New Community Site - Basis and Ideas

Author Message

Bertrand Maugain

Moderated by: Nicolas Pastorino

Thursday 18 June 2009 2:37:37 pm

Hi all,

As some of you know, we are looking at building a new community site and we are working on building a prototype together with a partner (Grenland Web) in Skien (Norway), our resources being focused on delivering the updated roadmap (cf. http://ez.no/ezpublish/roadmap )

This is far from a specification document but it shows the concepts and ideas we are thinking of.

We would like to discuss that at the Barcamp (Friday 26th, 3.00pm) at the eZ Conference and hopefully get feedback.

You can download this document at : http://ez.no/download/other_downloads/community_site_ideas

See you in Paris !

Bertrand

John Arne Jørgensen

Thursday 18 June 2009 11:22:06 pm

Some more info about new features:

So what's new?

A brand new community site programmed from scratch using Varnish to boost performance.

Varnish
Support for Varnish caching content for all user groups, both logged in and anonymous users

Rating for content
Much awaited rating system will aid users in finding most relevant content.
Star ratings - for articles, blog posts, forum topics
Thumbs up only - for comments and forum replies

Code links to documentation for quick reference
Hot links to documentation

Syntax highlighting in forums and blogs.
Syntax highlighting for .ini .php .tpl kode

Better search
Search powered by eZ Find will consider also contents rating when presenting results.

Community driven
Community members provide content to the site by posting in their blog. If the blog post is deemed relevant to the tutorials or articles section it can be mirrored there.

My eZ - latest activity
Shows a list of the content a user has been involved in. Comments and other posts. Makes it easier for the user to keep track of his discussions.

All comments are forum discussions
When someone comments on an article or blog - a topic in the new forum "Discussions" is created.

Twitter, facebook, social bookmarking sites
Twitter is fed updates from the community site. Follow @ezcommunity
Tweets about eZ Publish is also fed back to the community site

Keywords
Userfriendly method of adding keywords to content

SSO
For ez.no and community site. Possible to add other ez sites later.

A simplified online editor for all areas, including forums.

Looking forward to sharing some wine in Paris :)
Regards,
John Arne, Bjørn, Jan, Thomas and Benjamin from Grenland Web

Skype ID: Reasonable
Twitter: reasonably
www.grenlandweb.no

Matthieu Sévère

Friday 19 June 2009 12:43:54 am

Will this community site be be developped based on non-specific extension that can be re-used ?
I mean develop several extension relating to each new features so that it can be integrated in eZ afterwards.
Because all of the features your are about to develop are currently missing in eZ and will be more and needed !

I'm looking forward this new community site it's a great idea !

Thanks !

--
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/346216

John Arne Jørgensen

Friday 19 June 2009 4:14:30 am

I guess you will have to get an answer from eZ Systems about that :)

Skype ID: Reasonable
Twitter: reasonably
www.grenlandweb.no

Felix Laate

Friday 19 June 2009 4:22:57 am

Hi,

I think integration with already established communities like e.g. Facebook should be included. There is an extension for facebook_connect in the projects-area. This could be used. But I would prefer if a wrapper was made, making connecting to any community (with an API) possible.

Let´s say an user wants to log in to e.g. FB:

login-handler > wrapper > facebook_connect

The wrapper would have a generic method that in turn can use a specific method to do the job.

This would make ezp a perfect system for the third era of Social Media, the social colonization, into which we are currently heading.

Felix

Publlic Relations Manager
Greater Stavanger
www.greaterstavanger.com

John Arne Jørgensen

Friday 19 June 2009 10:48:33 am

Felix: I think it would be a really great selling point for eZ with better connectivity to social networking sites. Not a lot of work maybe considering the benefits?

Skype ID: Reasonable
Twitter: reasonably
www.grenlandweb.no

Robin Muilwijk

Saturday 20 June 2009 1:30:42 am

Hi Bertrand,

I just found the pdf doc (through a twitter link) about the new community site. I always liked having everything available through one site (ez.no). Is there a specific reason why the corp site and the community part of it will be separated?

Would it be an idea to put in a "Site" menu option, either underneath the "Company" in the top menu? Which lists all sites such as Projects and the new Community?

Also, as idea, see http://community.joomla.org/connect.html. Joomla! also has it's separated Community site, and Joomla! Connect is one of it's features. It's a feed a news items, those news items are coming from sites from community members. Those members can submit a request to be added to this Connect feed. Advantage for community members; one single feed of news items related to eZ Publish.

Board member, eZ Publish Community Project Board - Member of the share.ez.no team - Key values: Openness and Innovation.

LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk // Twitter: http://twitter.com/i_robin // Skype: robin.muilwijk

kracker (the)

Saturday 20 June 2009 10:10:20 am

Hello All,

It sure would be really, really, nice on this new community site for you to point out and <b>link to</b> the ezpublish community wiki, http://eZpedia.org (as a member of this ecosystem)

eZpedia already has loads of helpful content (for new and old versions of ezpublish), http://ezpedia.org/wiki/ez

eZpedia has been around since 2006! providing a place for members of the community to freely publish eZ Publish related documentation, howtos, tips, detailed solution instructions, faqs, articles, community extensions usage/install help, and so much more, it's a really helpful resource for a lot of ezpublish developers. Anyone can register and publish to our site (monitored not censored), we give away ezpedia's content and we give away ezpedia's source code away (will you do this with your community site?).

I guess the text of this post came off badly I think. But we never could get any promotion for our efforts to improve available community documentation ie: a link on ez.no, projects.ez.no or planetezpublish.org (got one on PubSVN though, ever thankful for paulb)

Yet developers (especially new users) find unique proven shared community solutions documented on ezpedia.org valuable yet basically hard to find / know about it. So we believe this has a value to share to others.

@Robin Muilwijk

Checkout, Bruce Morrison's eZ Publish Friend Feed, <i>http://friendfeed.com/ez-publish</i>
Not quite the same, but available today.

cheers,
<i>kracker

311 - Amber</i>

Member since: 2001.07.13 || http://ezpedia.se7enx.com/

Robin Muilwijk

Saturday 20 June 2009 12:40:25 pm

Thanks for pointing me to that link kracker, didn't know that existed.

Board member, eZ Publish Community Project Board - Member of the share.ez.no team - Key values: Openness and Innovation.

LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk // Twitter: http://twitter.com/i_robin // Skype: robin.muilwijk

John Arne Jørgensen

Sunday 21 June 2009 5:56:28 am

Robin: My understanding is that ez.no have grown very big during the years, and with 20+ large custom extensions for everything from the partner system, community etc. it's too much work to upgrade it all to php 5.

Another issue is hosting requirements. ez.no now runs on a three server cluster. Splitting this a bit up makes it easier to use standardised hosting for each of them. Indeed - the community site with the new Varnish accellerator will run smoothly and have great growth potential on a standalone server installation.

kracker: As for pointing to ez eZ Wiki.. Thats a good tip, I'll pass it along. Maybe we even could RSS in a list of the latest updated content?

Skype ID: Reasonable
Twitter: reasonably
www.grenlandweb.no

kracker (the)

Sunday 21 June 2009 4:18:56 pm

@John Arne Jørgensen

Contact me. I would be happy to write a custom cronjob to export only the latest updated content via rss export feed (currently a feature which does not exist, instead we offer email notification subscription updates a lesser but available feature)

> <i>kracker: As for pointing to ez eZ Wiki.. Thats a good tip,</i>
> <i>I'll pass it along. Maybe we even could RSS</i>
> <i>in a list of the latest updated content?</i>

@ Robin

Your welcome. Happy Hacking.

<i>
cheers,
//kracker

sole and the skyrider band : ghost, assassinating other ghosts</i>

Member since: 2001.07.13 || http://ezpedia.se7enx.com/

Pierre T.

Sunday 21 June 2009 4:23:55 pm

Can't wait for that. For when do you plan to release the first public beta?

Gaetano Giunta

Tuesday 23 June 2009 3:37:33 am

@John Arne Jørgensen: <i>SSO: For ez.no and community site. Possible to add other ez sites later.</i>
I'd say a strong sso system + some content integration with projects.ez.no is vital from the start

@Robin Muilwijk:
http://www.planetezpublish.org/
http://www.planet-ezpublish.fr/
http://www.ez-france.org/ also has a feed

@kracker: not to be too arrogant, but I think ezpedia never fully realized its potential, with contributions apparently dwindling over time, and the relevancy / correctness of proposed information rotting away little by little. The fault? I'd say exactly the same as for the "official" eZ sites: not enough love from developers leading to a clumsy, awkward interface (where's the content tree? where are the keywords and tag clouds?). But maybe it's just me - I dislike the standard wikipedia interface...

