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BuddyPress user test drive part 1

December 29, 2008 in Blogging, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 28 comments

BuddyPress has a trial site in which you can sign up for an account and give it a test run, much like the folks at Curverider did many months ago. It gives everyone an opportunity to experience the user interface. I signed up for an account and gave it a quick test drive. I will look deeper into the details over time. This is an overview of the registration, progile, and the blogs.

Going to testbp.org presents the following screen:

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Click on of the registration links to set up an account. You are then prompted to give a username, email address, reply to a captcha and to provide some profile details including an avatar. You are also given the option of just creating an account, or an account with a blog.

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If you selected the option to create a blog, you are prompted to give a subdomain and title for the blog, and have the option of allowing search engines to index the site or not.

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Next you are prompted to look for an email to activate your new account. Once you activvate your account, you are assigned a password and asked to crop your avatar. Once you log in, your are brought to your profile page.

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Notice the navigation on the left side displaying menu options, the submenus in the next column. Clicking on the “Blogs” option brings up a new submenu. Note the ability to create additional blogs.

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When you click on your blog, up comes something that should look very familiar to WordPress users:

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If you click on the site admin link, you are brought to the familiar WordPress 2.7 blog interface.

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As in WordPress you can customize the look using themes.

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Overall, with BuddyPress, the blogs have an individual identity outside of the BuddyPress installation in that they have an independent subdomain, and that they can be customized like any other blog.

Clearly, Elgg and BuddyPress are very different. While this is more of an overview than a comparison, it is easy for one familiar with Elgg to see that these two packages take very different approaches to what might appear the same when one simply looks at a list of features.

I plan to overview more BuddyPress user features in the future and look forward to a discussion of the merits of each.

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BuddyPress release imminent

December 28, 2008 in Elgg, open source, Social Networking, Technology | 9 comments

BuddyPress, a social networking platform based upon WordPressMu, originally scheduled for release by the end of this year is in beta release. Developers have frozen new features are are now trying to iron out bugs before the version 1.0 release.

BuddyPress is not an application on its own, rather it is a collection of WordPressMu plugins that extend core functionality. They can all be installed as a collection or individually. Here’s a list of components:

  • Extended Profiles that allow administrators to customize fields for user information and allows users to configure what is visible to the public.
  • Private Messaging between users
  • Friends
  • Groups that may be created by any individual including forum, photos, blog, and wire
  • The wire similar to a comment wall available to profiles, groups, etc
  • Activity Streams for yourself or your friends
  • Blogs (of course)
  • Status Updates
  • Photo Albums
  • Forums enabled through bbPress

Implementation involves a few steps. First WPMU must be installed, then the Buddy Press Plugins  are uploaded and activated. Finally, bbPress must be installed and integrated. Jim Groom is writing an evolving guide to the process. It includes links to many great WPMU resources.

Having administered a WPMU installation at my school for about a year, I’m very eager to work with BuddyPress. I’ll be looking at the way in which the access/user privileges integrate into the various components. Adding one or two components at a time might ease the transition.

Elgg and BuddyPress have common features, but based on my experiences with WPMU and Elgg, I know they will be substantially different. Once versions are more stable, I look forward to comparing the two. Meanwhile, I’d gladly try it out as a user if anybody has a test installation.

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NYSCATE Presentation: Open Source Web 2.0 Applications

November 26, 2008 in open source, Technology | 7 comments

On Tuesday, November 25, I presented Open Source Web 2.0 Applications at the New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education (NYSCATE). I was very excited to share some of what I have learned in the past year regarding web based applications such as WordPress, Elgg, Pligg, Posh, Gallery, and many others.

I was concerned about the timeslot–the last session on the last day of the conference. I was delighted to find the conference room nearly full when I began to present. I was also pleased to see a few people that attended my presentation last year.

You can hear the presentation Open Source Web 2.0.

Click through the presentation as you listen. (It will toggle between the first two slides until it has loaded. It’s a large file, so give it a minute.)

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Edublogs inserts content link ads in free blogs

November 11, 2008 in Blogging, open source, Technology | 6 comments

The popular “free” educational blogging site Edublogs has begun inserting inline content link ads in the posts of their free blogs. Once users are logged in, they no longer appear, but anyone view the blog sees the ads.

To disable the ads, one must become an Edublogs supporter costing $25 per year. There are other benefits such as more server space and Twitter integration. Alternatively, schools can set up Campus subscriptions starting at $900 per year for 100 blogs.

On the popular Classroom 2.0 site, teachers are registering shock and dismay at this unannounced development, saying that they feel “bamboozled.” Concern has been expressed about control over the content of these ads. Teachers and students have invested much into this blog platform and suddenly find the landscape has changed.

In fairness to Edublogs, the potential for advertising has been in their terms of service for some time–I looked into it many months ago. (You DO read the TOS before clicking I accept, don’t you?). In this tightening economy, the flow of easy captial has been shut off. The free hosted social applications need to pay their bills to keep their servers up and running and to pay staff.

I have always expressed concern about hosted Web 2.0 solutions for these very reasons. There is also the issue of data ownership. If one of these companies goes belly up overnight as has been the case with so many major corporations of late, what happens to your data?

The solution is free and open source software on either rented web server space, or on in-house servers. No, these are not “free” solutions, but they are inexpensive. Webhosting accounts can be had for as little as $5 a month and most offer ample resources for hosting your own Web 2.0 solutions. Furthermore, you will not find yourself blindsided by changes in policies and terms.

There are many options for software. Multiple blogs can be hosted on WordPressMU, Social Networks on Elgg, and the list goes on.

Stay tuned for more such developments and start studying up on free and open source Web 2.0 applications. As has been said so many times before: there is no such thing as a free lunch!

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Security Matrix: WordPressMU

August 16, 2008 in Blogging, Policies, Technology, wordpress | 3 comments

In my previous post about Web publishing security, I proposed the following security matrix:

While this is an oversimplification of the options, I think it gives a framework for making decisions on what web publishing software to deploy, when to deploy it as well as how. As an illustration of how this framework can be used and the potential complexity, we will examine the popular multiple blog platform WordPress MU. Another reason is that we have deployed WPMU in the past and there has been some debate about how it should be used if it should be used at all.

Out of the box, WPMU has two options for access to content: Open to the world and open, but blocking search engines and archivers. It has four options for moderation: Unmoderated, Posts only moderated, comments only moderated, and both posts and comments moderated. With WPMU, then, our matrix looks like this:

As one can see, there are already eight potential options in terms of access to publishing and content. While all the content can be accessed by anyone in the world through both choices, blocking search engines and archivers would significantly reduce access unless one has a link, or goes to the site directly.

WPMU has a plugin that I discussed in an earlier post called More Security Options. This plugin offers three more content access options: Community members (all users with accounts on the WPMU installation), Blog (People who are at least subscribers of an individual blog), and Administrators (only the administrators of an individual blog). The security matrix with this plugin appears:

There are now 20 options in terms of publishing and content access! Arguable, there are even more. For example one could choose to allow unmoderated comments, but restrict comments to logged in members of a blog. Clearly there is enough flexibility in WPMU to accommodate a wide range of Web Publishing Policies.

It is up to school tech committees to consider the ramifications of all of these options in terms of security, audience, and ownership and weigh the pros and cons of each before committing to a particular configuration. Teachers can then decide within the constraints of the school web publishing policy which option best suits their class. Publishing student content to the web is not simply as choice of yes or no. There are several shades of gray. These are not the only considerations and options for deploying this software. For further discussion, refer to my other posts about WPMU for more information on managing and securing the software.

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