newer versions. Docbook in theory - nice way to generate multi format documents from single source (HTML chunked, HTML single page, PDF, MS word, OpenDocument, ebook, etc). In practice too much author training required and result is average. Tip - keep it as simple as possible nice MS Word/LibreOffice template will cover most cases. Remember documents prepared as design in desktop publishing packages, will not be editable in house.

15 Core Software (ORTIS) Custom built using Java and open source libs Tomcat servlet container Mysql database Hibernate, Spring and Wicket frameworks Open source libraries (Jasper reports, PDF generation, etc) Integrates Google Maps api Uses PHP picture gallery (to be replaced) Integrates local payment system

16 ORTIS System

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18 Development lessons learned Outsourcing development tasks speeds up process a lot, but makes in house maintenance harder. Be carefull, when selecting cutting edge technologies for new projects. Old parts of the system must still be maintained, but resources are limited. Try to use existing open source libraries and modules instead of developing your own it will save time documenting and testing parts of the system. Using mainstream tools and languages is prefferable easier to find developers and smaller chance of going out of fashion and dissapearing.

19 Thank you! Contact me: Mail: Skype: girts.ziemelis