Physics Overflow is almost ready for public beta!

Question

Looking at the road map it seems that most of the things and tasks listed there are either [DONE] or deferred to [LATER] by now. So to me it seems it is time to consider starting the Public Beta of PhysicsOverflow now :-).

The things we still need to finish should be doable within a few days and I try to summarize them here (help, additions, and corrections are welcome):

From the Road Map:

• Disallow robots to search post revisions
• Let search engines in 
• Finish and update the FAQ (thank for the good work to Dimension10). From a short look it seems the following sections should still be expanded a bit
  - What is PhysicsOverflow (1)
  - How do I edit a post
  - The Navigation bar (14)
  - The Moderation Queues (15), if this does not have the same purpose as the description closing etc
  - Glossary of PhysicsOverflow (19). I am not quite sure about what kind of things should be listed there ?
• Set the landing page to main (Q&A)
• Set the permissions to the public beta values
• Correct users with too long user names

Reconsider site representation issues
if needed, such as

• the custom texts on the ask form, answer form, comment form
• custom messages for new users
• the standard mail sent to newly registered users
• Prepare and plan the promotion of PhysicsOverflow as discussed for example here.

So, after communicating with Polarkernel, it seems feasible to start the Public Beta of PhysicsOverflow next week at Midnight 0000 hours 4 April 2014 (Fri) [CEST]. Is this okay with everybody? 

Comments

I wanted to put the last paragraph into a gray box to highlight it, but with the simplified editor and the reduces number of accessible styles I can no longer figure out how to do this ... :-/

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@Dilaton I have done it for you; just click the blockquote (closed inverted commas") button. I have also made some more minor edits as this is a huge milestone post for Physics Overflow (thanks for writing it)! 

Also, according to me, faq1 and faq8 are ok, at least for now. faq19 can be developed later on. My intention is for defining terms and abbreviation that we may often use while discussing the site on meta, e.g. "meta", "POT", "TP.SE", "PO", "TRF""PhO", "MO", "Q&A", "Reviews", "Refreeing", "Tags", "Categories", "Super-Administrator", "Administrator", "Expert", "Editor", "plugin", "Q2A", "SE", "P.SE", "PSE", "TPSE", "the TRF thread", "the blog", "the wiki", and so on.       

Also, even Google and search engines should not be allowed to access post revisions! If they do, it leads to significant duplicated content, which is bad for Search Engine Optimisation. I will fix this in the post now.     

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I think the logo could do with having a "beta" attached to it, something similar to chemistry.se

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Yes, I was thinking too that maybe we should have a sign that the site is still in a beta state, when we go public ...

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BTW we should not forget announcing PhysicsOverflow on the meta of MathOverflow ;-)

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@physicsnewbie That's a great idea, but it may give the impression to ex-TP users that the site will, like TP.SE, go down if it doesn't attract too much of an audience. This is obviously not true. 

It could be a good idea, to instead of just writing "beta", we could give it something like 

\(\mathsf{beta} =\pm \iint\ldots\int\beta\mbox{ }\delta\psi \mbox{d}x\mbox{ } \delta\psi \mbox{d}x\ldots\delta\psi \mbox{d}x \)

(beta functions) 

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Actually, now that I think about it, it might be possible to bring some of the NavBar Options to the logo. Wait, I'll try to do this later today... 

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Nope, I tried it, but it isn't possible. 

I think that, this is because the logo is actually rendered as a raster image once the site loads, and each time the zoom setting is changed. So the href feature in vector images cannot be used, unfortunately : (

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@dimension10 Maybe that's the problem: we're trying to copy the format of the development of TP.SE, without asking if we have to. Physics overflow is now public, and that's all there is to it, isn't it? No need to give it a "public beta" status.

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@physicsnewbie No, the public beta is called so because 

• We still don't know how fast users are going to gain reputation, so the reputation values aren't confirmed till the end of the public beta. 
• The reviews section isn't done yet. Speaking of which I have an idea for local contribution hosting, I will post about it later. 
• Not all questions have been imported yet.   

Answer 1

I think that the TP.SE question Public beta: Attracting users? is also relevant to us. 

