Playing with Technology» Social Software

Building a community

Jon — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:59:13 +0000

Since returning from WordCamp NYC I’ve been working on updating the Voices service. (Just have to mention that it seems one of the tagaroo updates would appear to have fixed the lag while writing. Nice job!) One of the things I was really excited about at WCNYC was the way a few people had used BuddyPress to create some really cool community sites. I was particularly impressed with what Mike Pratt had put together for West Point creating Bugle Notes and the Nourish Network site Lisa Sabon-Wilson showed. So I decided that I needed to use BuddyPress on the Voices site.

I must say it has been relatively painless to convert Voices from just a plain WordPress Multi-blog setup to a BuddyPress powered community site. My first step was to convert my existing Multi-blog setup on DreamHost to use BuddyPress and mark it as the development environment. Once that was done in late October I began looking at my options for a theme to use as the main site theme. This was before the changes in theme structure for BuddyPress. At first I tried to code something myself, but given that I wanted it to be ready for this semester and that I have other duties, it was clear I couldn’t take the time. I looked at some of the free options like Bruce, but could not get them to really work consistently and be stable. In the end I settled on BP Corporate by incsub. It is a nice clean theme, which is what I really wanted since the content of an academic community should be the focus.

Once I had picked a theme I started playing with where to put the widgets and how to make sure the site had a dynamic feel. I ended up using the plugins Ahjira Recent Site-wide Articles, Auto Group Join (with some modifications to make it work), BP Groupblog, BP Events, and Recent Global Comments Widget. The homepage also uses some of the built-in BuddyPresss widgets like Groups, Site wide activity, Who’s Online Avatars, Members and Recently active member avatars. Eventually I’d like to add a Featured Post widget, but the ones available currently do not seem to work. I think the overall effect has been very good. The site feels dynamic and people can see what community members are writing about.

I would say it has definitely been worth it. Even though the main use is for class blogs at the moment, we are getting a number of users joining because they want to be a part of the community. This is something that was not happening before BuddyPress allowed us to easily create the community features. The feature with the biggest impact though has been BuddyPress groups with the Auto Group Join plugin. This has made creating class blogs super easy and faculty have really loved it. There are still some things to tweak, but overall I’m happy with how it is going.

Inadvertant learning

Jon — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:48:41 +0000

I’ve been on vacation since returning from the New Media Consortium conference in Monterey. Usually this would mean playing a lot of Warcraft, mowing the yard, keeping ahead of the laundry, and all those other things one does when on a staycation. But this one has been a little different. Kathy now works from home, which means I really do need to stay on top of the housework (no waiting to start so that I would be done just before she got home), and it means I am listening to the webinars she is attending (Yes, I have noise canceling headphones for WoW, but they only do so much.).

This week’s webinar series was all about SEO and inbound marketing. The event was organized by Hubspot and featured a series of well-respected authorities on SEO and marketing. A lot of attention was payed to increasing your rank in Google, extending the reach of your content, and making the proper use of social media in marketing yourself. It was very interesting stuff to listen to as I completed my various daily quests. Many of the things they mentioned I knew, but there were several things I took away that I think will prove useful in the coming months as I work on the Voices site. Who knows I may have even passed their exam so I will be certified in inbound marketing.

To BuddyPress or not to BuddyPress?

Jon — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:10:07 +0000

Soon? We will have a new WPMU install up and my dilemma is whether to make it a BuddyPress installation. For those that may not know, BuddyPress turns your WPMU install into a community blogging site with group blogs, profiles, friending, etc. BuddyPress does this via plugins and some special themes.

The reason I am considering BuddyPress is to distinguish the WPMU install administered by Instructional Technology from the one administered by Web Services. Yes, we will have two installations. It was decided that blogs that were more official in nature needed to have branding similar to the new website and more restictions on content. So the Instructional Technology WPMU will be open. Users will be able to have any of a 100 themes, content will be posted under CC license, plugins will be abundant, and it will hopefully be an organic community. BuddyPress might help to further the latter. My main concern is the ability to revert to a normal WPMU. If we decide BuddyPress is not what we want can we easily revert to plain WPMU by turning off the plugins? Guess it is time to load it up onto my Dreamhost account and do some testing.

