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Welcome to the new blog
December 1st, 2008 in General by Chris Johnson
Welcome to the new blog. Over the coming weeks and months we hope to begin to use this as a more public place to comment and discuss projects and ideas. In addition, we are beginning to trial a new community back-end to the system, a bit like Facebook, with groups and profiles.
To get started, just sign up, then come back to this page and use the bar at the top (only visible if you’re logged in).
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shane said:
here’s some text from an email sent out regarding this new blog, which should give some background to the direction. People should also comment if you’d like to influence how the blog part of the site is developed.
message starts;
i wanted to get you thoughts on an idea which i think could bring together our online communication strands while widening our audience.
1. we’ve put the beginnings of a blog at ZCC based on software called wordpress, when working it will operate something like this example blog system http://transitionculture.org/2008/06/20/the-fascinating-story-of-a-viral-drum-break/
2. but we could add to this software to make it simulate facebooks features using http://buddypress.org/ which is an adaption of wordpress.
3. we could host the blog part of ZZC’s web site at http://www.zerocarbon.org (which we already own) and make it open to the rest of the town. this would be ZCC’s core tool for publicly visable communication but we can still have other ways of private communication (i.e. we’ll still have a free plan on basecamp).
4. we could add and widen the google map that john set up and integrate it into this blog
using zerocarbonbedford.org – widening the net would help generate more users, which is fundemental to creating critical mass otherwise these things end up being stagnant. it also becomes a seedbed and online presence for new local groups
budypress blog and social networking software – this would largely give us all the features and functionality that we enjoy under facebook and basecamp but make it visable to the public and be free instead of paid and private with basecamp. it will also be in house under our domains instead of external on the facebook domain. One of the big arguments for this idea is that the “user generate content” that would be generated on facebook would be generated on our site, driving people to our domains and creating a self feeding live energy for the site. I’ve heard this quote before
“users generating content on facebook is like redecorating a kitchen of a rented house, when many website owners own the house down the road”
not meant to be a dig at facebook but i do think that in-house versions of facebook will be the future.
if there are no objections to this email i will continue down this route.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Chris Johnson said:
Hi Chris,
it might be a good idea if we have this discussion on the blog?? what do you think? i’ve added a comment to the welcome post, which is basically an email i sent out to the ZCC steering group asking for direction on the blog.
One of the key suggestions that i’ve forgotten to mention (largely because i’ve not managed to get opinions directly about this issues) is the idea of putting the blog/social networking part of the ZCC site on the zerocarbonbedford.org web domain. it would operate in exactly the same way except it would be open to a wider group (i think there’s at least a couple more groups forming). i guess this won’t fundamentally change your work load as hopefully it’s as simple as adding the redirect to the domain name.
you said;
>I took a look, and only an administrator/owner of a basecamp area is allowed to export the XML file you mentioned.
i’ve put in a request to Clare at BBC and will pass the file straight on to you.
>As for the blog, it is in some kind of working form now.
great work Chris and very encouraging to see it working. i had a go on it. my first impressions where that it look quite easy to use. i posted a comment but it is waiting for moderation. i think we can skip moderation for now (i.e. add moderation only if and when we have problems). i couldn’t see how i could add a post??
> and included a small link at the bottom to sign up at the moment.
Yeah! would be good to have the “sign up” link in a more obvious place.
> Signing up isn’t necessary to comment though, as we discussed.
i think i must have communicated this badly to you; lets get people to sign up to add comments.
> I thought the BuddyPress thing looked great too, so I’ve installed that onto it too, and when you log in, you’ll notice a bar across the top of the blog to let you use it. Unfortunately, they haven’t implemented forums for groups yet, so we’d only be able to have one ‘thread’ per project on the wire (think Facebook wall) of the group, but it does provide for some flexibility in who gets emailed notifications etc.
it would be good for me to better understand this. i think we need to keep all the “posts” in one central place and perhaps having added forums would spread content too much. we’re only a small group.
