[silverstripe-dev] SSBits.com - Ideas and suggestions going forward

[aram balakjian]

Hi Guys,

Some of you (or maybe most of you) will know of the site I run - www.SSBits.com.

It's been over a year now since I launched it and I am feeling it is time to spend some time re-developing it and adding some more functionality to make it more useful to everyone in the community as well as those just discovering SilverStripe. I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on how it could be improved?

at the moment I am thinking about the following:

• Redesign to allow easier browsing of content and generally make it nicer to use.
• Improve the Snippet Submission so that users can login and see/edit/create/submit their articles from an account section.
• Create a rating system for posts so that they cold be sorted by rating, giving users easy access to the best posts.
• Extend the comments system so that the authors comments show up in a different colour as well as emailing authors when people comment on their post. Comments could also show up in a users account page.
• Adding video posts as well as text. This is part of my ideas for diversifying the types of posts, but that is for later ;)
• Have a 'Starters' section which provides a good resource for people getting started in SS, a video of installing SS on a server, setting up your first page type, installing a module etc.
• Having some sort of module resource linking to the most popular modules....I still hate using the official module section of SS.org, though it is much better since they added the search
• a few other bits and pieces.....

I know that SS are redeveloping their core documentation so I am wondering how much of this may prove less important as that is released...any clues from the core devs would be handy ;)

I am also aware that at the end of the day content is the most important thing, so I shouldn't spend huge amounts of time developing the site that could be spent creating content so I guess I have to keep it as simple as possible. If any of you have any ideas of improving the actual type of content it self please feel free to say. 

Anyway all thoughts/ideas positive and negative (within reason! lol) are welcome :)

Aram

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[Dan | Rye Designs]

How many of you are familiar with StackOverflow?  It might be a good idea to model it after that.  Perhaps creating a Stack Overflow Clone module for Silverstripe.  Of course another option would be to use StackExchange, submit a purposal at meta.stackexchange.com/

Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

-Dan

[aram balakjian]

Hi Dan, thanks for the suggestions.

I think it would be really good to have something like stack overflow for SS, however I think it is a slightly different model to what I want to achieve with SSBits. SSbits is more about tutorials/documentation than Q & A type content.

That's not to say a Q & A couldn't be incorporated in some way, but I wouldn't want to replace the article/blog format with it.

[Dan | Rye Designs]

You are more than right.  I didn't really think it through, it was just kind of an AH-HA moment.  I think I will begin work on that stack overflow module :)

-Dan

[Sam Minnee]

Hi Aram,

Currently the snippets are all listed in date order - it would be good
to have different ways to navigate - for example, by tag, or by
supported SilverStripe version.

> It's been over a year now since I launched it and I am feeling it is time to
> spend some time re-developing it and adding some more functionality to make
> it more useful to everyone in the community as well as those just
> discovering SilverStripe. I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on
> how it could be improved?

[aram balakjian]

Hey Sam, thanks for the suggestions.

There is a category list in the sidebar of each section, but yes I agree, the navigation of posts is a big thing that needs improving, early posts all get lost, especially to those who don't go past the home page.

I like the idea of searching by SS version, although might be difficult to keep all the posts up to date as new versions come out. I think perhaps a sort of 'advanced search' would be a good idea.

Aram

[Al Twohill]

On 23/04/2010, at 9:48 AM, aram balakjian wrote:

> Hey Sam, thanks for the suggestions.
>
> There is a category list in the sidebar of each section, but yes I agree, the navigation of posts is a big thing that needs improving, early posts all get lost, especially to those who don't go past the home page.
>
> I like the idea of searching by SS version, although might be difficult to keep all the posts up to date as new versions come out. I think perhaps a sort of 'advanced search' would be a good idea.
>
> Aram
>

Other good sorting methods could be: Most Viewed, Most Commented, Highest Rated

[Cam Findlay]

Hi Aram, 

Resurrecting an old post, would be interested in catching up sometime to talk ssbits and if you have any future plans for it as I see things have been pretty quite on the blog/tutorial front.

Get in touch sometime :)

[Craig Ballantyne]

Hi Cam, 

I work with Aram at Carbon Crayon, I'll flag this up for him when he gets back from his holiday.

Basically SSBits ended up getting a little bit neglected primarily due to a lot of client projects which obviously take priority.  We do have plans for it going forward though and we're working on a new version that we'll hopefully get some time to finish and launch relatively soon.

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[th]

Hey Aram, 

I planed to write you a long time ago about my concerns about the "Site of the month".

The winners were the pages was the best design, but in my eyes SSBits isn't about

the frontend; it is about with snippets and tutorials for the backend and SS functions.

If you plan to resurrect SSBits please over think the site of month ;)

Best, 

Tobias

[Will Morgan]

SSBits, and by extension the SOTM also functions nicely as a way to show off SilverStripe to potential clients looking for a new website. Having a nice looking website certainly doesn't hurt opening up the market more... and at the end of the day, good design sells to people better than mumbling on to them about finely separated concerns.

A better question to ask would be "what else could SOTM be judged on that's relevant to SilverStripe?", to which I'd answer functionality, modules, usability, and so on. This opens up a few new categories - for example I would love to submit a few modules I've written to some sort of competition. Winners (author + top 2 contributors) of the competition could get a SilverStripe mug, or if the module is really awesome and Sam is feeling generous, maybe a week snowboarding in New Zealand? ;-)

And to the guys at Carbon Crayon - if you're swamped with client work (congrats, btw), why not work on a skeleton then open source it?

Will

[Craig Ballantyne]

Yeah SOTM is always going to be tricky, unless you set up a group of "professional" judges to vote on silverstripe specifics votes are always likely to be skewed towards the front end (although remember that the bulk of the site members/voters are SS developers who can/will take that into account when voting).  Like Will says though it isn't necessarily a bad thing, anything that shows really good/interesting looking sites built with silverstripe can only help to promote SS as a platform.  

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[Cam Findlay]

Thanks for getting in touch Craig.

Please get in touch, I'd be keen to hear what you have planned for ssbits and see how we can work together to improve the SilverStripe ecosystem of websites, tutorials and general awesomeness :)

Hit me up at work, comm...@silverstripe.org

Thanks, 

Cam (the new SilverStripe Community Awesomeness Manager)

[James Pluck]

I wondered what happened to SSBits.  A large proportion of the bookmarks under my tips folder are from that site.  Perhaps it could be something more community based?  Many hands/Light work kind of thing?

Kind regards

James Pluck (BSc, AIITP)

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[Aram Balakjian]

Hi James,

Sadly SSBits has been in hibernation since late 2012 due to the fact that we (Carbon Crayon) became super busy and were unable to maintain the content.

However, we have been working on a new version of the site that we are hoping to launch Q2 this year. I'll be giving a sneak preview of it at the London SilverStripe Meetup on March 19th.

The primary idea is to make it more self sustaining while also maintaining the highly editorialised content (tutorials, reviews etc.). After the meetup I might post some of the preview materials here or a link to the dev site for people to give feedback on.

And thanks for the interest! SSbits will be back I promise :)

Aram

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[camfindlay]

Even better, if you can manage it... video your talk and we can put it up on the silverstripe vimeo knowledge-base ;)

[Jonathon Menz]

Glad to hear SSBits is coming back. Nice work on the Carbon Crayon re-brand Aram, looks really good!

[Aram Balakjian]

Thanks Jonathon :)

And good idea Cam, I'll see what we can do!

Aram

Office:     0207 428 2581
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