This was a fun experiment. I learned a lot from the exercise, and appreciate the feedback I received. As you can tell from the dates on the posts, this blog has ended and won't be getting more posts.
Thank you.
Gedan
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Designing a Structure for the Wiki
To get started with the wiki, we need an initial structure. Some of the obvious questions are:
- How should we design the categories of how2why4.com?
- What should our contribution policy be?
- What should our privacy policy be?
- How do we want to encourage contributors?
- How do we entice visitors (consumers)?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Umm, why not just go with youtube?
At this point, we've created our site, populated it with some how2why4 content, and are searching for the true purpose to help guide the design further.
We have some competition out there, and we have to distinguish our site from the competition to get enough users to come to our site.
One of the big competitors is youtube.com. It has a category of "DIY" videos. Many of them are very good, so why do we think we can do better when it seems to have the google position on DIY/How2?
Fortunately for our site, there's substantial room for improvement because of a problem I talked about in my other blog and called the single viewpoint problem. The problem is that if you're trying to learn something or get useful information off of a site, you don't want only one person's opinion. And you probably don't want to go around reading everybody's opinion to inform your own, because that's too much like a research paper. More importantly, you are not in a position, if you're trying to learn something new, to judge whether something you find on the web is correct, or not.
That's the niche that how2why4.com can fill. By the nature of wikis, blogs, forums, and multimedia, multiple opinions can be integrated to provide a higher likelihood of truth. It also can integrate the best of other sources, like youtube and wikipedia with commentary to improve not just the how2 part, but also the why4.
I'll contrast wikipedia with our site in a future post and then we can move on to more detailed design.
We have some competition out there, and we have to distinguish our site from the competition to get enough users to come to our site.
One of the big competitors is youtube.com. It has a category of "DIY" videos. Many of them are very good, so why do we think we can do better when it seems to have the google position on DIY/How2?
Fortunately for our site, there's substantial room for improvement because of a problem I talked about in my other blog and called the single viewpoint problem. The problem is that if you're trying to learn something or get useful information off of a site, you don't want only one person's opinion. And you probably don't want to go around reading everybody's opinion to inform your own, because that's too much like a research paper. More importantly, you are not in a position, if you're trying to learn something new, to judge whether something you find on the web is correct, or not.
That's the niche that how2why4.com can fill. By the nature of wikis, blogs, forums, and multimedia, multiple opinions can be integrated to provide a higher likelihood of truth. It also can integrate the best of other sources, like youtube and wikipedia with commentary to improve not just the how2 part, but also the why4.
I'll contrast wikipedia with our site in a future post and then we can move on to more detailed design.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Editing the Home Page
I'm going to try something new beginning with this post. I'm going to start making CamStudio movies of the changes I make to our TikiWiki site, how2why4.com. I will post the movies to youtube.com and reference them on the how2why4.com site. I'll even post a video about how to post a video.
The first video will be about how to edit the home page. You can find the video at
http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Editing+the+Home+Page.
The next video, shows how to add a video.
I made the video using CamStudio (see sourceforge.org) using the .avi format. Then I uploaded to youtube.com. There's a little spot on youtube.com where it gives you a funky, yet unique, name for your video. Copy that into the following and put it on the wiki page for the red colored text:
{FLASH(movie=http://www.youtube.com/v/ggSdKBcMSBQ,
width=>425,height=>350,quality=>high)/}
See the result at http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Adding+a+youtube.com+video
Then
Let me know what you think.
The first video will be about how to edit the home page. You can find the video at
http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Editing+the+Home+Page.
The next video, shows how to add a video.
I made the video using CamStudio (see sourceforge.org) using the .avi format. Then I uploaded to youtube.com. There's a little spot on youtube.com where it gives you a funky, yet unique, name for your video. Copy that into the following and put it on the wiki page for the red colored text:
{FLASH(movie=http://www.youtube.com/v/ggSdKBcMSBQ,
width=>425,height=>350,quality=>high)/}
See the result at http://how2why4.com/tiki-index.php?page=Adding+a+youtube.com+video
Then
Let me know what you think.
King and Kingmaker
Content is king. That is a mantra of the entertainment business.
In Web2.0, content is still king, but users are the king maker.
There are at least two types of users we need for how2why4.com, contributors and consumers. If the stories told around the web2.0 campfire can be believed, the bulk of wikipedia.org was built by about 1000 users. That's out of what I estimate to be 100's of millions of users or about 1/1000% of the total community.
In spite of these wild differences in the size of the two groups, contributors are essential to the success of the site, for without them, no content. And no content, means no consumers, at least after the first visit.
How do you get contributors? I'm going to explore that option in real life, and I have a few theories about motivation.
Some people, like me, need only the adoration of others. We like to show off how smart we are and get others to take notice. It's ok if you disagree about the smart part, too, because if you don't that just shows you're not as smart as you think *grins*.
Others of us are motivated by contests. Maybe if I gave away an ipod in a random drawing to one of the first 100 contributors, or maybe the highest ranking contribution. I don't like this option because I have to get an ipod from somewhere and I don't want to use my money.
Still others are enticed by the idea of money. I think that's a pretty powerful motivator. Going back to the previous paragraph, I don't like it when it's my money, so how do I get others money to give away? I would like to explore this option more. Especially if I get to keep a little on every transaction. Any ideas?
For now, I'm going to appeal to the vanity of all potential contributors, and set up a site where they can get praised to their hearts' content.
