phpBB icons

More theme development. This time it's icons for the forum.

A new look?

So, things have been pretty quiet on this blog since I finished my master's. It's been mostly because of (for a time) lack of internet, but also a lack of motivation. But all is not lost! Open Words is destined to carry on! I'm currently working on rebuilding the site from the ground up using Drupal in place of WordPress. My new job has given me new skills and increased confidence in my abilities as a web developer and I've come on leaps and bounds since I began this project.

The current site will stay as it is as a temporary stop-gap while I work on the new site, hosted here on my computer. My intention is to experiment with modules/themes/etc on a local version of the site, before buying some seperate hosting and creating a world-viewable version.

This is what Open Words was meant to be all along and I'm really excited about how things are shaping up. I hope you are too!

Screenshots:

Open Words goes live!

There now exists a working prototype of the Open Words site! It can be found over at congelical.com/openwords and anyone is free to sign up and start using it. Also, along with the forum, there's now an Open Words wiki, which has all kinds of useful stuff (or will eventually) like a "getting started" guide.

Obviously, due to the limitations of what can be done with WordPress and the available plugins, the site doesn't have every feature I might have wanted. But this is a way for me to give people an idea of how the site should work so they can tell me what they like or don't like. This is pretty much it for the practical side of Open Words in terms of my project. The deadline is in two weeks, which will be spent doing the write-up and getting feedback from users. However, this isn't the end of practical stuff completely as Open Words is about more than just making something for my major project.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to sign up and use the site!

Tentative steps

So, the first part of the Open Words community is now open. I've just created a phpBB forum which can be found over at congelical.com/forum. Feel free to register there and start discussing whatever you want (including the main Open Words site and ideas for the forum). The forum is intended as a place for discussion of whatever goes on on the site, as well as discussion on writing in general. It also gives users a chance to get to know each other slightly better outside of just what they do on the main site. Currently I need to work on how to link the main site and the forum together (such as how to link users' accounts on each).

Any feedback can either be left here as usual or on the forums.

A hell of a lot of reading

Recently I've been working on the literature review segment of the project. This is basically background reading on various things that relate to what I'm doing. This has ranged from looking at other sites involved with online publishing or collaboration to reading up things like social software and how it works. It's currently a work in progress and can be found in two Google documents. The first contains anything I've taken from articles and papers I've read (and one video I've watched). The second contains my observations of various sites. They're both full of links, so further information can be found. They'll eventually be turned into full pieces of writing, like my piece on moderation systems (which is also part of this review, though was originally done separately). As usual, comments are welcome.

In other news, I've been thinking about site documentation. I've decided it could work well in wiki form. This could also work for things like the writing advice pages. I'm going to look into how this could be set up and think about how access could be controlled (such as only allowing users with a certain level of participation in the site wiki access). Let me know what you think and whether the wiki should be public, semi-public or private.

A change in direction

As I've said before, my original intention was to learn PHP and then to work on altering WordPress (and other software) to my needs. Having begun down this path, I found it to be a far more daunting task than I'd first imagined. While learning PHP didn't seem too difficult, becoming proficient with it on a level that would allow me to work with a programme as complex as WordPress in such a short time is probably near impossible (or would probably require me to be locked in a room alone for the next few months).

Fortunately, having installed WordPress on part of my personal website and having looked into what you can do with it as a site-building/management tool, it seems that it's flexible enough in itself to be able to do what I want. While this means that the site may not end up the way one designed completely from the ground up would have, it does mean that the site will be a lot closer to working fully than I had originally thought.

The next step shall be to look into how to adapt WordPress (using the settings available, as well as the various plugins there are) in a way that will allow the site to function in the way I wish. I shall also be looking into how to alter the site design. This means I shall be working on design ideas for the site, which I shall put up here.

One for the ideas wall

Credit goes to Alex White for this one:

Alex had the idea that part of the site could be for people to post their ideas that other people could then turn into written pieces. This would allow people who aren't writers themselves to contribute and be a creative part of the community. It also works well with the idea of collaboration/etc.

Learning languages

So, a big step has been taken on the journey to building the site. I' ve now learned CSS (and I've put these skills into practice by building my own site). the next step will be to learn PHP and (possibly) SQL.

My plan for building the interface for submitting/editing pieces of work on the site is to use an altered version of WordPress. Depending on what WordPress can do and what I need, I may use MediaWiki as well. How I will do this will have to be looked into more when I have the ability to understand the workings of the programmes.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on these ideas.

If anyone else wishes to learn CSS (or various other languages like HTML, PHP, etc). I highly recommend W3Schools.

Proposal, presentation and research

Last week I did a presentation on my proposal for this project. There will be a video of the presentation available soon. For now, you'll have to make do with looking at my slides (which aren't exactly that helpful as I didn't exactly fill them with info) and my project proposal form.