> I’ve disabled the ability for every user to create personal blogs and ‘friends’, as I didn’t think this was functionality we were really looking fo
yeah! i agree it’s this over spreading of content.
> I’ll work on making some of these features more accessible from the main site now, and then the process of signing up and posting more intuitive, then finally a more unified/house style
magic!!!
thanks
Shane
December 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Chris Johnson said:
I’ve changed the moderation settings now to allow comments to show immediately, but there isn’t a way to only allow signed up users to comment at the moment (but I’ll check the plugins, someone might have made one to do this). The downside to hosting the social site on the other domain would be that everyone would have two sign in username/passwords, one for the blog, and one for that. The upside would be the wider network as you suggest.
–> For the blog <–
I’ve had to install a more complex version of WordPress to run the BuddyPress backend on here, so if we just want the simple blog, I’d like to revert back. The simpler version will still allow multiple contibutors, editors, and commenters, but it’s more easy to administer the backend (and train others to do so!)
–> For BuddyPress (on the other domain?) <–
With the current release it seems hard to control the amount of information divulged to the public on the BuddyPress system, and I guess most people wouldn’t be happy with their personal details going out to the internet, unless it was only their name. This has been a benefit of the slightly more controlled BaseCamp (despite the guest/guest account). It is possible to limit access to the entire site, in a similar way to BaseCamp, but to allow users to sign up for their own account, so they’d have to do this before gaining access. Alternatively, we caould just inform everyone that any details they share will be visible to the whole world, logged in or not, and then leave it up to them.
I’d suggest the cross Bedford site might find a use for multiple groups and wires (walls in Facebook), and that rather than being primarily a blog/news site, it is primarily a group/discussion site.
That’s my two pennies worth. Any further thoughts?
Chris
December 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
shane said:
hi Chris,
just a clarity point that should make life easier; the idea is that zerocarbonbedford.org would house the blog and the social networking programs. i.e they’d be one unit under one domain. ZCC still needs to decide if that widening the net in this way is a good idea (in my opinion it is) or if it should stay within zerocarboncastle.org
controlling the release of people’s contact details being released to the public is fundamental. i hope’d it would be possible that people coulc be contact through their registered identities rather than through personal contacts.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Chris Johnson said:
That’s possible, yes, and it is possible to send personal/private messages through the BuddyPress system (which will then trigger email alerts), so there is no need for personal information to be published.
I wonder if it would make more sense to scrap the blog idea and work more with ‘groups’ (but still publicly accessible ones) in BuddyPress – using the ‘wire’ discussion feature. I’m keen not to duplicate discussions as you’ve mentioned, and I wonder if having both the blog and social network would do that.
This might also solve the needing to sign up to comment issue, as only signed up users can comment on group ‘wires’, but anyone can view them.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
shane said:
yeah!! sounds logical, would using buddypress direct enable the same front end viewing experience as the wordpress blog? i.e. the latest posts being displayed as the main content of the blog “home page”, what are the likely differences?
December 1st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Chris Johnson said:
We would end up with something more similar to http://testbp.org/ as a front page for that part of the site. It’s customisable, so obviously wouldn’t feature ‘blogs’ like that one does, and might show more of the latest activity from group ‘wires’ instead. Colours and graphics could be changed too, obviously depending on whether we stay as ZCC or change to ZCB.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
shane said:
i’m kind off learning about budypress and wordpress as we go. as far as i can see they’re not fully integrated, budypress provides a kind of entrance portal/social networking platform but then when you click one of the blogs, you jump to a different template and platform (ie wordpress), which the user has used to write their blog.
is that correct? it looks a bit of pain for you that buddypress used different templates to wordpress.
For our purpose, on buddypress, the news tab http://testbp.org/news seemed to be an excellent blog home page and the buddypress homepage http://testbp.org/ provides a superb social networking area full of chatter and current interactions.
It may well be possible to get all the features we need through buddy press. what do you think? the only difficulty maybe renaming and redirecting the links to these two tabs.
supposing just using budypress was a good idea,
1. what’s the work load like for you?
