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Making GL Professional

Sunday, June 30 2002 @ 05:35 pm EDT
Contributed by: MLimburg
Views: 20,337

This is a general call to all folks who are using GL. How do we make GL more professional? Now, let me define this a little ... I'm taking about polish, making GL into an easier beast to use everyday - rather than installation or configuration issues. What do you think GL needs to make it more streamlined, optioned, and simplier from a user AND admin point of view. Does it function well for those non-technical folks that are using it? How can be make it better?

Comments

Making GL Professional | 36 comments | Create New Account

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My take

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Sunday, June 30 2002 @ 07:07 pm EDT

There should be 2 points of contact. 1 database installation, the other should be just some simple configuration. If you want to make the configuration easy, get everything done in php. But that then becomes a hassle if someone is merely upgrading.

Actually..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Sunday, June 30 2002 @ 10:44 pm EDT

I personally think it\'s already quite easy to use.
If you can find an easier to install/use framework I\'d like to hear about
it. It always comes down to that tradeoff.. Ease of use means
assumptions (in context), which in turn means it works well for some and
dies for others. If you could define the final picture, then you might get
the form tight. From past experience it seems there will Always be those
who have difficulties due to lack of experience, and that\'s OK too, they
just need a little extra support. Hmmm.. how can we improve the users..
:) - perhaps some well written documentation, demonstrable practices
etc.

There were three reasons for my choosing GL. The first, it looked pretty.
The second, it stacked up well against 5 other php portals. The third, it
required almost nothing to tweak to taste.

Forgive the metaphors and abstractions here, that\'s just how i see it :)

Actually..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Monday, July 01 2002 @ 12:08 am EDT

Anon is totally right. I reviewed the entire nuke family and several content management packages and choose GL because it fit _all_ my requirements. None of the others did.

GL has encouraged me to learn PHP coding and made it a simple and straight foward process to see how almost everything works. The code is not blended stirn noodles hacked and patched to the point of getting a doctorate in GL to work on it.

My install took all of ten mins. It worked the first time. It till works and the bugs I encountered are being fixed.

Block and plugins installs are pretty simple, like cookbooking and not like appendix removal.

Help is available everywhere I look.

etc, ad nausium, till your eyes fall out reading the good stuff.

Bad stuff--
Documentation. I know you guys will have it for us when it\'s ready, but most people choosing this for business solutions are not the IT kiddos. They are \"the guy who \'knows\' computers\", I know because for years I was that guy. Know one windows keyboard shortcut and you\'re the department \"webmaster\".

That\'s all that comes to mind right now.

My own users are a good spread of \"so I use that browser thingy right?\" to \"Gads, Max, for the love of God, dont use sprintf there.\" The ones having trouble figuring out posting usually admit to difficulty understanding the terminology, so I changes \"web resources\" to \"links\" and some other things in the langue file per directions from the guys on the #IRC channel and that was that, no more complaints. one user couldn\'t find a link back to the home page, so I told him about the link in the header..... ect.

As a business solution, GL makes an excellant program to keep people up to date and post policies (static pages), gathering user data via polls, help manage contacts and makes inter user communications a snap.

I\'ll shut up now.
--Max

Actually..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 08:38 pm EDT

I think you miss the point. You want this to be either well received by more people or you don\'t.
The current configuration consists of me performing the following functions:
1. Untarring the stuff
2. Creating a mysql user and database and assigning rights to the user
3. Modify lib-common.php so that it knows where to read the config file
4. Running the installation script which then attempts to build everything, provided this \"everything\" is in the correct directory structure the tarball came in.
5. Editing this config file again so that things do not screw up.
6. Changing the password of the admin user.

If this is to be made easier, you will probably want step 3 to do step 4, right?? And you do want people to locate their config.php somewhere safe right?

Anyway, you will delete directories such as sql, docs and other directories like that rite?

For upgrading, recently, things just got a bit messy. In fact, I dun really do \"upgrading\". I tend to like to copy the whole directory structure, and update the database a little, and just sit back. But with the installation script thing, I ain\'t able to do that anymore. I had to grab the sqldump and edit that and dump that back in the server, utter waste of time if GL was able to do dumps before.