In Web2.0, content is still king, but users are the king maker.
There are at least two types of users we need for how2why4.com, contributors and consumers. If the stories told around the web2.0 campfire can be believed, the bulk of wikipedia.org was built by about 1000 users. That's out of what I estimate to be 100's of millions of users or about 1/1000% of the total community.
In spite of these wild differences in the size of the two groups, contributors are essential to the success of the site, for without them, no content. And no content, means no consumers, at least after the first visit.
How do you get contributors? I'm going to explore that option in real life, and I have a few theories about motivation.
Some people, like me, need only the adoration of others. We like to show off how smart we are and get others to take notice. It's ok if you disagree about the smart part, too, because if you don't that just shows you're not as smart as you think *grins*.
Others of us are motivated by contests. Maybe if I gave away an ipod in a random drawing to one of the first 100 contributors, or maybe the highest ranking contribution. I don't like this option because I have to get an ipod from somewhere and I don't want to use my money.
Still others are enticed by the idea of money. I think that's a pretty powerful motivator. Going back to the previous paragraph, I don't like it when it's my money, so how do I get others money to give away? I would like to explore this option more. Especially if I get to keep a little on every transaction. Any ideas?
For now, I'm going to appeal to the vanity of all potential contributors, and set up a site where they can get praised to their hearts' content.
Changing the look
We have our site up, but it looks rather plain.
Tikiwiki allows for different themes. There are a large number of built-in themes accessible through the admin interface. For how2why4.com, we'll use one of the built-in themes. Login as admin and select the admin interface.
Select "general" from the list of icons. We'll be back many times to this page as we load other features.
You can browse through the themes, but for how2why4.com, we'll select the white-blue-grey theme. It's got pleasing colors, good contrast, and a nice layout.
And click the change button.
The resulting interface makes the home page look like the following:
Users may also change the theme for themselves without changing the main theme. Other themes are also available at themes.tikiwiki.org
We still need to get some content on here with pictures. We'll do that in the next post.
Please refer to the family of tikiwiki help sites at tikiwiki.org
Tikiwiki allows for different themes. There are a large number of built-in themes accessible through the admin interface. For how2why4.com, we'll use one of the built-in themes. Login as admin and select the admin interface.
Select "general" from the list of icons. We'll be back many times to this page as we load other features.
You can browse through the themes, but for how2why4.com, we'll select the white-blue-grey theme. It's got pleasing colors, good contrast, and a nice layout.
And click the change button.
The resulting interface makes the home page look like the following:
Users may also change the theme for themselves without changing the main theme. Other themes are also available at themes.tikiwiki.org
We still need to get some content on here with pictures. We'll do that in the next post.
Please refer to the family of tikiwiki help sites at tikiwiki.org
Monday, May 7, 2007
Going with a simple security model
For any site, there's a balance between total openness and its possible chaos to total restriction and the possibility of no users.
Tikiwiki allows a rich permissions model that we'll use as we enable each feature. For now, let's just deal with how we allow people to register for the site, balancing openness and restriction. We'll reuse the existing user classes of "unregistered" and "registered". As we'll see, we can give basic reading permissions to "unregistered" and then greater permissions to the "registered", such as create and edit wiki pages, leave comments, etc.
The first place to stop is "admin home" and then "login".
You'll see the following form:
Clcik on the highlighted items. First, you want to let users register. Next, you want to prevent spam bots from registering. This option forces an anti-bot code to be entered. Finally, check the "validate users by email" to capture an email address. Not only will this help prevent spam, but it's handy for the users when they forget passwords or you need to communicate with them.
After checking these boxes, drop down to the bottom of the form and save your settings.
That's all you need to do to setup a reasonable registration model. Users who register will then be in the "registered" group (go figure, huh?). As you add features, such as blogging, forums, and wiki pages, you can grant permissions to the registered users.
As a warning, this is no "field of dreams" and even though you have built it, it's no guarantee that anyone will come to register. We'll have to deal with website advertising in a future blog. For now, get your friends and coworkers to use your site.
In the next post, we'll deal with deal with attractiveness. At this point, we have only a plain home page.
Tikiwiki allows a rich permissions model that we'll use as we enable each feature. For now, let's just deal with how we allow people to register for the site, balancing openness and restriction. We'll reuse the existing user classes of "unregistered" and "registered". As we'll see, we can give basic reading permissions to "unregistered" and then greater permissions to the "registered", such as create and edit wiki pages, leave comments, etc.
The first place to stop is "admin home" and then "login".
You'll see the following form:
Clcik on the highlighted items. First, you want to let users register. Next, you want to prevent spam bots from registering. This option forces an anti-bot code to be entered. Finally, check the "validate users by email" to capture an email address. Not only will this help prevent spam, but it's handy for the users when they forget passwords or you need to communicate with them.
After checking these boxes, drop down to the bottom of the form and save your settings.
That's all you need to do to setup a reasonable registration model. Users who register will then be in the "registered" group (go figure, huh?). As you add features, such as blogging, forums, and wiki pages, you can grant permissions to the registered users.
As a warning, this is no "field of dreams" and even though you have built it, it's no guarantee that anyone will come to register. We'll have to deal with website advertising in a future blog. For now, get your friends and coworkers to use your site.
In the next post, we'll deal with deal with attractiveness. At this point, we have only a plain home page.
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