Website use, part 2

1) Contacting other Nonsite users:

In response to Wendy Kramer's question over in the website discussion forum, I wanted to let folks know how to use the individual user contact form. I've added a link called "User List" in the "User tools" menu over on your right. This link will take you to a list of all registered site users.

If you follow the link to the user you want to contact, you'll arrive at that person's profile page. The top of this page should have a couple of tabs labeled "View," "Track" and "Contact." The View page is where you arrive by default, and gives you an overview of the person's profile. For right now, profiles are pretty basic -- eventually I'll get around to adding fields for location, fields of interest, membership in various working groups as those are formed, etc.

The "Track" tab will take you to a list of everything the person has posted to the site.

The "Contact" tab will take you to an email form that you can use to contact this user. Anonymous browsers don't have access to this form, so spam shouldn't be a huge issue. The form itself is also set up with a Captcha question to make sure a human user is accessing it.

Of course, all of this is assuming that the user wants to be contacted. Control over this is up to each user, who can enable or disable his or her personal contact form by following the "My account" link in the "User tools" menu. From your own profile page, you'll have access to an "Edit" tab that will allow you to configure certain settings, including whether you want your personal contact form enabled ("Contact Settings"), and whether you want to be included on group emailing lists ("Group e-mail settings"). For right now, I'd recommend that everyone turns on the personal contact form unless you really, really don't want to get messages from other site users. It won't expose your email address (all the addressing is done behind the scenes), and it's pretty well-protected against spam. Still, it seemed best to leave that in your hands, so for right now the default is for the form to be turned off.

(The group e-mail settings are attached to a feature I haven't built yet, so for right now it doesn't matter whether you turn them on or off).

2) Time-limited content:

Those of you who have posted to the site have probably noticed by now that certain types of content publish by default to the front page, while others publish but don't show up on the front page and have to be actively searched for. (I'll get around to building some menus to make this latter type of content easier to find. Probably this weekend).

Some of you might have noticed as well that you can change these default settings while you're creating the post. (It's the final set of options, labeled "Publishing options"). So if what you're writing defaults to the front page but you don't want it there, you can uncheck the relevant box. Or the reverse...

What you probably haven't noticed yet is that you can automate a timeline for any of this. Say, for example, you want an event listing published to the front page, but you'd like it to cycle off the page after the event itself happens. Events go the front page by default, so you don't need to adjust anything in the Publishing Options section. The section you need to fiddle with is called "Scheduled actions," which is located a couple of items below the text-entry box when you're writing your item.

So, let's say my event is happening on December 3rd at noon, and I want the listing removed from the front page (but not unpublished entirely -- we'd like to keep it archived) at that time. In "Scheduled actions," I would select "Remove node from front page," and set the time box to "2007-12-03 12:00:00 -0700." (That final negative number is for a Pacific time zone. East coasters will want "-0400," central time zone is "-0500," and mountain is "-0600.")

That's all there is to it. By the way, I've set this item to leave the front page on December 1st, at which point it'll migrate into the archive of old news items.

Upcoming issues and added features:

Over the next few weeks, I'll post information here on:

• How to send out RSVPs and enabled signups for events
• How to incorporate images into your postings
• How to access and send messages to the site's mass mail lists

I'll also be building some new features, including:

• A WYSIWYG text editor for the content creation pages. Right now, you need to know some HTML tags (or Wiki syntax, for the workbook pages) if you want to include links or anything beyond very basic formatting in your posts. This module has already been developed on the open source platform we're using, so it's just a matter of me run-testing it. I should be able to do that this weekend.
• Some more detailed content organizing pages. (Right now, we're pretty much limited to that "Recent posts" link. I'd like to build in some default pages that will let you see, say, all the content of type "Document" that's related to curriculum, organized according to subcategory. Suggestions on what we'd like to include in these easy access pages would be appreciated).
• The capability to set up segmented mailing lists on the fly. Right now, mass mailing is pretty much all or nothing -- you either send to one selected user, or you send to everyone registered on the site. (The discussion forums are an exception to this, of course). What I'd like to build is a user interface that will let you select, say, everyone who listed "New York" as their location and "community gardens" as an area of interest, and send an email to them. This will take a lot of doing, so don't look for it right away.
• Converting documents like this into an easily-accessible FAQ section, so that as things cycle off the front page you still have a reference for using the site.
• Some contextual help menus, so that rather than have to navigate to that FAQ for every question, you'll have page-relevant help text available. If you're creating a discussion forum post, for example, there'll be a "Help" link that will pop up a list of suggestions relevant to discussion forums. Again, this will be fairly time-consuming, so it's not an immediate project.
• Anything else that comes in as a request from site users. You can contact me directly using the Contact link on the black-and-gray menu bar. Better yet, you can sign up for the Website discussion forum over on the forums page, and make your suggestions part of an ongoing discussion.