Forum OpenACS Q&A: Community Projects...

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Posted by David Kuczek on
As we have 2101 registered users and 6093 downloads of openacs (cvs
downloads excluded I suppose) I would really be interested in some
more insight into realized projects.

I think it would be a great thing (I know that nobody wants to hear
this word) marketing wise to have something like a showroom, where
running sites are presented. This could include details like time for
implementation, number of users etc. And on the other side features
(maybe new features) of those platforms etc.

This way people could see how the modules are serving a cause and
therefore can picture the strengthes of openacs better.

Besides that developers could be able to reuse enhanced or rewritten
modules.

For example: We have rewritten the general-comments module and created
three different comment types. Opinions, advises and regular comments.
We created a new module called general-rating and created our own
epinions....

But maybe this would be a goal for openacs 4.x with its independent
modules?!

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Oh, I love the marketing word.  Marketing's great.  It's the tail that the dog should wag.  Unfortunately, many get it backwards :)

I think your idea is a good one, i.e. a centralized page for documenting OpenACS sites that goes beyond the simple listing-with-comments form we've got now.

As to when something like that gets down, seems to me we're all pretty busy with OpenACS 4.x at the moment!

One nice thing about openacs 4.x is that the independent module structure allows folks to offer alternative module implementations.  So, if your general comments module, once ported to 4.x, provides the same API to client objects as the existing one does then you could supply it as an alternative folks could download into their copy.

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Posted by David Kuczek on
I am responding as mailto:rlocke@infiniteinfo.com (Robert, you replied to me directly and not to the bboard)

"I would like to contribute:
    www.videoauthority.com

as a newly implemented OpenACS site.

That's all the detail I can provide for now.  :)

Rob"

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Posted by Bill Millikin on
Well, I don't know about marketing, but we're using it to build two sites, with a third in the wings.

www.greatestnetworker.com
www.ercmembers.net
www.swainmortgage.com

In the case of my favorite, a private site called www.ercmembers.net, we are incorporating as many modules as we can, to make the system wide open for the use of our members.  While there are users starting to use it, it isn't "Grandly Opened" yet!  We have a group of people (approximately 500) who will initially be subscribed, and we're looking for about 1000-5000 members, we think.

So far, we have implemented User Homepages, WimpyPoint, File Storage, Classified Ads (with Auctions), and Whois-online/Chat.

To date, we haven't decided what to do with/about forums, but they will be very important for collaboration among our users, as is Wimpy.

We will be incorporating E-commerce with a paypal link setup, as well as Credit Card Verification.

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Posted by Scott Mc Williams on
Well...I've been involved in a number of OpenACS sites. www.royal.com is the biggest, but by no means the best implementation of OpenACS technology. www.edulix.com is a little more community oriented. My main project right now is http://www.vwbusclub.com/ which will eventually make use of most of the ACS. Currently we are using pdm, chunks, faq, news, calendar, glossary, general-links, general-comments, classifieds, ecommerce (not fully implemented yet), neighbor to neighbor, polls, whoisonline and my pet project...a HEAVILY modified forums.

I am currently building three other full ecommerce sites with it as well. Fun fun fun.

Scott

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Posted by Pascal Scheffers on
As an I-Have-Got-Do-Something-On-Easter-Holiday I built a 3.x modulette where you can register your OpenACS site, I call it 'The OpenACS Site Register', and you can find it here: http://pascal.scheffers.net/siteregister/. It doesn't do much yet (as in, it works, but there are a lot of 'nice to have' features.

At the moment it requires you to install a small script on your OpenACS site that will report the number of users, bboard postings and comments in your system (you can find that on the 'add my site' page). The module will poll all active sites every 24 hours, so the stats are kept up-to-date. For the time being, if you do not like to publish your stats, just edit the script I provide and return zero for all stats.

I am thinking of adding a 'more info' page, where the site owner can leave more info about the implementation time, modules that are in use, etc. That page can then also show some sums and averages of the the number of users/postings/comments in the last 24 hours, week, month, year, etc. (I keep a history of stats).

I shall not be insulted if nobody likes this, I wanted to try something small for the weekend. If you like it, please register your site on my box, if Don et.al. like it I'll be happy to transfer, data and all to OpenACS.org.

I learned a lot: I like Postgres but the documentation sux (for example, in pl/pgsql how on earth do I find out 'how many rows affected' after an update? and use that a return value of the procedure). OpenACS is also somewhat lacking, but there are plenty of samples, so that wasn't too bad.

I also found a silly bug in AOLServer+ad12, if you go to the site-register index page, and (with IE 5 atleast) press refresh repeatedly, AOLServer toggles between writing the headers before AND after the page and the normal behaviour. Not very pretty. Does this have something todo with me using .ADPs?

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Posted by Pascal Scheffers on
I meant if Ben et.al. likes it, of course. OpenACS.org is his box, isn't it?
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Posted by Dan Wickstrom on
"I learned a lot: I like Postgres but the documentation sux (for example, in pl/pgsql how on earth do I find out 'how many rows affected' after an update? and use that a return value of the procedure). OpenACS is also somewhat lacking, but there are plenty of samples, so that wasn't too bad."

Use the get diagnostics command:

	declare
		my_row_count integer;
        begin

        	update foo set bar = 'baz';
		GET DIAGNOSTICS my_row_count = ROW_COUNT;

		return my_row_count;
	end;

See .../doc/postgresql/html/plpgsql-description.html in the pg documentation.

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Posted by Don Baccus on
BTW, get diagnostics (a weird name for information like this but it's in SQL92) is new for 7.1.  If you've been reading old docs you'd never find it, obviously!
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Posted by Pascal Scheffers on
Oh well, I had been reading those docs. And I had sort of skipped
after I read 'get diagnostics', which didn't seem connected to my
problem. Also the section title could be a wee bit more specific. You
live and learn...

It was nice thing to toy with regardless :)