Wow, this is amazing! (plus **VISION**)

[shafer]

Wow, I think this forum has an all-time world record for the number of sticky/announcement threads in it! You should get a prize or something!

First off, I should really apologize. I'm so sorry for being out of touch during this critical period when Shari and Dan were doing this great work building a database, and Martin and Graeme and Jim and Emma were busy writing up new species descriptions for all the loaches. I had to fly across the country for 2 weeks to take care of my girlfriend while she went in for lung surgery (fortunately, all is well now), and was hopelessly behind at work when I returned. I'm really sorry for letting Loaches Online float as long as I have.

Let's talk a bit about vision to make sure we're all on the same page. Using the forums for the species description is just temporary since it's "convenient" to edit pages as a group. (Or, better than emailing pages back and forth!) The stickies were never intended to be permanent! Having Shari/Dan's index to this forum looks very handy as a development tool to find the page quickly, but something more complete is needed for the final site.

What I'd really like to do for Loaches Online is have the entire site editable by all of you. Just imagine that every page has an edit button at the top, and all of the moderators can log in, make their change, and have it immediately visible. In some ways it would be similar to editing messages at the forum, but you would have complete control over the entire site, instead of being stuck in this message format with avatars on the left-hand side.

Does everyone have high-speed internet access? There's a 53MB QuickTime video that describes what I'm talking about far better than text. Go to http://plone.org/about/movies and choose "Editing with Plone". It's 12 minutes long and is really worth watching.

Can't you just imagine Loaches Online built with that software? Look how easy it was to make a nicely formatted web page with different text styles, tables, links and more. Even more, look how easy it was to upload a big full-screen picture, and then flip/rotate it and put it on a web page as a thumbnail. This would be perfect for the species index, since I really want to preserve all those great BIG images that are currently available. You wouldn't have to use Photoshop to shrink the images manually. All of the images could be attached to the site itself and would be searchable too, instead of having to upload them somewhere else entirely like we do on the forum now. They didn't show it very much, but you can make folders to build separate sections of the website too. (i.e. species index, articles, etc.) We could build the entire site (except for the forum, which would remain separate) using one piece of standard off-the-shelf (free) software and could upgrade when they add new features that would help us.

(To be honest, this software existed last year. Some of you may remember it by name when I proposed using it. But this IMAGE support didn't exist, and I decided that having easy support for large and small images was crucial for Loaches Online. Without it, it was going to be too complicated for everyone to produce a professional quality website as a team. I looked at dozens of software packages since then and never found something that had everything I needed, until I noticed this recent upgrade.)

I should really write to Shari and Dan and get an idea of what they envision for the database / website they're building, and where they're currently at in the design. It's quite possible all their great work can be wrapped up with this software as well. Anyway, I haven't forgotten about you and I've got (all) of your emails still in my in-box! But, it's 3am and I am out of energy for the day. Anyway, watch the video, and if you're interested in that software, I could install it this weekend and give you all logins for a test. (I'd go ahead and copy a few species descriptions into it first, so you could get an idea of the vision I have and we won't start a discussion at a blank slate...)

Thanks!

Jeff

[Graeme Robson]

That is one impressive program. You have my vote, Jeff.

[Martin Thoene]

Oh wow! Now that is a thing of beauty! Entertaining guy too.

I know there's a million and one other things required to get the "look" of the site itself, but that kind of editing capability and functionality is really impressive.

As a visual kind of person, I really like the possibilities for on page image resizing. I think for visual interest to the reader it would be really excellent to distribute our available images throughout profiles and articles.

Things like my Hillstream Loaches article need another update and this could be an ongoing thing. So much easier to be able to do it myself rather than have to send you (Jeff) the text and have you upload the revised version.

I'm all for getting it uploaded so that we can see it for real and then there's a working tool that we can use to determine what feels right to the majority of us.

With the text and linking capabilities of that program, we could come up with some very user-friendly, easy on the eye pages. For a non computer technical person like myself I feel I could get pretty savvy with that quite easily. I absolutely love that highlighted text quote feature. Extremely useful I feel to drum home certain points to the reader.

"Botiine Loaches should not be kept with Rift-Lake Cichlids as their water-chemistry requirements are vastly different"

That sort of thing.