I also completed a research project, where I looked at moderation systems used in various online communities. This serves as back-up research for the system I hope to implement as part of this project.

Notes from the red book - part 7

Book layouts The option of have longer pieces organised into specific sections as well as linking pieces together

- Chapters Separating large sections of a book style work into separate pages that can be easily navigated to
- Paragraphs Allowing people to jump around a piece at will. Also the possibility of allowing you to bookmark a paragraph in a piece so you can return later and pick up where you left off
- Sequels The possibility of linking a series of books together
- Replies Allowing other writers to connect their work to yours (due to things such as using the same characters)

Dictionary/thesaurus links Links through to an online dictionary and/or thesaurus

- Search integrated The possibility of integrating a search function for the dictionary/thesaurus into things like the text editor and piece browser

Mail/Notes? Allowing users to send private messages to each other

- Storage space The issue of how much storage space to give the users
- - Plain text, no attachments No wasted space on formatting or large files, possibility of using html for messages (like MySpace does)
- - Emoticons Allowing the use of them in messages, same as on forums

Favourites/bookmarks page A place for users to keep a record of their favourite pieces/authors

- Show newest pieces Organise the pieces by how new they are or how recently they've been updated
- watching messages/alerts Alerts shown to users when something happens like a piece in their favourites is edited or an author they like has posted something new

Future plans Things that are not only out of the scope of this as my major project but will likely have to wait until the site is established (rather than just because of technical issues)

- Integration with other social networking websites Allowing users to connect their profile to their profiles elsewhere
- - Facebook Most likely through some sort of application that would show an overview of the user's profile on the site
- - MySpace Similar to Facebook, not sure how MySpace applications work?
- - Etc There's various other sites to look into, some along the lines of Facebook and MySpace, others more specialised (an important one would be LibraryThing)
- Possible opportunity to be available on devices such as Kindle? Looking into how people using a Kindle could browse the site and download pieces to their device
- Independent publishing to create books on demand of certain pieces Like how people have prints on DeviantArt, this means they can put their pieces up for sale and they will be made into books as people request them
- Publishing collections of shorter pieces Not every piece will be the appropriate length for a book to itself. This is the possibility that pieces will be chosen (through something like a competition) to be part of a collection of work from the site that will be available to buy from the site
- - Genre Collections could be based on genre (such as a sci-fi collection)
- - Piece style Or on the style of the pieces inside (such as a collection of poetry or short stories)
- RSS feeds? The possibility of having RSS feeds from the site. What of is undecided.
- - Personalised? Could you have personalised RSS feeds? These would notify users of their new alerts, etc
- Intricate Creative Commons licensing Giving greater control over how a piece on the site is licensed
- - More depth A user can choose to use one license for the whole work or separate licenses for different parts. So other authors could maybe write pieces set in the same world, but aren't allowed to use the same characters.

Notes from the red book - part 6

Categories Pieces will be organised into categories based on genre (romance, sci-fi, etc), length (short story, novel, etc), style (poetry, prose, etc), and more

- Can be specific or generic Users define what level of a category their piece is placed in
- - Multiple categories Pieces can be placed in multiple categories (so a love story that takes place in space, can be in romance as well as sci-fi)
- Category browsing Users can browse categories and their sub-categories, with pieces within those categories organised in various ways (user-definable)

Searching Allowing users to search through pieces

- Simple search and advanced search Simple search can just be on a keyword, such as "spaceship. Advanced search allows things such as only searching within specific categories (such as if you only want sci-fi short stories) or pieces by a certain user
- Random functions
- - Random piece Navigates to a random piece when clicked
- - Random author Navigates to the profile of a random user when clicked
- - Within a category Random pieces are selected from within a certain category
- Define your interests Allows a user to define what kind of writing they like to read
- - Recommendations? Recommends pieces for a user to read based on their preferences, possibly with a bias towards pieces with little to no comments
- - - User submitted? Users could possibly vote for pieces they think should be featured, either in specific categories, or across the whole site (so there would be "top pieces this week", as well as "top sci-fi pieces this week" or "top short stories this week", etc)

Notes from the red book - part 5

User profiles Pretty standard for any community site

- List of pieces List of pieces submitted by a user
- - most recent (added/updated) Organised by most recently submitted or updated, possibly other options available
- Description A general description submitted by the user
- Blog An optional blog that a user can use to talk about their writing, or whatever
- Links Any links the user wishes to add to their profile (like MySpace, Facebook, etc)
- Ratings-at-a-glance A value showing their reputation, either a single value or a ratio of their comments score vs. their number of pieces
- - Links to more detailed stats Click through to a more detailed run-down of their activities on the site
- Most recent comments A selection of their most recent comments (in full or as extracts)
- Picture and/or avatar Used to identify the user quickly. Possibility of using just an avatar, just a picture, or both
- - Large on profile (though not too big)
- - Resized to 50x50 elsewhere Such as on comments or forum posts, etc
- Signature? Possibility of allowing users to include a signature with their comments/posts
- - Text/emoticon only Means no inclusions of large images, etc
- - 1 0r 2 lines Means no long, text-filled, signatures