I\'m pretty sure when I chose GL, it was coz one of the things the original dude said he wanted was for GL to be secure. And I\'ve tried to also help ensure all my installations of GL are secure.

Ciao
ST Lim

Actually..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 07:00 pm EDT

I haven\'t read all of the other comments so I won\'t comment on them, but I\'ve been experimenting with several CMS\'s/Portals/blogs and the one thing consistantly lacking has been documentation for the average user who doesn\'t know php from mysql from a hole under thier belly button ...All they know if \"Can I figure it out in 8 seconds?\" If they don\'t they leave and usually never come back.
Most web developers have run across this with family and friends... They don\'t know spit so you lose them right from the beginning time and time again so you just give up.

I haven\'t tried geeklog out yet and just downloaded it, but the fact that you ask at all is a good sign ;)

Tristate
...OH KY IN We\'re looking for a CMS/Portal/Blog so the \'dummies\' can use it too... :)

Posting

Authored by: krove on Monday, July 01 2002 @ 10:37 am EDT

I guess the only real complaint my company users have is formatting posts requires pure HTML. Now I understand that making the jump from a pseudo-formatting code (like UBB or phpBB for example) to HTML is not all that great. Getting the formatting just how you want it, however is not straight-forward for the non-technical minded user: a return in the text box is not reflected in a story, and the user invariably forgets to add in a < br > tag.

The hack to use JavaScript when creating a story was just marvelous - and I think it should be built directly into GeekLog as standard. The users find it much simpler. Using the templates, my users can quickly and easily enter support issues, log certain problems, etc.

Most of the other issues seem to be coming in later upgrades (document management, multi-page stories, better handling of text -- stripslash issues, etc). I can\'t wait for future versions, but I imagine that upgrading will still be a chore for those of us who modify the out-of-box configuration (possible to lessen that impact?)...

That\'s all I can come up with for the moment, but as I write more and more customizations, stuff will probably come up.

Ahh..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Monday, July 01 2002 @ 12:45 pm EDT

Yes, you\'re right.
Regarding the JS inline editor, I like it too. I found it very useful. Unlike
most scenarios (yes, the paid ones) it\'s simple nough to travel, and
generous enough for the inexperienced (by travel I mean cross platform
- I saw it 4 different boxes.)

As for the retweaking on upgades, THAT is my greatest dilemma. I\'m a
developer, and drift through GL frequently tweaking functions that just
can\'t live outside core (ie I\'ll work off the existing codebase rather than
reinvent the wheel - and a felxible one it is too :-).

Looking forward to the fun and games.. :) !

How to make geeklog more professional

Authored by: Remdotc on Monday, July 01 2002 @ 02:54 pm EDT

First off, I would like to state, I think geeklog is great. If it wasnt, I wouldnt be using it for the basis of turning my website to a dynamic using php.

I. Code
A. From a new coder point of view, your comment system is good, but could be better.
Varribles found in most group collabrative software, are all doccumented before used, Case in point, lib-common.php vs config.php. While config.php is really well written, lib-common is a jungle, making the lives of anyone who wants to add, change, or extend a class, difficult at best
B. Hook & Forks for dummies
Most people call this \"custom coding\", or hacks, to the software. While most people who use software do like to tinker with the code, there are a lot of newbie programers, or Newbies to php (cough...cough) that havent had, or dont know the answers to what are the most common questions . While this board is good, opens up a lot od discussion and is really helpful, Perhaps a step by step or how-to\'s

II. Doccumentation.
A. The default doccumentation that comes with geeklog is way out of date. General rule of thumb is, if its old or wrong, don\'t distribute it, instead just leave a readme file that says. Go to this website for online doccumentation, or update it.

Well, Here\'s My Thoughts

Authored by: MLimburg on Monday, July 01 2002 @ 05:53 pm EDT

I\'m trying to keep this focused on the user/admin experience AFTER install ...

