AIM

Connect people delivering and receiving bike reuse services over a very large area

Lots of people (inc. Africa) to help edit it (signed on)

Raise Re~Cycle's profile

Create an online resource of best practice for customisation, collection and send processes, and any other processes that can be of use to partner and peer organisations in the field.

Create an interface for uploading organisation profiles, success stories, photos, and other forms of documentation to both enhance reach of organisations and facilitate collection of evidence of the success and impact of the various activities of the involved organisations for further fundraising and development.

Attractive and easy to use

First draft of a powerpoint on how this will look and some of its features is HERE

BENEFITS FOR CONTRIBUTORS/PARTICIPANTS

Raising awareness of your organisation

Easy networking and finding potential partner organisations

Sharing good, effective ways of doing things, from logistics and fundraising to customisation of utility bicycles.

Building an online profile of your organisation that gives a rounded, well-documentet view of your work and activities. Success stories, real-life stories, photographs and videos add human warmth and interest.

Simultaneously, you get instant access to the profiles of your partner organisations, and can benefit from their documentation as evidence of the reach and efficacy of your operations, in order to boost fundraising and development.

No more files lost - it can all be hosted by the server and accessed instantly.

No more delays getting documentation from partner organisations - they upload, you access.

It is in everyone's interest to boost their organisation profile for more effective fundraising, more awareness, and better networking.

All users benefit from the efforts of each other, as it makes everyone look better.

WORKING ON THIS

Carina Westling (design)
Geoff Bones (tech guy)
Merlin (charity founder, not super tech)
Help needed please

Advisors

Daniel (web set up, v tech, v Drupal)
Grant (v tech, v Drupal)
John A (v tech, v free software, at least a bit, may be more Drupal)

FEATURES

HTML only forum (Drupal module), and a Wiki (MediaWiki suggested for compatibility with Drupal) or "Re~Cyclopedia".

Landing page presenting the features and how they can be applied in the form of a Re-Cycle 'workshop', HTML only.

We are trying to keep coding as simple as possible for connectivity reasons, as many of the users outside Europe and North America will be on dial-up connection.

The page needs to have an open, generic look - not too heavily branded - to appeal to a wide range of users, including peer organisations. We want bicycle re-use enthusiasts the world over to recognise the atmosphere and feel invited.

It needs to answer to the needs of its users, rather than being something you use for entertainment, so there is hardly any use for lifestyle type web 2.0 applications.

There is also the possibility for mobile phone interface, as mobile phone usage is far more widespread in most target countries. A video sharing platform can be added.

See PPT link above for further details.

TECH STUFF

Install Drupal forum in HTML mode - done
Design skin
1. design skin (Carina)
2. write the code that implements the design
Install Wikibook (?) - done
Design skin - done
1. design skin (Carina)
2. write the code that implements the design
Get copyright free images f ex iStock (there is an existing lightbox with shortlisted images, see link under Other Sites. Contact Carina - carina@freezone.co.uk - if you have trouble accessing it) (Carina) - done
Design landing page (Carina) - done
Create landing page (HTML only) - NOT DONE - something that allows us to format differently, wants to look a little different to the rest of the site, skin change
Integrate the back end - NOT DONE - tie the modules into the wiki - Geoff stuck as so many ways to do it
Having ability to change the look of it - so visual clues are there, like 'ususal' forum
Working out the difference between the wiki book and forum
1. The forum will be especially good/useful for improving designs
2. let it grow organically, start off in the forum and hive popular things off into the wikibook
3. initial seeding and let grow, can seed more where think needed
4. Poss have system in the book there's a cloud or other way of showing relevent parts of the forum
Why am I here on the site?
1. 3 clicks to get anywhere?
2. 4 chunks of 'what its about'
  1. Set up and run a bike re-use project
  2. Fix a bike? Or are there others?
  3. Make stuff from dead bikes - Tools, pedal powered things (water, elec generation) and art
Make it easy for new end users to know instantly what this is and what the benefit is to them and how to use it
Need to distinguish if you're going to the wiki or the forum
Publish
Create forum container (Carina?)
Create forums (Carina?)
Create some wiki content (Carina?)

TO DO:

Grant

wiki book what is it
look at flip over on url so different look

Geoff

CSS of style sheet

Merlin

Put short clear words about how to is
Top level wiki book Catagories
Top level forum Catagories

Issues / questions

Who Does What?

Mobile phone interface?

Video sharing platform? Most likely not integrated, but off-site though the skin can be customised. (Accessibility!) Blip.tv? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blip.tv):

"User control

Bloggers also report on other aspects of blip.tv's philosophy,
including its ideal of placing video content creators "in control at
all times." This leads to a large array of options and controls in
blip.tv's user "dashboard," including less popular video formats such
as Ogg. The company's distribution options, advertising options and 
video format choices are all subject to user control.

The company tends to explain this as being about "individual empowerment, 
"both in terms of user control over their actual media and in the sense that 
blip.tv's users are "doing an end run around the [broadcast] networks."