2. would there be a duplication between tags, categories and groups?
3. i noticed that there’ll be a beta release in December, should we wait? and the platform looks stable but are we silly to go with a beta?
December 1st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Chris Johnson said:
Yep you’re right.
I’ve changed my mind, I think we do need a blog/news page and the group pages, like you suggest, but this could be done just using buddypress and one blog – the main one for the site.
In response to your questions:
>> 1. what’s the work load like for you?
I’m busy this week, but after that I should have a couple of weeks to work on it and get it all up and running and templated. Obviously that would need me to know whether I’m designing for another logo, or we’re sticking with ZCC.
>> 2. would there be a duplication between tags, categories and groups?
Yes, but Wordpress is designed to cope with crossover between tags and categories. You put a post in one or two categories, and put lots of tags on it, like keywords. It remembers old tags and auto-suggests them to help with tag clouds.
As for groups – they have a different purpose – people interested in helping with projects join a group and discuss the project. The group can then output news (tagged/categorised with their group name) to the blog/news page.
>> 3. i noticed that there’ll be a beta release in December, should we wait? and the platform looks stable but are we silly to go with a beta?
Nope, I’d go for the beta. It seems well written and stable as you say, and I’ve only found a couple of bugs that were very easy and quick to fix myself. Security wise, it hooks into WordPress, which is used the world over, so I’ve got no worries about that, as it doesn’t really deal with it itself.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:04 pm
shane said:
the mock up looks absolutely great!!! just really simple with everything easily accessible.
you said:
>I’ve changed my mind, I think we do need a blog/news page and the group pages, >like you suggest, but this could be done just using buddypress and one blog – the >main one for the site.
That’s good news, so if i understand correctly we won’t need to have wordpress?? which will simplify the functionality and development.
>I’m busy this week, but after that I should have a couple of weeks to work on it >and get it all up and running and templated. Obviously that would need me to >know whether I’m designing for another logo, or we’re sticking with ZCC.
i need to discuss this and get back to you.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Chris Johnson said:
I’ve added a couple more mock ups in the latest post, working from the idea of setting up bedfordzerocarbon.org as a cross Bedford networking site with multiple groups and users, then hosting extra ‘mini-sites’ on top of that, which would still run on the WordPress backend on bedfordzerocarbon.org (and hence the same usernames, etc), but could have their own theming and administrators/editors.
If we went this route, I’d expect to move the current ZCC site to this system as the ZCC mini-site, and then point the domain name zerocarboncastle.org directly to our mini-site on the bedfordzerocarbon.org domain. The mini-site address would probably be something like zcc.bedfordzerocarbon.org
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Shane said:
I think we’re on the right track technologically speaking. the only issue that i can see that is up in the air is if the interactive part is open for other groups across Bedford to use or if it will be a ZCC only.
My initial thoughts are to design it so that it is closed to ZCC only and then pitch it to the group that it be widened once we start using it.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Chris Johnson said:
Sure, in which case you might want to use the original image to email out. Either way, it’s minor tweaks to change it if we set it up correctly the first time round.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Chris Johnson said:
I’ve started work on the new theme – see the work in progress at http://test.oppin.co.uk
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
shane said:
it looks grand! are we looking at the ZCC blog homepage or the ZCC discussion groups homepage or are they one and the same?
For the sake of clarity I’m calling the;
current ZCC static stuff = blog
current basecamp/facebook = groups
If this is the homepage for the ZCC blog it is great that we can have the “news” displayed. which i imagine is a function of buddypress and not wordpress.
for the ZZC homepage i suggest we have the following tabs across the top;
Home
about
projects
events
groups
Contact us – this means we need to find somewhere for a contact us link but it doesn’t need a tab as it’s simple an email address. (which i imagine is getting spammed)
Events, launch event and what’s on – could all be under one tab, just different blog/news entries, perhaps a static at the top with regular fixtures
Films and footprint – could be blog/news entries on the projects page
that way we keep it clean and simple.
are you looking to template the budypress pages? when you’re logged into buddypress it has a whole different layout. i wouldn’t worry about changing the layout though.