WHATS NEW BLOCK; this needs updating. I am thinking establishing different blocks for NEW_EVENTS, NEW_STORIES, NEW_COMMENTS, NEW_POLLS and NEW_LINKS. Also, a NEW_GLOBAL block, which can be configured (via config.php) to show a combination of entities.

FORUMS; need a forum view, nuff said.

DATA ENTRY; I agree with above, we need a nice simple way to enter formatting into GL that avoids raw html in a textarea. There is a Flash editor in discussion, which would rock. There are four options I know of, an editor written in Flash, an activeX editor (all commercial to my knowledge), the embedded html editor in mozilla (called the blogger project i think), and a javascript frontend. So far, the javascipt option is viable NOW. I think, we should start here, and implement the Flash editor once our uber-flash-gurus (as opposed to our flashing-uber-gurus) get this working.

THEMES; we need a few corporate themes. There\'s clean, but we need more. Smooth_Blue does a good job (I use it within an intranet i run here, and it\'s quite slick) but we need something with real polish. I\'m going to start bending my brain on this one.

ADMIN; we do need some streamlining here. I\'ll go over it and see how it goes, but I\'m sure some generic cleaning and reformatting would be fairly simple to do.

CALENDAR; i think this needs a little overhaul. The \'location\' field is redundant with address1, address2, suburb, etc. I\'d like to add a RSVP date and CONTACT details. I\'d like to also add some security features, like allowing sensitive information (aka the address details) having a possible group assignment .. so public users can see the event, but they need to contact someone to GET the details. Also, the ability to copy an event ... man, i need this one :)

DOC MANAGEMENT PLUGIN; yeah we need it, and i have to finish it.

GALLERY PLUGIN; hey, i\'m a busy guy ... get off my back ...

SHOPPING CART; another needed thing. I\'ve got a plan for this, mostly from code in my latest php/mysql book. Basically, one level of categories, range of assorted items, with images, able to add to a cart, blah blah blah. The config file for the plugin has a \'secure url\' so you can define https:// type addresses (just leave it blank to use the normal url). Currently, the code has three options, 1) to email the order to a nominated user (after being GPGed), 2) keeping it in a database, 3) using a payment engine API to process the details. More nwes to come on this one.

DOCUMENTATION; and here I mean the typical \'context help\' type of thing. We need it, and we need it written in a way that can work on *many* sites.

Enough typing, my fingers hurt.

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Well, Here\'s My Thoughts

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 02:16 am EDT

Hey Mlimburg, as far as the file mangement thing goes... look into The Vault here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vault

Seems like a good start and is GPL. Haven't tried it out just yet but the sql looks reasonable and the features look like a good match for GL's needs.

Well, Here\'s My Thoughts

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 12:33 pm EDT

I agree with you that it should be made easier to edit a page.
Raw HTML is not something most editors have knowledge of.

I personaly use a wikisite for my website and the wikiengine is not that big. Mayby it is possible to include it in Geeklog?

I am not a programmer but if somebody who is also familiar with Wiki could take a look at it. :-)

Greetings,
Jeroen Roeterd

Well, Here\'s My Thoughts

Authored by: MLimburg on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 07:07 pm EDT

I\'d love to see a wiki plugin, but from a quick look around the various php basde wiki systems, I cant see one that would integrate into GL with ease. It will take some programming for it to really integrate.

(HINT HINT to any wiki programmers out there)

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

My two cents

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 02:08 am EDT

GL is a nifty piece of Code, but it still lacks some basic features. Let me try to gather a few.

For one, the admin cannot change basic user preferences. What if I don\'t want my users to change the layout? What if I don\'t want new users to receive their password via E-Mail? I canot turn this of without plunging into the code. BTW, there\'s no linkto the admins section in the admin block.

As mentioned before, the Themes are rather thin in variety, but that should solve itself in time. The installation instructions need to be worded a bit more clearly. In a way that also a complete Newbie will grasp the point.

All in all I think GL is on the way to be professional. With some more work and a bit of cleaning up the code this will be first choice for MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANY people!