Copyright policy

blip.tv's terms of service state that uploaders to the service retain all copyrights
of their videos. By uploading the videos, the creator gives blip.tv a
revocable right to host and distribute the video on the user's behalf,
but that right can be revoked by the content creator by deleting the
video from the service. That said, the video remains on blip.tv's
servers after deletion (but unavailable to the outside world). Users
must e-mail blip.tv support to request complete video removal.

In addition to the base license users give to blip.tv by uploading their work, 
users can also choose from a number of Creative Commons licenses to 
apply to their videos. Creative Commons search uses blip.tv for its video 
search platform.

Downloading videos

In general, blip.tv is an open platform. It offers direct download
links for all videos it hosts, including videos that it has transcoded
(i.e. Flash videos). In addition to offering direct downloads of videos
from its Web interface, blip.tv also offers RSS
feeds which include "enclosures" for all video formats. The blip.tv Web
site supports a number of open metadata standards, including 
microformats, RSS, Atom and JSON.

The blip.tv Flash player does not include a blip.tv logo, and the
Flash video content can be easily and seamlessly separated from the
blip.tv Flash player without the use of special software."

Other sites

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&lightboxID=590370...

http://blip.tv/

Comments and ideas

'WIKI' OPTIONS

For multiple people to log on and edit/create content.

Drupal straight, with existing TinyMCE
Drupal plug in module, eg; collaborative book module (below), Freelinking and/or Wikitools
"Wiki" thing, eg; MediaWiki, http://www.pmwiki.org, (will prob need separate hosting, is poss, and search may not work so well)

Another option altogether is moving to something like Foswiki which is less well know but very widely used commercially.

FEATURES - MUST HAVE

Edit page

intuitive and easy
poss different optinons, can just type with <br> or can ctrl+B for bold (like this) or click on the B in tinyMCE (like this)

Format text easily

TinyMCE seems ok with this, or wiki has !!! or <<STRONG>

Rollback/Revisions

Revisions are supported in drupal, but to create wiki like
functionality you have to force a revision when you edit the page.
There are tutorials to do that.

Moderation

Easy to register

Easy to edit
TinyMCE is easy, says Merlin

Separate permissions for site and 'wiki'

Search - option to search whole site, just main, or just 'wiki'

Moderator ability to move and connect pages and groups of pages, for/so that;

clarity of structure
easy to read
easy to find the info
pages are not lost ie. created and edited, but not found by readers

Can upgrade Drupal version without screwing this whole thing up :)

FEATURES - LIKE TO HAVE

Is aim to have downloadable documents distilling different sections , eg. how to pack a containver v.1-1

Would be good to have a system that makes this easier, eg. collaborative book module - see;

http://www.64studio.com/manual

http://www.64studio.com/install_guide

for an example of that in use.

It's like posting wiki pages, except the site editor can organise the material into a linear structure (like book chapters).

Easy to make new page (poss that newbies can ask moderators to do this)

Freelinking - say I write MyNewLink, traditionally in wiki's that becomes a link automatically when the page is rendered, and clickingit takes you to that next page. If it's not authored you create it.

To create a link in drupal all you need to do is make a link to:
node/78 or whatever, but to create a new page you'll have to go through a menu, like you normally do. There are work arounds here, but it's an ease of creating a page issue.

Multi-language support

Mobile phone option

More people are using these and will continue to grow...

MISC BITS

Filters / input format:

!My heading

Get's changed to <h1>My heading</h1>

It's an output filter that takes your text and changes it into html.

That's what wiki syntax is for, so you don't learn html, but I think
it can still be difficult for others.

Tinymce, uses an editor (it's what you use on recycle anyway), that
lets you add links format text, but actually writes the html for you.
i.e. filters on the way in, not the way out.

So with something like tinymce, you don't need to learn wiki syntax.
Though I [Grant] actually hate point and click stuff and would rather just
write in text.

Filter Options

Markdown filter = module = wiki like syntax. Can make it optional - more techy folk will like- gives users the option of a wiki syntax, while retaining all the Drupal goodness
TinyMCE - ok when we need up to date software? - will it work in Africa with old computers?

Can probably set in user prefs, so when you log on it gives you your preferred choice

DRUPAL (+ module) PRO

Already using this

TinyMCE has good input for new users to understand

DRUPAL (+ module) CON

Outcome may be less than what a wiki really is, perhaps in the way it looks, or the kind of markup that is supported, or some other functionality.

No standard installation to copy; it needs both specialist knowledge and time to bring off. Here's one comment I read that seemed to sum up many that I read:

Doing a good wiki in Drupal 6 is surprisingly hard. My project to create a site with MediaWiki-like functionality for climate research at UC Berkeley took much longer than I thought it would, and the result was mediocre.

Risk of making a lot of work when the time comes for a site upgrade?

WIKI PRO

Some people will know the format / structure already

WIKI CON

Integration may be a little clunky. For example, if I sign up as a user with drupal, I might have to wait a while before I get a userid to use the wik

Search not so good accross both Drupal and Wiki

Need new hosting (not the end of the world)

Risk of making a lot of work when the time comes for a site upgrade?