Shane
December 4th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Chris Johnson said:
The news feature IS the blog – so it is WordPress! I do plan to template the BuddyPress pages to use similar colours/logo/font and get it working on IE, as it only works on Safari and Firefox currently. I agree about the tabs-I plan on having sub-pages under each to keep it simple.
At the moment I’m working as though the discussions/BuddyPress part of the site is the same as the blog part, but if we open it up in future, the discussions part will stay and ZCC specific pages will go to a sub-domain (like zcc.bedfordzerocarbon.org)
December 4th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
james said:
new site looks good
December 15th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
shane said:
hi Chris, the site does indeed look good. don’t want to sound over excited but i do think we will finally release the potential of user generated content…. making the site much more active. it’s alive!!! alive!
could you quadruple the size of the carbon hero homepage image?
i was thinking of inviting people to test for a week or so and then transferring peoples memberships from basecamp soon after.
Do you think it is ready to start testing?
December 15th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Chris Johnson said:
I’ll resize the image, no problem. I reckon we’re ready to test, let’s get going!
December 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am
shane said:
hi chris,
i was just trying to add content and was wondering how do you add images so that they can sit side by side? i can upload images fine but can’t see the “behind text” type function.
following from our conversation last night, here’s a couple of final suggestions;
Could do with making the admin button more prominent and maybe renaming it as “add content” What do you think? I’ve found the button on the home page but the “feed” module doesn’t appear elsewhere.
i liked your suggestion of a basic posting guide.
could all of the entries entered on the project, events or about us pages, be automatically added to the home page blog as news? ie all blog posts
would be good to have a news letter subscribe function in a nice and obvious place.
thanks
Shane
December 17th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Chris Johnson said:
I’ll add the feed module to the other pages. I also added a button to the header that only shows once you are logged in and allowed to write posts.
I don’t quite understand your question about pictures – if you want a gallery of pictures uploaded for that post (like for the launch event post) type [gallery] where you want it.
As for adding static content like pages (events/projects) to the blog, you can’t, as they would disappear into the background as they got old. You’d need to double post – once on the page and once on the news blog anyway.
I’d suggest a short blog post instead, about upcoming events as they approach.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
shane said:
hi Chris,
when i’m adding picture, in the editing box, they seem to be one on top of each other rather than side by side. when i get a chance i’ll look through the help section.
what i’m suggesting is that the about, events, projects and home page have the first entry as a “sticky” and then the rest is a blog. does that make sense? and then could the information on posted on any of the other three automatically get posted on the home page.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Chris Johnson said:
When you insert a picture, click on one of the buttons that look like red boxes with grey lines running across in the ‘Alignment’ section. ‘None’ will leave your picture with a big gap beside it, as it tries to put the picture inline, like another word in a line of text, or its own paragraph. ‘Left’, ‘Centre’ and ‘Right’ all make the text flow round the picture in a more natural sense.
It’s do-able to convert the sections to only displaying selected content from the blog instead of a static page, but I’m not convinced we have enough content on the blog to make that work well at the moment. Each section would only have the ’sticky’ post in it. It would take a bit more work to convert each page over to getting its content from the blog, rather than static pages, but not too much.
I don’t quite understand why we’d want the ‘about’ page to be a blog either, I’ve never come across a website that has that kind of page as a blog – and it’s not really ‘news’ type rolling information.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
shane said:
hi Chris, i think there has been some confusion, largely due to dialogue through written text, sometimes a chat is better but i’ll continue here, just in case the remote chance that someone else is following the dialogue.
you said;
“As for adding static content like pages (events/projects) to the blog, you can’t, as they would disappear into the background as they got old.”
i’m suggesting that these pages (events/projects) become blog format, with stickies at the top rather than being static pages. this will make it easier for user to add content, while allowing viewers to see the history. i.e. more content rich than one edited/updated static page. Consequently if the home/events/projects pages are blogs, i’m suggesting that any blog entries to the events/projects pages could be automatically added to the homeapage.
you said;
“I don’t quite understand why we’d want the ‘about’ page to be a blog either, I’ve never come across a website that has that kind of page as a blog – and it’s not really ‘news’ type rolling information.”