In my opinion, there are some plug-ins (a job for polarkernel) remaining to be installed as soon as possible, such as 

• [NO] SEO Links (discussion)  
• [DONE] Q2A Webmasters  
• [DONE] Warn On Leave   
• [DONE] Comment2Answer  
• [DONE] Q2A Embed Media
• [DONE] Q2A Featured Questions  
• [LATER] Image Manager  

These plug-ins are good to have, and the first one is almost a necessity. I wonder why Q2A does not incorporate it in it's core. 

The second one gives admins some great tools to see how well the site is faring at a glance. It could even be made public I hope.  

Additionally, we also may want to decide on solutions for having a chat room. That somehow reminds me; we may also consider retaining the tpproposal blog as a (hopefully $\infty$) life-long blog for Physics Overflow. The chat room; I'm not sure if we should wait for the public beta to start or not, but I just thought of reminding everyone about it.   

From the things you have listed the following need to be done by 0000 hours, [CEST]      

• Sunday:
  • [DONE] Edit the site description. (discussion)

• Tuesday:
  • We should invite everyone listed in the blog post.   
• Wednesday: 
  • [DONE] I (and anyone else who is interested) need to finish [DONE] 14 and [DONE] 15 of the FAQ. 
  • [DONE] The long users need to be corrected (I will do this). 
  • [DONE] The main page needs to be set to Q&A. (a job for polarkernel)  
• Thursday:  
  • [DONE] Change permissions 
  • [DONE] Edit robots.txt; allowing / but disallowing /revisions and /revisions/ (a job for polarkernel and dimension10)
  • [DONE] Changing all admin-added links (in the sidebar, navbar, etc.)  
  • [DONE] Post a welcome to public beta
  • [DONE] Post a post on an intro to the reviewing section 
  • [DONE; to be expanded] Post a "Help Promote Physics Overflow" post. 
  • [TO BE DONE ASAP] Set your alarm clocks right for 2300 GMT/UCT(Wed), 0000 CEST, 0430 IST, 0700 ECST, 1900 (Wed) EAST, or 1600 (Wed) WAST. 
  • (additions by <polarkernel>)
  • [DONE] Shut the site down for proper movement
  • [DONE] Move the site to the root http://www.physicsoverflow.org/
  • [DONE] Restart the site, accessible only for super-administrators.
  • [DONE] Open the new site and going online.
  • [DONE] Open the champagne and propose a toast to this great team!
  • (additions by </polarkernel>)
• Saturday 
  • [DONE] Announce on the TRF thread
  • Dilaton will write a guest post on TRF 
  • [DONE] Announce on the blog
  • [DONE] Post on Quora.  
  • [DONE] Post on  meta.MO. 
  • On the blog, user10001 (dushya) had the idea of promoting the site to various physicists in the world.       

Comments

Great!! Thank you for your migration plan. I will test these plugins on my local server and then install all of them today. I hope, all this beta-code will run without interferences after such a short testing time. Please add the following items at the end of your list on Thursday (all done by me):

• Edit and install HTTP 301 redirect on old URL (just to be sure)
• Shut the site down for proper movement
• Move the site to the root http://www.physicsoverflow.org/
• Restart the site, accessible only for super-administrators.
• Open the new site and going online.
• Open the champagne and propose a toast to this great team!

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@dimension10, @Dilaton Should work now. I accidently did a change on this site instead on my local site. Sorry

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The main page is set to Q&A. Can be revoked very easy if required.

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Not that easy, I would have to create a new page type. Actually, there are pages like the following, that I can make landing pages:

main                  Recent questions and answers in Q&A
qa                    Recent questions and answers
questions             Recent questions
activity              Recent activity    
activity/main         Recent activity in Q&A
activity/meta         Recent activity in Meta
questions             Recent questions
questions?sort=votes  Highest voted questions  (and similar sorts)

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@dilaton best not to pester Lubos over this, remembering he gave up space on his blog for the site, which we should all be grateful for. Let's all thank him under the thread on his site, now that the site is launched

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Posting a guest post on TRF seems no longer realistic...
But we have at least shortly announced it on the theoretical physics forums thread Lumo installed for us.

I have just aske quid again in a MO chat room if he personally thinks we could write a short announcement in their meta. I am working on a text now.

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Now I have announced PhysicsOverflow on the meta of MathOverflow :-)