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

Gaetano Giunta

Tuesday 30 June 2009 1:43:27 am

About forum import from ez.no: I do not think the 'important topics' in the current forums are really that important/relevant by now - most have not been updated since 2007 and are a bit out of scope

Principal Consultant International Business
Member of the Community Project Board

Kristof Coomans

Monday 13 July 2009 1:38:48 am

Is the presentation from the conference barcamp available somewhere? It doesn't seem to be listed at http://ez.no/company/ez_conference_awards/ez_conference_2009_report

Also, an important topic to be discussed are the eZ Systems policies regarding commercial information attached to your projects/profile/... Has this been discussed at the conference and if so, what has been the outcome of the discussion? What I'd like to see is that you as creator of the 9GPL-ed) project have full freedom to manage it the way you want, if you want to let people know on your project page that you offer commercial support for it, then that should be just allowed, as about any other software project hosting sites do. See also the recent discussions at http://blog.coomanskristof.be/2009/05/22/share-your-information-censorin/

independent eZ Publish developer and service provider | http://blog.coomanskristof.be | http://ezpedia.org

kracker (the)

Tuesday 18 August 2009 3:05:11 am

Hello Everyone,

I am eager to hear just what news of the new site is shared in the future. What's going on :)

@ John Arne Jørgensen

Per your request. I have completed initial development on a new rss feed which provides a list of the most recently updated content objects within the website. Please let me know what you think!

http://ezpedia.org/en/rss/updated/updated

We hope that this gesture (in feature form) will encourage continued discussions.

Cheers,
<i>//kracker

Theme: Sole and The Skyrider Band - Stupid Things Implode On The...</i>

Member since: 2001.07.13 || http://ezpedia.se7enx.com/

zurgutt -

Wednesday 16 September 2009 9:36:26 am

@Kristof: noticed this thread very late but about the conference: I raised the question about control and censoring at the session about new community site and at least got a direct and honest answer (from Paul i think). I nearly quote: "yes, we will control the site and yes, we will censor you if we want to". (I asked what they will do if i write something they dont like)

Well, someone has to be in control of site. But earlier this year, after the issue about censoring your page came up, I was contacted on skype by someone very central from eZ Systems and promised that there will be discussion about related policies and the new community site at the conference. Setting up a control board for new site, containing community member(s) was mentioned.

None of this was discussed and my related questions were mostly ignored or sidebrushed at conference.

So i would like to have a explanation, why the change of plans. And I hope this can still be fixed.

Certified eZ developer looking for projects.
zurgutt at gg.ee

Paul Forsyth

Wednesday 16 September 2009 10:16:02 am

Hey,

I agree that the time at the conference was too short for everything to be discussed.

From next month this will kick off. There will be a community board, and this will guide the site forward. It will be as you expect.

I'm sorry communication has been lacking. Its not because our heads are in the sand :)

Regards,

Paul

eZ Systems

Robin Muilwijk

Friday 18 September 2009 12:28:13 pm

For those interested, a new book has been released, and it is available under an open source license:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/09/18/the-art-of-community-available-for-free-download/

Title: The Art of Community, building the new age participation

Maybe it can be of some help to the new community site as well, even if it is just as a reference.

Board member, eZ Publish Community Project Board - Member of the share.ez.no team - Key values: Openness and Innovation.

LinkedIn: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk // Twitter: http://twitter.com/i_robin // Skype: robin.muilwijk

Piotrek Karaś

Sunday 27 September 2009 2:20:59 am

Hello all,

I've got few questions regarding the new community site.

1) When is the new site expected to be online? Is there any test version that could be downloaded or accessed?

2) Many members and especially eZ System partners are most probably aware of the new partner program that is being introduced (actually was first discussed around the same time that the new community site, at the conference). As far as I understand it, eZ Systems want to turn the partner program 100% commercial. Now, I don't want to go into discussing that here - probably deserves another forum thread - but I would like to think about what impact can that have on the community.

Take my company for example. We've been with eZ for about three years now, getting and giving back most of what's possible for a silver level partner, but now we're unlikely to maintain that level with the introduction of the new program. What that means is that we will become community partners. In such case, what will be the ways of having ourselves promoted in the new community site as a company?
a) Will there be a list and/or a ranking of community partners? If so, what will that be based on?
b) Will any community partners or any community activities be still promoted at ez.no?
I believe Zurgutt's concerns and questions are very relevant here.

3) How flexible will the community site maintainer be to future enhancement or functionality requests? I do realize this might have been more difficult to handle with the current state of things, but should be much easier if the community website gets disconnected from ez.no.

4) Will the existing community be migrated to the new community site as a starting point? If so, what will be migrated? Existing forums for example?

5) Will the new community site be somehow integrated with the issue tracker?

If any of these questions were addressed already at the conference, I'm sure all the community could be interested anyways.

Thanks,
Piotrek

--
Company: mediaSELF Sp. z o.o., http://www.mediaself.pl
eZ references: http://ez.no/partners/worldwide_partners/mediaself
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/272585
eZ blog: http://ez.ryba.eu

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