Emoticons A selection of images for use in comments/forums posts/etc

- Build up database Either create them myself, use free-to-use images, or have them be user-created (should have visual coherence)
- - All graphics open and CC licensed
- Sane selection + some randoms Need all the standards (smile, frown, wink, etc) with a couple of non-standard, try to avoid a massive selection of stupid emoticons
- Sane functions to call them Try to avoid anything that could come up in someone's writing (common ones include "8)" or things like multiple punctuation marks)
- Not available in text submission, only comments Pieces shouldn't be filled with emoticons, they are intended for discussion/conversation/etc

Notes from the red book - part 4

Help pages A selection of pages intended to help users with various things. Including stuff about the site and creative writing in general.

- Writing advice/exercises Help and tips on creative writing, as well as exercises intended to improve writing skills
- user written - wiki? Help pages could be user written, possibly as a selection of articles or in wiki form
- FAQ for the site
- Manifesto about openness Talking about the benefits of collaboration and openness as well as reasons behind using open source technology, etc
- Recommendations about what to use with the site Programmes that can be used to access the site or in conjunction with it
- - Firefox (no need to write spell check programme) Firefox has a built-in spell-checker, which would remove the need to have one built into the editor
- - Commons licensing Creative Commons licensing and why to use it, etc
- - Recommend open source programmes In general, such as things like Open Office/AbiWord or Linux, etc

Notes from the red book - part 3

Editor A web app not unlike the one I'm using right now to post this. With some additional features.

- Easily add tags Like the little box at the bottom here, it lets you add tags and suggests tags you've already use. Possibly suggests common tags.
- Add links to character pages Allows you to easily add links to info pages you set up that talk about various things, such as characters, places, etc.
- - List of existing pages Lists pages you've already set up, whether they're character pages or other parts of your work (or even other works).
- - Ability to create new pages Allows you to create a link to a page you haven't set up yet and will create a blank page that you can edit at a later date.
- - Find function Allows you to search for certain things within a text and add things like links or tags (so every instance of a character's name can link to their profile page).
- Spell check? An important function. Decision has to be made as to whether it will be provided by the browser or the editor.

Notes from the red book - part 2

Reputation system A system that will give users a certain "reputation" value that will allow other users to see at-a-glance their standing in the community.

- Writing/commenting ratio Shows how many comments a user has left compared to how many pieces they've written. Good comments are more heavily weighted as they are a user participating in the community and helping others.
- - Initial comments Comments posted on pieces.
- - Follow-up comments Responses to comments. Worth less than initial comments.
- - Stats breakdowns (similar to DeviantArt) A page on a user's profile that shows things like how many comments a user has posted, how many of those have been moderated a certain way, etc.
- Similar rating system to Slashdot on comments Allowing users not only to rate comments as good or bad, but also as things like "helpful", "correction" (grammatical or factual), "interesting", etc. Comments gain and lose weight accordingly.

Notes from the red book - part 1

This will be a series of posts reproducing the notes I've made of various ideas I've had for the project that I've written down in my little red notebook. I'll also add additional notes in blue in order to clarify certain points.

Initial Ideas

Writing pages - like Wiki, but not. A website where people can post their writing. It would encourage community and collaborative working, but pieces would only be editable by the writer(s). Some elements of a wiki would be used (e.g. being able to see revisions to a piece)

- Highlight sections + add comments Allowing you to highlight a specific section of a piece and to add a comment to that section.
- Character/place/etc. links Allowing links within a piece of writing to pages that give further details about certain things relating to the "wider world" of the piece.
- Discussion pages? Discussion on comment threads? A question of whether to include some sort of forum where members can discuss various topics. Also, whether to allow comments (on a piece) to be discussed further.
- E-books - various editions Publish certain pieces as e-books (either novels or collections of shorter pieces). Allow these to be revised.
- Scraps section Like on DeviantArt. A place for unfinished/unused pieces that writers wish to post anyway.
- Creative Commons licensing Again, like on DeviantArt or Soundclick. Allow writers to define how their work is used/distributed/etc.
- Donations - pay what you want for digital copies Either charge a certain amount for the e-books or use a Radiohead-style payment model. Or offer them for free and allow users to donate to any writer they so wish...
- Later move on to publishing copies In paper book form. To be covered later in "future plans".
- E-book revisions are free If charging for e-books, allow people who have already purchased an e-book to download a new revision of it for free.