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| Integrating User Profiles with Ventrian's New Articles module: Possible? (N/A) |
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Dear Rod,
I have been dabbling about with some things, and was wondering if there is any way in hell that the Smart-Thinker module can integrate with Ventrian's News Articles module in that a users post count could be displayed in the User Profiles? Also, is there any possibility of getting it worked out so that it could display the articles posted by the author in a sorted list in User Profiles as well?
Just curious as I have been slowly getting the foundation worked out for my site, and this just seems like a brilliant idea. Considering that both you and Scott seem to have a good relationship with one another, and are both excellent coders, integrating something together that both of you can work out would be simply amazing.
Even some suggestions for Scott would be to have the Author Profile Picture thumbnailed with a token in the Articles would be nifty.
All these features would make sense, and it would certainly be quite an amazing job if this would be possible.
Let me know if any of this can be ever done. I'm always up for more seamless integration, and featuers for my sites. I'd imagine some other people may benefit from this as well. I'd be willing to donate openly to get this up and running Rod! The idea of it is getting me excite! =)
Cheers,
Danny
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| Re: Integrating User Profiles with Ventrian's New Articles module: Possible? (N/A) |
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Hi Danny,
Hmmm - anything is possible - it just depends on how much time and effort it requires ;)
It definitely is a good idea - Scott's News module is brilliant, and if it were my module I would definitely do these kinds of integrations as standard - unfortunately it's tricker when you dealing with module integration across vendors because of all the potential issues with relying on another developer - both technical and non-technical reasons (a silly example, but lets say one of us wanted to sell our business or go and live in the Bahamas from the proceeds of module developer ;) - this would leave the other person in a spot).
We do have a good relationship - we are doing a very minor UserGroup/Private Messages intgration piece coming soon - see
http://www.ventrian.com/Support/ProductForums/tabid/118/forumid/5/postid/12829/view/topic/Default.aspx
Your ideas make perfect sense, however this kind of integration would require a strongly-coupled link between our modules which I do not think would be possible (it requires too much interaction and planning which would be more than we could possible commit at the same time). I would have to learn Scott's modules and VB.NET (or vica versa) for the intgration to be useful, and it is more complicated than merely the technical coding).
So I am afraid all I can suggest is that you get the source for both modules and customize it yourself or outsource it - I'd love to help but I am ABSOLUTELY swamped with requirements and customer requests and ideas. I am currently working on strengthening the Smart-Thinker suite and trying to add in all the cool features that make modules really useful - RSS, Better UI, fully localised etc.
Please let me know how you get on - I'm happy to help with the code on my side but for now thats all I can offer I am afraid!
Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players
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| Re: Integrating User Profiles with Ventrian's New Articles module: Possible? (N/A) |
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Thanks for getting back to me Rod.
Would you ever consider doing an Articles module yourself? Also, when
you've said before that you would like to focus your modules or perhaps
get your modules friendly with social networking, in what way were you
thinking of? I have found your Pokey DIY site to be interesting. It has
tons of promise in what it offers, and is a great example of how using
your modules would show potential in offering social networking
abilities.
In terms of social networking, will you ever implement a search system to find users via fields such as name, interests, age, etc.? This would be a great addition to your User Profiles system, so I'm interested to see where this would lead as I'm dying to get something together for some of my sites, but have been unable to do so simply because the module support is not there yet. I do however intend to strongly use your modules, as well as Scott's.
BTW, I was also wondering if the Smart-Thinker's Quotes system was capable of being used along with the Events module? So if somebody were to comment on the event or something, or just wanted to say something about it, they are able to do just that. Similar to Facebook.com, where their Events sytem is very well thought out and people can post on the "Wall" of the event. In fact, as I've said before, I have found your modules can very much perform something similar to facebook.com. Your quotes module in some essences, share qualities to Facebook's wall, and tons of other features of other social networking systems can be done with your modules as they have already laid the foundation down for it. Just missing are search features, and a few other things.