My two cents

Authored by: knuckles on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 11:46 am EDT

So what you need is something along these lines:

1) User requests account
2) Request goes into queue on server for admin to approve
3) Admin approves request and sets prefs for email, themes, story
access, group member etc.

knuckles

Feature request party?

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 02:19 am EDT

Well, as long as we\'re all making feature requests.. here\'s mine. Edit comments by submitter, if logged in, just to make it a reasonable coding request.

A nice little \'edit\' link that only shows up for the submitter, similar to stories would be nice. Preview only goes so far. Especially late at night!

Flash text editor

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 02:30 am EDT

Check out this guys site.... very nice.

http://www.illogicz.com/flashmx/texteditor/

Flash text editor

Authored by: knuckles on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 11:21 am EDT

LOL, I\'m building a Flash text editor for Geeklog as well. I\'ll contact
the author to get some info from him. Thanks for the pointer, but I
agree that the most important thing Geeklog needs is an input device
that our grandparents can use.

Thanks again!

knuckles

Flash text editor

Authored by: MLimburg on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 07:12 pm EDT

That\'s pretty slick ... I found it to react fairly slowely though, but it certainly fits the bill! If you could have a dropdown box to insert smilies, it would replace most (all?) the javascript editors I\'ve seen.

Has anyone else encounter slow reactions within this thing?

Sheesh, I\'m drooling already ..

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Flash text editor

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, July 04 2002 @ 04:00 pm EDT

Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｔｈａｔ　ｉｔ　ｗｉｌｌ　ｂｅ　ｔｏ　ｓｌｏｗ　ｆｏｒ　ｄｉａｌ－ｕｐ　ｃｏｎｎｅｃｔｉｏｎｓ。　　Ｉ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｔｈａｔ　ｍｏｓｔ　ｏｆ　ｕｓ　ｕｓｅ　ｈｉｇｈ－ｂａｎｄｗｉｔｈ　ｃｏｎｎｅｃｔｉｏｎｓ，　ｂｕｔ　ｔｈｅｒｅ　ａｒｅ　ｔｈｏｓｅ　ｉｎ　ｍｙ　ｃｉｒｃｌｅ　ｗｈｏ　ｄｅｆｉｎａｔｅｌｙ　ｄｏ　ｎｏｔ。　　Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｔｈａｔ　ａ　ｇｏｏｄ　ｊａｖａｓｃｒｉｐｔ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｗａｙ　ｔｏ　ｇｏ－－ｂｕｔ　ｏｆ　ｃｏｕｒｓｅ　ｙｏｕ　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｈａｖｅ　ａ　ｐｒｏｂｌｅｍ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｂｒｏｗｓｅｒ　ｃｏｍｐａｔｉｂｉｌｉｔｙ。　　Ｕｎｌｅｓｓ　ｙｏｕ　ｌｏａｄｅｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｔｅｘｔ　ｅｄｉｔｏｒ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｂａｃｋｇｒｏｕｎｄ　ａｆｔｅｒ　ａ　ｐｅｒｓｏｎ　ｈａｓ　ｃｏｎｎｅｃｔｅｄ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｉｔｅ。　　Ｊｕｓｔ　ａ　ｔｈｏｕｇｈｔ。

Templates

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 08:45 am EDT

Has anyone here used VBulletin on the admin side? I imagine there have been a few. We should have an admin section similar to that. You could still build in themes and store them in a DB and templates for quick changes. This would eliminate the need for a lot of files. If you haven’t seen it I’m sure there is a demo at www.vbulletin.com

A function to turn off/on the site with a message to say changes are being done and to come back shortly would also be a good idea for those who’d like to implement changes. The ability to also view the site when it’s turned off if you’re an admin is also key for this to work properly.

That’s about all I can think of for now.

Shane
www.eyecravedvd.com

If this is a feature request...

Authored by: Remdotc on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 09:01 am EDT

Features, that would be cool

I. Ablity to restrict user account creation, ie approved via admin
II. Karma for stories, articles and links
III. Add, more of a modular design, for front end. I.E. Allow users to insead of having to use a theme arround a fixed block engine (much like almost all portal wares) give users the option of just calling one parsed html page, with the options they want. This would allow anyone to quickly design a site they way they wanted it, without having to understand nested tables ectra, or use the current theme design
IV. Add more options to the conf file, so nothing is hardcoded
V. Add caching sparse system, ie rewrite index.php?=topic/sidXXXXX$pid=XXX to index/topic.XXXXXX,XXX.html. With an configurible caching time for Blocks and for main section. This would not only make the site use less resources and speed up page load time, but would also make dynamic pages search engine friendly

If this is a feature request...

Authored by: dreamscape on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 06:17 am EDT

I. Ablity to restrict user account creation, ie approved via admin

This has certainly been brought up on a number of occasions, especially by myself. Basically you're preaching to the choir. I plan to get (maybe do) the following implemented; a user authentication system with several methods, manual approval is one of them.

II. Karma for stories, articles and links

We've talked about this, and if you've got good ideas for karma we'd like to hear them as many many sites deal with this problem. I'd just say Karma for modules though and let developers / admins decide what gets karma.

III. Add, more of a modular design, for front end. I.E. Allow users to insead of having to use a theme arround a fixed block engine (much like almost all portal wares) give users the option of just calling one parsed html page, with the options they want. This would allow anyone to quickly design a site they way they wanted it, without having to understand nested tables ectra, or use the current theme design

Definitely a point of contention for a lot of people involved with geeklog. This comes from two places though, people developing themes and people developing interfaces. It's non-trivial but something I agree would make geeklog much nicer.

IV. Add more options to the conf file, so nothing is hardcoded

Yeah, we're way ahead of you on this one. Probably going to move the configuration to the database with lots of descriptive text around the options so people understand exactly how they can change things. And, being db enabled, we'll make this web based configurations.

V. Add caching sparse system, ie rewrite index.php?=topic/sidXXXXX$pid=XXX to index/topic.XXXXXX,XXX.html. With an configurible caching time for Blocks and for main section. This would not only make the site use less resources and speed up page load time, but would also make dynamic pages search engine friendly

You're actually talking about 2 issues here caching, and search engine friendly urls.

Caching is something that we have to think about long and hard. Tony and I had a discussion the other day about the scalability of geeklog, if geeklog is going to run a pretty decent site (something along the lines of slashdot or thinkgeek or freshmeat, you get my point?) it'll obviously need to be run on a farm of servers hitting one beefy database with all the niceties of load balancing and fail over, etc, etc. Caching is a function of the machine it's on naturally, but we can force cache through the filesystem. Some of this becomes difficult based on user preferences, sticky connections, good use of cache, nice timeout settings, etc. Definitely something to think about from a performance standpoint, and we are.

URL rewriting, aka, search engine friendly URLs is another issue that's come up quite a bit. (you should live in #geeklog with the rest of us) :) There are several issues/options with this:

First, the best method is probably some combination of apache's forceType and modrewrite functionality.
- For the uninitiated, forceType directives allow a user to configure their apache server to force the mime-type of all the files in a given directory. This would be useful in our case to forceType php on all the public_html directory files. Then we could have files like geeklog.com/users, stories, etc. No .php extension needed.
- Mod rewrite on the other hand allows you to take a url like geeklog.com/stories/1/2/3 and rewrite it to stories?storyId=1&something=2&this=3.
- Problems:
  1. You need to be running apache
  2. You need to compile apache with both mod-rewrite and forceType
  3. You have to be able to handle the configuration issues of both modules
  4. You probably need to be running your own server and not be in a hosted environment.
A second option is to use PATHINFO in php.
- There is a known bug with this and IIS.
- This does provide a decent crossplatform solution once the IIS bug gets worked out and doesn't require any server configuration

Group access

Authored by: knuckles on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 01:29 pm EDT

Here\'s my scenario, I have multiple departments and nothing to hide.
I want to publish everything but I want the information each
department gets to show up on the *main* site page ONLY if it has to
do with them. Any other stories simply get supressed, they can
search for it, but I don\'t want their attention detracted to information
meant for the *other* department.

Right now I can get around this by setting up the user account and
then logging in *as* the user and checking off the topics I don\'t want
them to see on the main page. I\'d rather be able to do that from the
*user* creation page. Save me a trip.

Better yet, I\'d like to see a user section in the \"Groups\" editor that
allows me to set some user preferences globally to all users in that
group. So for instance, I can toggle the \"accounting\" topic to
SUPRESS for all the users in the group \"Engineering\" that don\'t need
to see the posts from the accounting group flying around. But at the
same time, if an engineer wants to see those stories, they can search
the accounting topic.

Possibly even an option that allows the user to *see* the site as
another department would. So after an engineer is done reading
about stories that pertain to his dept, he can view the site as the
accounting dept would see it that day and read their news and so on.

knuckles

Another Important Aspect ..

Authored by: efarmboy on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 05:01 pm EDT

Part of making GL 'professional is to allow non technical users administrate GL. They need to be able to easily add/remove functionality. Block and Module developers need to to have a doc-umented and supported method of allowing the GL admin interface to install and de-install the add-on easily.

This would includes items as:

Doc-umented development guidelines

Standard module directory

Module config file

Module languages file with all display text variables

Module admin definitions: requried by GL admin install/de-install

GL version specific patches for auto versioning support

Security group config: Some standard GL definitions here to support GL security model

Module sql updates

Now, the admin tool would automatically detect the new addon and allow admins to install,de-install,activate or de-activate the module/plugin.

Other features and would likes:

Ability for users to edit their comments (noted before)

Private messaging for GL users (plugin idea)

What's new block that knows you and what you've seen

Option to set an alert on a story for changes - more visable then what's new

Option to set limit on RDF feed news items - per block

Ability to setup re-occuring calendar events

Ability for GL users to optionally share calendars

More business look and feel themes

Ability for users to alter the block location and decide on a two or three column view

Ability to define a new view for a topic and select blocks and different layout
Today, you can configure a block to appear for all or specfic topic. This would be the other way around

Ideas meant for constructive dialog - I'm a GL lover as well.

Cheers,
Blaine

Another Important Aspect ..

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, July 05 2002 @ 10:48 am EDT

Can\'t agree more with Blaine on this, especially with respect to module and block support. I\'m currently \"playing\" with GL and think it\'s got great potential (it\'s very fast for me...OS X Server/Apache). *However*, when it comes to installing/activating blocks and modules Postnuke blows it away. Witness what people are having to go through to install Gallery! I\'m not very knowledgeable when it comes to any of this stuff, just knowing enough to be dangerous and stumble through the documentation, and *for me* GL\'s way of getting modules and blocks installed is a hassle. I don\'t mind editing a confg file now and then, but I don\'t want to have to tweak all kinds of files and then spend sometimes hours trying to figure out why they won\'t work. GL really needs a Postnuke like way to simply drop a module folder in the right directory, initialise it, and activate it. Simple. I\'ll be keeping my eye on the CMS, but for now, Postnuke fits my needs better.

2 bits

Authored by: Euan on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:20 pm EDT

Again, thanks guys for a fantastic program. I couldn\'t live without it. Now for the gripes (constructively):

Internationalisation: I note that none of the twenty comments already here as I write this (unless I missed one) mention internationalisation. I run a site in English/Japanese and tend to find that almost NO software ever fits my needs. I would like more control over character encoding (I can edit the templates for a charset, but it would be nice to set that per language from an admin panel). Time zones have been addressed elsewhere.

To make GL really godlike, an option to change the text content according to the language. If the user chooses the Japanese skin, they get shown the Japanese language version of a story (if available - default to admin-defined default). But I\'ll wait for GL3 for this if I can have control over encoding in GL2. Hell, I\'d pay for this (whoa, let\'s not get carried away now).

Also, ability to set the topic titles from a language file - I have to write \"english | japanese\" for all my topics, which takes up a lot of space.

