NonSecwitter

  • Posts: 20
Suitability
« on February 19th, 2014, 08:06 PM »
Greetings all,
Congratulations to @Nao on the deployment of wedge.

How does wedge lend itself to content management? I am volunteering at a domestic violence shelter www.mutualgroudnd.org and they are looking for a more dynamic web experience that still facilitates the information for the public while providing forums and news feeds for employees and volunteers. Would wedge be able to provide that? The website has all the information that needs to be public.

I cosidered Joomla, but iam a routing switching guy by trade, and i hear Joomla is so complex that it would be difficult to pass the torch to a non-technical person for management.

Thanks!

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Re: Suitability
« Reply #1, on February 19th, 2014, 08:22 PM »
Wedge is a community manager, rather than a content manager, but at its root, it's still the same paradigm: there are topics and posts, and they can be shown in a way that makes it look like a blog, or a 'regular' website (e.g. create a topic, assign a different type to it, which will remove all the clutter, and block the topic to prevent comments.)

Yes, it's possible to build any kind of website with it, but Wedge still needs work regarding the ability to build something else than a blog or forum with it, of course. It'll come later... :^^;:

NonSecwitter

  • Posts: 20
Re: Suitability
« Reply #2, on February 19th, 2014, 08:38 PM »
Got it. I'll play around with it. I can program java, but won't help much with this. The change would be in a few months. I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks again. :-)

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Re: Suitability
« Reply #3, on February 20th, 2014, 12:46 AM »
There's always ways to make it suitable for your site, but from the moment I get into website customizations, I can't really do it for free... And billing a charity isn't really in my DNA... :^^;:

You'll have to hope the stock version gets to do what you want eventually, I dont know...

NonSecwitter

  • Posts: 20
Re: Suitability
« Reply #4, on February 22nd, 2014, 01:03 AM »
It's pretty close to what we need. I think a theme with a public "front end" that offers the ability to add generic pages would be perfect. My vision is the ability to add additional pages with modules for news and announcements, blogs, or just general writing/coding space that maintain the header, the theme and the link bar, etc. Ideally it would allow any number of pages to be created with the option to nest links in dropdowns for pages like "about us", "news", "contact", etc. I don't know if it's even possible to add pages dynamically like that.

I know what you mean about charging a charity. I am looking at a database project in either Java or the Oracle front end with them that I won't get paid for. If i knew php i would jump in and do it. For now I'll try to ghetto rig something using a link to wedge from the home page and vice versa. The layouts will be WILDLY different, but it will work ;-)

Should I submit this to "Features" as an idea?

P.s. I spelled the website wrong. http://www.mutualground.org/

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Re: Suitability
« Reply #5, on February 24th, 2014, 05:43 PM »
My plan is to have a setting that holds a list of what you want to see on the forum's home page.
This could be a combination of any of these:

- full board list
- topic list, i.e. a specific board page of your choice,
- a custom action (Custom.php + Custom.template.php)

Or, a 'custom' home page, similar to Wedge.org's, with a selection of either (or all):

- a custom introduction text, in either language you want,
- board list,
- thought list,
- latest topics,
- information center,
- perhaps some kind of gallery summary (yet to code this one...),

And really, any good suggestions I might get in the future.

Opinions welcome, of course.
Right now, you can already set a default topic list to show on your homepage (set $settings['default_index'] to the board ID of your choice.)
You can also set a custom action (set the same variable to 'Home' for the current action, i.e. intro + latest topics etc; or anything, as long as it works stand-alone.)

NonSecwitter

  • Posts: 20
Re: Suitability
« Reply #6, on February 24th, 2014, 05:51 PM »
Awesome. If and when I get into PHP and JavaScript I'll try to make some contributions. I think adding additional pages is a direction I'll need to go in the future. On their current website they have quite a bit of information throughout several pages on their site and I'd like to get them on a single platform that has a consistent look and feel.

And, if you are looking at a custom Wedge app down the road, I'll jump on that team ;) I'm learning Java now, so I will be mastering that before I pick up any other languages.

Thanks again.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Re: Suitability
« Reply #7, on February 24th, 2014, 05:57 PM »
An app for Android, then..?

I don't have plans for an app, because... Well, who'd be using it? Would it need to be tailored to a single forum? Would it be something like Tapatalk, where you can subscribe to various forums? Well, maybe that one, I don't know... But I can only see myself doing a multi-forum app if there's something behind to justify it, i.e. a cross-forum, cross-platform login system where you'd automatically get an account created for you if you wanted to post on a new forum in your app.

Come to think of it, though... I guess it could 'work' with Google credentials.
I'd need to work on a Facebook Login inspired plugin for Google, though... And I'm not even sure there's a hint of compatibility between Google+ Sign-in (for websites), and Google credentials (for Google apps on Android.)