While i think the events and projects pages should be blogs, ultimately i don’t mind if the about page is a blog or a static page and am happy to go with your preference.
the rational behind making this a blog page is that it will leave the site with one coherent format throughout and we can mimic a static page by having a sticky. again making everything coherent leads itself to users getting used to how to work the site and reduces barriers.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
shane said:
hi Chris, i seemed to remember another CMS/blog that had an option, when adding a blog/article you could check a box that would include the article on the home page. perhaps buddypress/wordpress has something similar?
January 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
shane said:
Hi Chris, i’ve spent a little time getting familiar with the site and have added some content. I can see why wordpress is the leading blog platform, it’s pretty easy to drive.
We’ve been talking about a sit down and chat so I’ve written a list of thoughts for discussion;
1. The ultimate goal of simplification for the viewer/user. remove anything that won’t be used and any barriers that stop use.
2. Need a good integration between wordpress project pages; such as the static waste, transport, energy project pages etc and the buddypress groups; waste, transport, energy etc. reduce any potential duplication and confusion. Example of content needing integration; eg waste blog posts and waste group discussions, waste group members project outlines
Wordpress
3. i cant get the blog post to display just the except on the home page it displays the whole blog? although this is not a major issue.
4. how do i edit some of the features/widgets – such as add emails to the email list and send a news letter to the list?
5. i’ve added daughter pages to the “waste” section in the “project” pages but these pages appear in the “projects” side bar which makes that menu confusing.
buddypress
6. the buddypress user menu has “activity”, “profile”, “wire” and “blog”, although in “profile” it would seem to have an overview of all of these. could we lose the other three? if so the following 2 points can be forgotten.
7. When i click on “Blogs” > “Recent comments”; it states that i haven’t made any comments but i have?
8. if i go to “blog” > “create blog”, when you click it you get the message “Blog registration is currently disabled”?
9. When editing the profile i can only add my name no other personal details? it’s called “edit basic” is there an edit advanced that allows you to add your bio and photos etc?
10. in the dashboard i couldn’t see where to edit the widgets on the pages “about”, “project” or events? i can edit the widgets on the home/blog page. Also on budypress, i was keen to rework the groups page. is this a different buddypress dashboard?
11. when you click “groups” from the top menu, you come to a groups homepage; all we need on the groups home page is the group listings (with all the current groups) and perhaps find a group search function for in the future. we don’t need the alphabet, not enough groups, and we don’t need the featured groups module, this seems to be distorting the position of the group listings below.
12. i’ve added both “transport” and “general” groups but i can’t locate them. there not listed in the list of groups.
highlights from previous comments;
13. linking project pages to homepage/blogs. i think that is solved by simply having a link to the project blog “category” on the project page i’ve done an example of this here on the “waste” page there’s the following link “Blog posts – All waste related posts are stored here. You can also log in and add your own blog posts.” see http://zerocarboncastle.org/projects/waste/
14. Could do with making the admin button more prominent and maybe renaming it as “add content” What do you think?
15. I’ve found the button on the home page but the “feed” module doesn’t appear elsewhere.
16. i liked your suggestion of a basic blog posting guide.
i’ll email you to see when we can all meet.
thanks
shane
April 14th, 2009 at 11:49 am
shane said:
quick addition/update;
forget number 7. the recent comment that i made is now on my profile, i image its a time length thing and after a certain time they dissapear.
17. i can see my own blog posts through blog section of buddypress but not other peoples.
18. buddypress and wordpress are slightly buggy;
- i have one of your blog posts in my list of blog posts
- this page has a gap between the comments
- the groups page has a gap between the widgets
April 15th, 2009 at 5:31 pm