We have a standard format for these profiles already. With this sort of system, we can find a standard "look" for that format very easily with this software it seems.

I'm going to look at the Plone site some more because I'm interested in page framing, colors, backgrounds that sort of thing......visual me!

Jeff, good to hear your other half is on the mend. Send my wishes for a speedy recovery.

Martin.

[Emma Turner]

This sounds really excellent. I do have broadband, but I'm finding that I can't get the video to play at the moment. Is there anything obvious I'm doing wrong, I just click on the Editing with Plone bit and nothing happens?

Emma

[Martin Thoene]

Emma, my computer wouldn't play it in Quicktime which is what you should get when you click on the picture. Click on the "other formats" text below the picture and on the left sidebar click on DivX.

That played it no problem for me.

Martin.

[Graeme Robson]

Mine played it in Quicktime, it was just a waiting game. The little download icon was at the bottom lefthand corner. It took around 5mins to download, but it worked.

[shari2]

First of all, I am glad that things went well with the surgery Jeff. Last week I had wondered if something was wrong and considered sending you an email...

Some thoughts on Plone:

1. It is very versatile, and easy for users to develop their own folders.

>>this is good for those developing the page, and allows anyone to build anything they like into their folders.

>>this is bad in that anyone can put anything they want there, and if a user searches, all items with the search terms are pulled. If someone decides to get funny, they can place a page defining A. elongatus as a panther complete with photos and funny text. Seaching A. elongatus will also pull that 'funny' page from their folder. Now, I'm not saying that any of US will do that , and if we are the only people who have folders that are createable, then that concern would be eliminated.

Are we talking about using this strictly as a development tool, used by the moderators and Jeff?

If so, do we really need a database at all? If Plone can be the storage/usage site for all the developers, it looks like that will not really be necessary. All the information would be linked to the pages built there and it would be sort of the 'database' for site searches. Of course, that works Dan and I out of a job...and he was having fun with it.

2. Using Plone will simplify the process.

>>This is good in that everyone developing has access to a tool that will allow each person to add their contributions easily.

>>This may be problematic in maintaining a unified format.

What safeguards would be in place to keep things standardized?

Can one moderator edit another's folders? I think so...?

The software itself is very easy to use, and can do just about everything needed for developing a site. It pretty much eliminates the need for a database linked to individual pages as it is right now. There will be no need to search on a field that's defined by a database. Users can search on a word or part of a word, and every page containing those words will be returned in the search.

The glossary function is nice too.

We went to a couple of pages built with Plone and registered at one. In the user preferences tab there was a box for 'Plone setup' but there were no actions that we could take as a registered user to change the configuration. This is good I think content management (especially in the development stages) should be restricted to Jeff and the team.

Of course, after looking around a bit, some of our earlier concerns are really not a concern at all. Plone should work, and work well for updating the site.

For me and Dan the question is what would you like us to do with what we have so far, and how would you like us to do it?

[shafer]

Hi Shari, great questions! Here's some of my "answers".

1.) Short term, the only users on the site would be the moderators. I'm sure I could disable the "create an account" feature so only I could create accounts.

Long term, it might be neat to let everyone make an account and create pages in their own user folder. It would certainly build a community. Lots of the pages would be kinda generic ("These are my fish. They are neat") and not necessarily suitable for inclusion in the main site. But moderators could approve / move the best pages into the main site. This would be a good way to get new moderators on the site too. People can start off small and learn how things work. Think how excited you would be as a new user if you made a page under your folder, and then the moderators liked it and moved it to the main site for everyone to see!

I wouldn't want the user pages showing up in the search results (or at least the main search results), but that could be fixed too. Maybe with an option to search the main site (default) or user pages.

2.) I'm not sure if moderators can edit other user's folders. It doesn't really matter to me. But we wouldn't be building the site in user folders anyway. Rather, it would be built at the top level of the hierarchy, not under the Shafer or Shari folder.

3.) Plone would be the editing tool. But, it's built on a database. I'd need to get up to speed on working with it, but I could probably use the database scheme and data Dan has already created and use it to build a new species index automatically, rather than typing it all in using the editor. What format do you have the data in right now? How can I get it? What pages did you have finished that used it? (I'm looking at the great index right now, where I can sort by index or common name. That would be great to have in Plone as well)

I went ahead and purchased an account on a new server for a year to run Plone. (It's not compatible with the current Loaches Online server). We've got a 99-day trial period with a money back guarantee, which should be plenty of time to discover any hidden problems not mentioned in the glossy marketing video. Hopefully my account will be created ASAP and I can start work laying out some of the big sections, creating a few sample species pages, securing the site, and creating user accounts for all of the moderators.

