mediawiki installation

On Pablo’s suggestion I looked into the mediawiki software as a possible solution for the opensource graphic design website. I couldn’t quite work out how it could be used but decided just to install it to have a go:

http://mediawiki.gianticebox.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

I now have a mediawiki but it seems too much like a normal wiki to be of any use. I think that the wiki software is not well suited to the open source website. Wiki softwares seem to work best for information gathered onto a single source and not for the kind of  gathering of people and ideas I wish to achieve.

v rough mock up

http://process.gianticebox.co.uk/dev/osgd-dev1/

That is a pretty rought mock up of how I imagine the open source graphic design website to look. Clearly there are some design issues in the mock up, and plenty of pages like posting pages and register pages to be created, but that shows a pretty clear way of making the website work.

Places that might need futher conceptual work are:

• The main front page. it shows just a list of projects whereas some imagry might be nice. However I do think that on many levels the design site doesn’t need to appeal to those who are not previously interested in the concept. A way of browsing the projects on the site is pretty imporant, but more so for the members than visitors.
• The project pages content needs to be slightly better separated to make it clearer.
• The user/member system. How much social network should be involved? Should there be a internal message system or just rely on emails sent thru the website to users emails addresses?
• Hosting content on the actual website, such as thumbnails for projects, project resources, and the like.
• The level of public private. Interestingly for an open source website I am feeling like I want quite a lot of the site to only be open to registered members. While the open source is about openness, I don’t want people to abuse the system. I think that having to register would put off some people who might just take from the system.

I also am being very sure to realise that this site [if i build it for the deadline] will be a very rough version of something. However of course because it is open source that almost makes more sense than not; the site will need to be improved after it is created. Because I am being careful to remember this I don’t need to worry too much about implimenting complicated features such as internal messaging or rss feeds of changelogs etc.

dev front end

For the open source design repository I’ve been working on a mock-up/draft of the front end. I’m doing this before any back end as both a safety net and also a way to work out exactly how I want the website to function. Hopefully it will not be too impossible to get the backend in afterwards and actually have something working for the hand-in, but we will see. I think I have given up making a working vote system for the hand in because I’m finding it so hard. Anyhow…

This is the index page for a logged in user. Here they will see all the projects they belong to listed with recent changelog posts and a link to the project. [In time projects should be tagged and then it could have a possible interests section at the bottom or similar]

This is the project page. This would have all the changelog posts and resources as well as giving a description and the list of members/users on the project.

This is the settings page. I think at first the site won’t have too many options for user details. I also want to start off using real first names not usernames, but also include small avatars. I think that using first names might make the site feel more professional, but I guess in time people might add that feature or just use the First Name field for a username. No matter…

I think at first I am just going to make the site use links to externally hosted resources and also external images for avatars. That way I won’t have to worry too much about coding things for file upload and treatment. The website will mainly be users posting different kinds of content that is pulled together into the project pages. I think I should try and get it working a while before hand in and encourage other students to use it so that the site has some content.

I’m not totally sure the main index page. I think it will probably just have to be a list of most recent projects by title and description. Perhaps a lot of user avatars too…

Opensourcegraphicdesign.cc

So I’ve done some further drafting for this open source gd project repository. Still not sure if it is a great idea to start on now as it is another ambitious cakePHP project. However I think at core it is a lot more simple than the vote app as really it is just a groups plus a bit more system. Here is the paper work: