building a true community of 200 sites

[David A. Bayly]

>I guess what's we're trying to do is figure out if Frontier can work 
>for our application. But we do not expect an "out of the box" 
>solution -- we assume we have to find someone to do some custom 
>development.
>
>So the "litmus test" we're putting before the experienced Frontier 
>community is
>
>              "can it* be implemented with say, less than 100 hours
>               of custom development?"
>                         * where "it" is shared-across sites
>                           categorization of messages
>
>Very hard to implement is okay, so long as it's simple and intuitive 
>from the end-user's experience once the heavy lifting in setting it 
>up is done.
>
>Our view is, if it's 100 hours of development, that's an exceptional 
>argument for using Frontier -- hey, where else could you get all the 
>cool built-in features of Frontier PLUS this true community-ness for 
>$900 plus the cost of 100 hrs of dev't?

Oh that's a different story. But given those constraints yes, it can 
be done.  The trick is to have a request which made  one one site, 
know how to interrogate the other websites. In your situation this 
can be made a lto easier  by requiring that all websites use the same 
basic structure for the metadata. After that its a matter of devising 
some strategies to avoid too much searching. My gut feel is that  100 
hours is rather  too much.

I'd be happy to pursue this off-list  of you want.



>
>
>Regards to all,
>Pardner
>
>
>On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 10:56  AM, David A. Bayly wrote:
>
>>I understand your need to do "categorisation" of messages/stories 
>>and I know how to do it and search using the category values, but 
>>only in one website. That's  what the metadata plugin allows you to 
>>do very effectively.
>>
>>But I don't know how to do it easily in several hundred websites. 
>>By easily, I mean in a way that a relative newbie could administer 
>>and novices could use in their individual websites.
>>
>>I can devise solutions but they don't pass the easy to administer test
>>
>>
>>>David,
>>>
>>>That was a very helpful response. Thank you! And that's great news 
>>>about the shared member list.
>>>
>>>As far as handling specific message types like Recipes,  I don't 
>>>know for a fact they will actually want recipes per se, but they 
>>>do need certain pages on their sites devoted to certain different 
>>>categories of information, and the information on those pages 
>>>needs to be tagged in the dbase as having a certain context (eg, 
>>>"this is something called a 'recipe', not a 'news' story).
>>>
>>>So let's say
>>>a) it's a page on their site where all the messages attached to 
>>>that page are "recipes"
>>>and
>>>b) there's another page where all the messages attached are 
>>>"community service work projects" (as in "we're cleaning Smith 
>>>park up on Saturday, Please come and we're supplying free fried 
>>>chicken for volunteers")
>>>
>>>I'm pretty sure Frontier can let us set that up from a UI point of 
>>>view. But we need the messages on certain pages "tagged" as 
>>>belonging to different categories and filed on the correct page 
>>>for that category.
>>>
>>>1) There needs to be a way to search for "fried chicken" in the 
>>>category "recipe" so, for example, you do NOT find the example (b) 
>>>above where it contains the text 'fried chicken' but the context 
>>>is not a recipe, but merely the fact someone's bringing chicken to 
>>>a work party.
>>>
>>>2) There needs to be a mechanism so a user can browse and search 
>>>ALL the recipes, or a better example is, you have nothing to do on 
>>>Saturday so you want to know if ANY of the 200 churches is having 
>>>some sort of a work party this Saturday.
>>>
>>>If you have any thoughts, please let me know!
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>Pardner
>>>
>>>>>  3) They want to be able to create certain shared info. The simplest
>>>>>  example would be Recipes. Each church would post "their own" page with
>>>>>  their favorite recipes. But they'd also like to have a button that says
>>>>>  "show me ALL the recipes for ALL the churches."
>>>>
>>>>That's possible, but involves considering some design questions 
>>>>before setting it up.
>>>>
>>>>What is the difference between a normal message in a DG, and a 
>>>>recipe?  Is it that you will adopt a convention that says the 
>>>>message subject will contain Recipe? If the answer is  yes then a 
>>>>variant of the search engine will handle do what you want. If 
>>>>not, your solution will have to deal with multiple websites and 
>>>>that's a complication.
>>>>
>>>>Or, you could make a single website that only contains recipes, 
>>>>and since you have shared membership  login is not an issue. 
>>>>Knowing that only recipes posted in that recipe website might 
>>>>make things too user unfriendly.
>>>>
>>>>One tool that does handle structured stories like recipes nicely 
>>>>is the metadata plugin,  but it works on individual website 
>>>>basis. .
>>
>>
>>--
>>
>>- David Bayly.       Programmer and digest reader.     dbayly at udena dot ch
>>  		Digest Readers do it once a day.


-- 

- David Bayly.       Programmer and digest reader.     dbayly at udena dot ch
  		Digest Readers do it once a day.