Otherwise, I would support almost all the features mentioned above, particularly an improved editor. I am always dubious about using anything other than JS or plain HTML... but maybe that\'s purely a mental limitation on my part. From my internet business (not related to GL but relevant I think), I always have to think about the user in China with a dodgy 14kbps modem and a 386 running windows 3.1 with Netscape from before they had numbers. Do they have Flash installed? Okay, they don\'t have JS either, but also don\'t forget the user with a fairly simple platform.

Cheers, Euan.

---
-- Heather Engineering
-- No job too small

2 bits

Authored by: MLimburg on Tuesday, July 02 2002 @ 10:42 pm EDT

Aside from the internationalisation issue, you\'ve raised a VERY good point. Whilst having a flash enabled editor would just rock my/our world, we always need to ensure we support the lowest range of users.

We get used to the idea of 56k modem connections and Pentium level machines as the standard with higher systems being used, but there are PLENTY of older slower systems out there. When I was working at Monash University, we had to deal with international users on 386\'s with 1200b modems running on crappy lines .. it would have been faster to send the packets via cranky pack animals over goat tracks.

We can check a good deal of this via javascript. If the test is successful, they get the \'use the flashy stuff\' flag. Allow them to switch this flag in the account section. And allow everyone else the lowest common system that will work on everything.

---
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Pretty good turn out

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 12:21 am EDT

Just wanted to say that this looks like a pretty good turn out by GL users. Lots of feature requests to mull over. I\'m pretty sure that Squatty , et al are having a heart attack thinking about all this... :-p

Just goes to show you how many fans there really are for GL though.

I recently audited DCP-Portal as an alternative... it had rave reviews. Problem was it \'required\' a DirectX/Active-X plugin just to submit a story as an admin... WTF? not too mention how inelegant it was. They obviously put a lot of effort into it but I\'m still choosing GL as my solution.

Keep up the good work, community.

Did anyone say

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, July 03 2002 @ 12:04 pm EDT

A start page for users with control panel instead of the normal links.

Did anyone say

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, July 04 2002 @ 03:35 am EDT

Sometimes the admin block gets in the way - it would be nice to be able to turn it off, and have a separate page for admin.

Did anyone say

Authored by: Euan on Tuesday, July 09 2002 @ 09:53 pm EDT

You can do this, but it means messing in lib-common.php. Would it be possible to make the admin block more accessible/controllable? This is getting off thread... feature request?

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-- Heather Engineering
-- No job too small

I\'ll ask my wife to chime in

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Thursday, July 04 2002 @ 12:17 pm EDT

I\'m a techie so maybe I\'m not the person who really should be answering this. But I set up my wife with a GL site and I\'ll bet she\'d have some good feedback for you. I\'ll send her your way.

cheers,
-Alan

A couple of small suggestions

Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Friday, July 05 2002 @ 07:40 am EDT

First off, I would like to say that you guys have done a great job on this weblog system. But I do have a few minor qualms with some things.

First off, anytime you have to change a password you should be forced to confirm it. All of the password fields I have found in GeekLog only require you to enter a password once to change it. If anyone out there is like me, I type my password very fast and sometimes my right hand gets ahead of my left and I screw it up. This is very dangerous and can be almost catastrophic if you do it while changing the admin password.

Second, maybe it is just me, but the forum feature is a little tough for me to follow, at least in the default threaded mode. I keep getting lost when I click on one of the sub-threads in the conversation. The nested works best for me, but maybe for threaded you could have the currently viewed response at the top, and a tree view of the thread below so that you can see where you are in the conversation.

Just my two cents

alphajoe

Forum

Authored by: etegration on Saturday, July 06 2002 @ 06:54 am EDT

I am dying for a forum! Mr Gxblock\'s forum is having issues and I am trying to help test out his new user.php stuffs...gxblock, get some sleep dude! You\'re working too hard! haha...btw, thanks man!

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http://www.etegration.com.sg
http://www.itcow.com
http://www.ministryofhosting.com

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