Get an MA in Social Media

Jon — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:33:27 +0000

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Social Media is a somewhat different beast than print and television media and the skills required to use it to best effect are different. My involvment with the redesign of Wooster’s website has just highlighted how different social media is. People coming from a print background just can’t seem to figure out how to make good use of social media for marketing. A program such as the one at Birmingham City University begins the process of legitamizing what people skilled in the use of social media are doing. As mentioned by Stan Schroeder in his post at Mashable, the hardest part could be finding faculty that can be considered experts. No matter what this marks a change in the perception of social media.

Betty wants to help you with your e-mail

Jon — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:45:59 +0000

Mashable featured an interesting Web app this morning. The app is called Cc:Betty. Why is it interesting? Well, it claims to provide a space where long an convoluted e-mail exchanges among a group of people can be sorted out and clarified. Each e-mail thread that Betty is CCed on becomes its own little website. Photos and files are separated into their own tabs and the thread itself is converted into an organized Web page. Where have I seen something like this before? Oh, yeah, a wiki. It really sounds like the entire e-mail thread is converted and organized as a wiki. This site probably has a niche since there are many people that still don’t really like the wiki idea but are fine with e-mail and reading websites. Something to keep and eye on in any event.

A couple of interesting project ideas

Jon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:51:48 +0000

I took a little stroll around the Web today and happened upon two interesting sites. The first was Fifty People One Question. The idea is to go to a location pose the same question to 50 people. This is certainly not a new idea but for some reason I found the site compelling. This could easily be a project in any course here at Wooster. The second site was Pic Lits. Again I would imagine that the idea is not new by any stretch, but the way it is implemented is interesting. It is really just the classic assign words from a list to an image. The goal being to convey the story told by the image. I’m sure this makes for an interesting assignment in any writing class.

I’m the leader on NITLE’s prediction markets?

Jon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:38:03 +0000

Lol. How in the world did that happen? About a year ago I was asked to join NITLE’s prediciton markets. The idea is to predict whether something is more or less likely to happen. The price of the commodity represents the chance that the prediction will happen. An increasing price means the event is more likely to happen. The market direction gives the poser of the question a sense of what the traders think is going to happen and so in some sense answers their question.

I think I traded in three markets and have not touched anything in at least 8 months and now I have the most money. The buy and hold strategy at work. If only I was as successful with stocks.

Brainify.com scratches head

Jon — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:39:16 +0000

Someone please tell me why we need Brainify.com. Brainify is yet another social bookmarking site and joins the likes of del.icio.us and ma.gnolia. What is the distinguishing feature of Brainify? It is restricted to people who have a .edu e-mail address. Say what! Yep, it is a restricted social network. In the off-line world such things are called clubs and popular opinion is that clubs are composed of like-minded individuals. I’m pretty sure that restricting something to like-minded individuals is bad and stifles growth and exploration. So why in the world would someone want to develop such a site when we have open communities like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia? You can read more in the Chronicle article.

Ok, I found something cool

Jon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:20:49 +0000

The MyWorld page in Flock is pretty cool. It’s one stop for all your social networking stuff. Not sure if it’s compelling enough to cause people to switch. I guess it depends on how much of your on-line time is spent in social software.

Flock again

Jon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:14:36 +0000

I posted about Flock a while back (will add links later) but have stopped using it for a while. I remember thinking all of it’s social networking features were cool and they have gotten better, so I’m giving it another look. I’m writing this with its blogging tool, which is not as good as ScribeFire for Firefox. I miss having my categories available while composing or maybe I’m missing them and they are obvious. I doubt I’ll switch from Firefox but if I find anything interesting I’ll post about it. (Ah, the categories show up when you try to post.)

Blogged with the Flock Browser