Revamp extensions catalog by dog-fooding CKAN

[jqnatividad]

https://extensions.ckan.org is currently not maintained.

It uses GitHub pages and the editorial process is quite tedious, with minimum self-service (https://github.com/ckan/extensions.ckan.org).

Having maintained it in the past during my stint on the CKAN Steering Group, I created a prototype in 2017, revamping the extensions catalog by dog-fooding CKAN itself. For several reasons, the prototype was not released.

Coincident with the recent revamp/modernization of CKAN (both the website and the platform itself ), I think its high time the GH pages catalog is replaced with CKAN.

Consider:

• using ckanext-scheming to catalog not only extensions, but existing CKAN instances as well (and how they use the catalogued extensions), by creating several custom metadata schemes.
• using Organizations to catalog the extension developer's affiliation
• using ckanext-dcat to register the different metadata schemes with schema.org to increase discoverability (e.g. registering extensions as SoftwareApplications, CKAN instances as Websites, etc.) and to inform the design of the metadata schemas as well
• leveraging CKAN authorization and built-in workflow to allow the community to submit extensions/CKAN instances using a self-service model
• using social components like ckanext-discourse, ckanext-disqus, ckanext-datarequests, etc. to engender a more active discussion open to more non-technical users (who may not be comfortable with technical fora like GitHub, gitter, etc.). Doing so also showcases the extensions themselves in action.
• allow more storytelling by using extensions like ckanext-pages, ckanext-odata, etc.

Finally, it will be a great demonstration site for CKAN as far more than an "open data" publishing platform, as is the case with current, skeletal, plain-vanilla demo site.

[jqnatividad]

Perhaps, we can even include some logic in the extension cookiecutter to automagically check/register the extension and check for name collisions.

It can even serve as a way for a CKAN instance to check if an extension has been updated, and if there are any security advisories, acting like the Python Package Index (PyPi) on steroids.

[anuveyatsu]

@jqnatividad everything here sounds like a great idea 👍

[jqnatividad]

Thanks @anuveyatsu! Perhaps we can make it a joint effort?

[anuveyatsu]

Hi @jqnatividad I missed your last comment here. Note that we also have an awesome list of CKAN related stuff here which isn't really maintained but could be a good/flexible way of doing this sort of work (eg, it is easy to use git/github). It's basically a markdown document: https://github.com/ckan/awesome-ckan