New Forum Needed - Member Collaboration & Projects..?

reply to post by Scaleru


For a name if you don'e like The Netwerk, I was thinking one might research words from the olden days when skills were traded and collaborated, find an old word for an old and vibrant economic exchange, then resurrect it for the modern age. Barring that just make up a new word, like all the other web startups have done - something to do with building ideas by working together, something funky, playful and fun and inviting..

Curiosity got the better of me and I'm building the basics of the site now (including groups and restricted forums for a starting point). I'm considering on the first page to include popular projects, calculated by the amount of interest each has received. That, however, may be too limiting, directing too much attention on one or two projects, where a random project list may be a little bit more inclusive.

One of the main pages will also be a projects page (because I don't like the word group in this context), in which an image and basic description of the project can be displayed.

For a name just a thought but

The Latin word for Idea is Informatio, Informatio is defined as: concept, idea.

Informatio

it also describes something that is "in formation"...

The name is something we can consider later in the process. We should define the limitations of the website first, content, interactivity, etc, then make it pretty

Any suggestions for inclusions? Hopefully going to get something down in the next 30 mins to give you an idea of where I'm at. That, and I finish work then, and will be going home to sleep. Sleeeeeeeeep.

reply to post by Scaleru

I think it should have a cool factor for the projects, where people can vote them up and down, or make it so that those which gain the most attention get to the top for top consideration, without trashing any idea, because sometimes the best aren't recognized right away being something new.

Should be able to have a project workspace with a calendar and contacts directory. Skype functionality would be a good idea, because there's no other way to exchange the amount of content needed to make a project work unless you're actually talking with the other person or people.

Once you have a site then we just need about 10 projects to get things going... I'll have one coming up but it's not for a while while I'm still in product design mode.

Anything that enhances the community feeling and opportunities to collaborate, so the person who's leading the project will want a type of dashboard overview to track the project, and that functionality there is what will drive things in the running of the project towards a projected goal and realization, so somewhere you're going to want a kind of project design process...

A "what I need" in terms of help and assistance, list, would be attached to the project outline

Needed

Graphic design
Video editing
Drupal CMS Development
Musician
etc.

For launch, I would suggest getting it out there in the blogosphere and even hunting down projects and people.

A data base of available skills and abilities and a way of notifying people of interest in their services would also be needed.

This is like one step away from kickstarter and might even lead to some successful startups on top of all kinds of collaborative creative endeavors.

Good for you for taking this on, and I hope that ATS might at least add a new forum title for this kind of thing at some point.. it's not that big of a deal really since we're already a virtual community free to invent and do what we want, if only we had a space to articulate our ideas and bring together like minded people who are willing to take creative action to realize a definite purpose of some kind or another.

Best regards,

NAM

Well, I'm off to a slow start, but it's a start. The link is at the bottom of this post, and I will probably shift some of this information to the forums over there, just for ease of sorting through features etc. Currently, I have an open forum set up, as well as a basic group system. I've added a test group so far, but there is no overall exciting functionality yet.

I am planning to smooth out one more thing today (purely visual) and continue work again tomorrow.

In so far as an upvote/downvote, do you think a star rating system would be a little more indicative of the overall view of the public? Something to think about.

Skin can be changed, though this one is compatible with smart devices as well as PCs. Background image will have to change of course, as well as logos etc. The front page can come with a slideshow, but that's something to look at later.

[URL=http://www.sjvellenga.com/collaborate]www.sjvellenga.com/collaborate[ÚRL]

Just a quick note before I go: On the project list page, the logo will be printed inline with the description text. I don't have time to apply the necessary CSS today, so something to add to the list tomorrow.

Time for sleeeeeeeeeep.

Edit to add:
Another note: It appears some parts of the site are broken or half-functioning to anonymous users at the moment. Will look into it tomorrow

Good effort/start and forget the last name I suggested via U2U.

I have a little time tonight to get a few things out of the way, but tomorrow I won't be online. The wife is sick and needs me to stay home to take care of the baby. The next day, however, things will be back to normal, so I am hoping to get a bit more done then.

Edit to add:
Heh, fixed the forums. For some reason, I had an incompatible version of the group forum installed. Silly me. Planning to get a little work done on profiles and call it a night.


Edit to add again:
I've incorporated some basic profile information just to get the ball rolling. These are visible to registered users only at this stage. Feel free to make an account and have a poke around. The site should be stable now. I'll leave it at that for today however, and won't get back to it for a day or two.

Alright, we're back. As for a name, I've been considering some form of "swarm". "swarmit.net" is available. I'll be doing a little more work today while I mull it over.

Just thought I'd update: I've hit a bit of a wall regarding contextual links for groups. No more time today, so I'll have to try and program a work-around for it tomorrow. Aside from that, progress is looking good. Still haven't had the desire to try and tackle private forums yet, but all in good time.