Cheers,
Danny
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| Re: Integrating User Profiles with Ventrian's New Articles module: Possible? (United Kingdom) |
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Hello Danny,
No, I do not like to reinvent the wheel – I could never compete with Scott’s News Module – it’s been around for a while and has matured into one of the best modules around. Integration would be the way forward – if you had the time and resources (this would be cheaper than doing a new module).
Social Networking: If you look at the Smart-Thinker solution you can see that when used as a whole it lends itself quite nicely towards the whole SN concept. This was always my intention (community modules) however with the launch of my own pet project – PokerDIY – I have realized how many gaps there are in the modules and where they can be improved. It’s definitely helped me see things more from a user’s point of view as opposed to a techy geek POV (and the modules will be all the better because of it ;)
The two biggest areas that need improvement are scalability, privacy and integration. If you look at Smart-Thinker.com ,there are 5000 users. If you make an event and try to invite guests – they all display at once. This needs to be a paged, user picker – see my post here:
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/ForumsDotNetNuke/tabid/795/forumid/118/threadid/75672/scope/posts/Default.aspx
I’m sure that most modules that handle data would not handle 50 000 users. I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, because I used the analogy earlier – if you are doing home printing you buy a cheapy inkjet printer for $50. If you want to print 50 000 posters, you buy a decent, heavy duty printer. It’s like the 80/20 rule – most modules suit most of the requirements, but would not handle the larger sites or scale well. This is something I want to improve on all ST modules, but it needs a lot of thought and re-engineering. Most DNN modules are designed to handle under 1000 users/pages etc.. I would love to see the demographics of DNN sites – I reckon 90% of them are under 500 users.
Privacy: This is one of the top concerns for SC members. A lot of people will not join a site unless it is trusted. Currently the UserProfile module is not flexible enough to handle this and this is something I will address in the next version.
Integration: The Smart-Thinker modules already integrate with each other well – it would be a shame not to use the whole suite – for example, every time a name is shown you can link to their profile. This is something I want to improve on. Unfortunately due to the problems mentioned earlier integration with other module developers is a LOT harder and more complex – I am trying the Ventrian Private Messages integration but honestly I can’t see it being anymore complex than that.
As you can see – I have a LOT of work to do to bring the existing modules up to speed to make them scalable and fit for a SN site. This is why unfortunately I am unable to be distracted until this is done. I have done a lot of investigation into how MySpace Events work (I think my module is better ;) and how Groups/Friends etc. work and I want to mimic the best features in the Smart-Thinker suite.
PokerDIY is growing all the time (I am investing money into it as I believe in the concept and I think a poker-specific social networking site is required on the web) – and it is proving useful at highlighting problem areas in my modules.
The good news is that I have resigned from my day job completely and will be working on Smart-Thinker full time as of the 10th of November. This means many improvements and better modules...
Quotes – can you raise this separately on the Quotes forum when you have a mo (it encourages others to get involved and can then try and abstract them into solid requirements) – I am speccing out the next version so get your ideas in quick ;)
Thanks for the feedback and compliments re. PokerDIY – hopefully this post explained my vision for the PokerDIY modules a littler better and you can see where I am heading – PokerDIY has got an easy 6 months worth of work on it just to get it into the state I want it (and then years after that ;) , but it should definitely showcase the features of the modules working together as a suite. Did you see the new Groups module on PokerDIY (went live at 1 am last night ;) I will be releasing it today or tomorrow but dogfooding it highlighted some issues – see:
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/ForumsDotNetNuke/tabid/795/forumid/-1/threadid/69532/scope/posts/Default.aspx
Last thought on Social Networks – look at MySpace/Flikr/YouTube/Facebook and note the best things about their implementation of Friends/Groups/Events/Profiles etc… this is what I am will be replicating in these modules (it’s great to be able to “borrow” ideas from things that clearly work – just takes a LOT of time.
Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players
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