This is exciting!

Jeff

[Jim Powers]

I got it to play, but got only audio.

Glad the surgery went well, Jeff.

[shafer]

I got it to play, but got only audio.

Glad the surgery went well, Jeff.

Aww, that's too bad. Did you try the DivX option too? ( Available at http://www.archive.org/details/EditingwithPlone )

[Jim Powers]

Yes I did.

[shafer]

Yes I did.

Hmmmn, well, there's not much we can do about it then. The video is probably made with a newer version of QuickTime ( http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ ) or DivX ( http://www.divx.com/ ) than you have installed on your computer. You could upgrade, or just wait until I create a user account for you on the new server.

[Jim Powers]

This is a new computer so I should have new updates. I'll keep trying.

[Jim Powers]

It worked this time. Go figure
That looks great!! Count me in!
Now I need to go fix myself a margarita for some reason.

[Martin Thoene]

I like the idea of us having user folders. It means we (moderators) can work on a page and then move it into the main viewable area right?

Wouldn't all users having the possibility of creating their own folder pages create a lot of excess on the server though? Definitely you'd want to limit the search capability to the main site.

Jeff, I don't know what your thoughts are on the visuals? Shari and Dan had run the Skiddoo Too Gargoyles past us and that sort of thing works basically as a layout IMO. Needs some refining though.

I'm seeing a lot of fish sites out there with immense visual clutter on their main pages. Fishgeeks is an unholy mess as far as I'm concerned. I guess the possibilities for visuals are relatively limitless, but my problem is not knowing how one creates them.

We've collectively decided that we believe a left-hand stacked groups of link buttons works. I always loved that system with the original Loaches Online format. We've talked about some of those buttons being small photos that link to group listings of similar fish that can take you onward to the specific species. There's a post in this forum somewhere where I did a schematic for how I think the linking system should work for user-friendliness. Thread is here. Other regular buttons link to other stuff, articles, etc.

We talked about the central field containing graphic links, i.e. artwork, whatever with titles that are click on links to Forums, News, Species Index, Disease info, Articles, etc.

I'm prepared to put a lot of artwork into this because I'm very into the appearance of things. I believe that a lot of sites fall down on their eye-friendliness. I like the Forum colour scheme a lot, but don't necessarily think that the deep blue carries over so well with main pages and other stuff such as the species profiles.

Everyone I'm sure has their own color preferences......I'm thinking we should go for calming colours. Earthy, natural tones maybe. I got this idea in my head today that's probably a bit feng-shui and connects into the fact that most of these fish are SE Asian in origin.

Basic layout like the Gargoyles. Up the left-hand side edge, a piece of Bamboo with leaves near the top who's tips overlap the main title box at the top. The left-hand button boxes float over another stick of bamboo that visually appears to support them. The bamboo harkens back to Clown Loach catching methods geddit?

Here's kinda what's in my head based on the Gargoyle layout:

Just ideas for discussion. Colors need tweaking around, fonts, just about everything ought to be considered, discussed and finalized and then once it's decided you come up with what you might call the "corporate look" of LOL. From that point everything can be created themed on the palette, font-styles, Logo and any other visual clues. You can do minor tweaks to this existing forum look to align with whatever gets chosen, retaining that visual connection even though the two things have their own identity.

With this main Homepage idea, I envision the main central part having texture.....like parchment. I've been looking at backgrounds today and there's a wonderful selection of stuff available free that could be utilized. I saw some beautiful stone effects and such like. I was thinking that background in a stone look with a parchment page on it might give a very Eastern feel to it. OK, I'm dreaming. just ideas and possibly not capable of happening or even fitting with other's ideas. I'm just putting down thoughts for everyone's edification into how my brain goes into overdive occasionally.....too much free time right now...............

Comments, ridicule, whatever, bring it on.

Oh...and that Clown Loach has to go from the top corner. How about artwork of a mixed species group with a new Logo floated over the picture base Jeff?

Martin.