If anyone has a look, keep in mind that I haven't yet set the privacy options on anything, so some pages might look a little strange (with apparently missing content).

Alright, to anyone that is still paying attention. I've decided I want to go ahead with this project full-scale. I've set up some fresh domain space, which can be viewed at the link below. The site is called "SwarmIT", Swarm implying a massive scale, IT suggesting the field of computers (though that is not the only focus).

I am currently working on establishing a decent base for groups. At the moment, I'm working around private news feeds for groups, then will be adding a public functionality as well. In fact, I believe I've worked out how I'm going to do this while typing this... Excuse me...

Well, apparently I was wrong. Ah well. In any case, I'm going to soldier on.

Over the next week, I'm hoping to have a base down. This will include both groups and user profiles, as well as means to search/filter both. From there, I'm going to be pushing more advanced features, yet to be confirmed. Anyone interested, feel free to have a look around and let me know if you find any bugs. You are all welcome to create an account, though any content you create at this stage is likely to be removed in the future (due to testing restrictions).

Link: SwarmIT

This is not forgotten! I'm just struggling along with getting some of the features down.

I've redesigned the project page. Instead of a tabbed layout, I've gone with a contextual menu that appears when you are on a project page. Thus far, details, news (both public and private, tabbed here), and forums are just about ready to go. Still struggling with permissions on the public news articles, and about to start applying the group based forums to test that out.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to take a step back and work on the user profile system a little. It should be a bit easier to make some progress there, and I should have more to offer. I'm going embarrassingly slowly, but that should change soon enough.

reply to post by Scaleru


Looking good. For a layout, take a good look at indiegogo and kickstarter, although in this case people are "funding" the project with their time and skills often on deferment until the startup or release takes place.

Had a quick look, and indie looks like they're profiting off the whole concept:

Pricing

In terms of layout, they're not too far off what I'm hoping for in the final product. I obviously strive for more interactivity from anonymous users as well as members, but that's just the structure of the website I am trying to create.

I think I'm going to have to start making lists of features to include though, as I'm thinking of more and more things with every moment. I like the addition of facebook/twitter links, as well as photos of contributors, that indie provides, as well as the incentives that kickstarter offers. Hopefully I can get a feature list included into SwarmIT soon so I can start using the website to document its own creation...

Anyway, had enough for one day, so more tomorrow. Project forums are now functioning as they should, private to members only. Public news article for projects are now just that, public. Private news articles work as forum topics. Project forums are created when a project is created, I am just working on getting them into the right spot. The same applies to adding new information, setting it to create it in the right spot with minimal user interaction to get it there.

I didn't get around to any user profile creation today, but I think I'll put that on the back burner for another day anyway. Tomorrow I am planning to further develop the add content links on project pages to display only to members, as well as the aforementioned "feature list" for projects, which will have two views: one for members, displaying what has been completed and what hasn't, and one for the public, displaying what features are planned for the life of the project.

If I end up with more time, I may wander back to the user profile, but I have some thoughts on how to make that more efficient, so I may need more time that I have.

In any case, if anyone wanders over, try not to poke too many things. I'm not sure of the stability at the moment (it should be fine) or the permissions regarding content creation (which may allow users to create things in places they shouldn't).

Edit to add:
If anyone has a chance, can you let me know how your browser handles the site? I've noticed some peculiarities with IE, Firefox seems to run fine though.

Well, I've come to the conclusion that the modules I can find for Drupal aren't quite hitting the mark for my needs, so I'm off making my own ones now. Starting to put a little attention into CSS and styling as well. Pushing the social side of the site at the moment, getting friending working and news feeds working, which shouldn't take forever. Hoping to get a few more things out of the way today and get back into coding the development of the project side of things by the end of the week.

Alright, still going on this, though time is a little short at the moment. I need to ask the general public for help now. I am starting to work on fields of expertise etc, extra information that users can advertise about themselves or projects can request, which will become a searchable field later in development. I need suggestions.

The obvious ones are IT (split into sub categories, such as programming [list of languages], web design [list of cms or other related skills], graphics, audio, etc etc), but what about other fields? Mechanics? Engineering? Electronics? Mechatronics? The list could effectively go on forever, but I am hoping to narrow it down to a few hundred individual talents, separated into something comparable to a "skill tree" from a game.

Thoughts? Ideas? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Good idea.

reply to post by buddha


I am making a site myself It's at SwarmIT

Originally posted by Scaleru
reply to post by buddha

 

I am making a site myself

It's at SwarmIT

I see you have been very busy.
sine'd up to swarmit.
swar! add name for a group.
like a swarm of ants that deal with problems?

Dont burn your self of.
get good sleep.