Protein^® Forum

wow, this whole thing is on phpbb...?

pretty much yes.

the messenger, calendar, forum, guide, gallery and members registration apps are all running on three *heavily* mod'd phpbb backends. the feed is running on [url=http://www.nucleuscms.com]nucleus cms[/url] and the store is running on [url=http://www.oscommerce.com]oscommerce[/url].

however, as the forum is central the OS it has also raised the larger issue of the next major upgrade to the entire OS, which to be honest, i'm still working out how to do as it has grown into something much bigger than it was 5 years ago!

if you've been following some of the discussions in the forum, i've been looking at the [url=http://www.flickr.com]flickr[/url] api for the gallery and some kind of [url=http://www.digg.com]digg[/url] engine for the feed however i haven't decided if/how these might work and more importantly what you guys and girls want?!

my big debate at the moment is how to get the members more invovled, how best to aggregate, edit and display that content and the big question, how can make the OS standout from the rest? e.g. the whole protein desktop app that is currently only available to player and pimps, should this be part of the OS or moved to a seperate site? where should the chromo go? how can we get more people involved and posting? how to get some geotagging bizniz going on?! who am i going to get to help build and maintain it?!!

some many questions ...

Eh, there's a desktop app??

not a desktop app like something you can download! we've just called the [url=http://webmail.proteinos.com]protein mail/contacts[/url] app "protein desktop" :-)

you know I'll help maintain it. I'm just not sure about anything else! This is a big topic to look at, and it really will set the course for the next few years...

I've used vbulletin in many other forums and it works really really well. Simple and easy to use and can be customised to any theme.

cheers only matt and thx vanpebbles. indeed it's a big topic, so maybe i need to rename this forum and lets discuss it!

i saw a really nice web two-point-oh forum, rss/tagging/xhtml and all that jazz, a while ago. i'll try and find a link ...

sounds good, dig it out and let me know.

fyi ... i've just [url=http://members.proteinos.com/profile.php?mode=register&agreed=true]closed new registrations[/url] as i've just started working on the new system so don't want to duplicate/miss anyone!

thread now renamed and full suggested app list added.

[quote]my big debate at the moment is how to get the members more invovled, how best to aggregate, edit and display that content and the big question, how can make the OS standout from the rest?[/quote]

Few random outpurings... I reckon you've got to accept that the minority are creating the OS. I do think there's a lot of input content on the site at the moment, maybe it might be worthwhile looking at the "ouput" - a richer denser supplement? A "contributor" interface and a "browser" interface? And a hard analysis of the hotspots for visitors - feed, forum, guide, calendar, what's doing the biznez? How much mail volume is there, and does it justify itself? I think it might be rash to force member growth, but i think it will grow. I suppose I'm suggesting you let us all tool around as we are but away from prying public eyes, and presenting a "best of" as the public offering - maybe with some kind of tagged rating system? - with a beefed up supplement. That way the many can still get the protein they need, synthesised by the few. As it was in the beginning, etc. (I've deliberately not mentioned the store, 'cos i'm a little uneasy around it - I don't ask you to help out with my business! ;)) And i think Chromo should be in a specialised lab of it's own, away from that commercial pressure until any products emerge.

And on the tech. side i'm no help. Whatsoever. At all.

ok so it looks like i might have just dreamt up that forum (but i'll keep looking just in case...)

i'll follow larry's lead; i think there must be some way to differentiate protein from sites such as coolhunting, reluct, eyebeam etc. (blogs?) seems that with the advent of blogs the feed no longer stands out?

at the moment the os really has the upperhand on design (every site seems to be using the standard 2 column blog format, the os design is a bit more intelligent), diversity and 'heritage' (being as ninfomania was around years before blogs took over).

oh and on aggregating content, i did have an idea a while ago about some kind of weekly/monthly printed version of the feed? maybe with more indepth articles, follow ups or something? of course this would be pretty hard to implement, logistics, time etc. and is ('philisophically'/environmentally) a bit of a regression. think [url=http://forum.proteinos.com/viewtopic.php?t=825]protein magazine[/url]?

i think i've deviated from the topic a bit here but just some ideas/thoughts.

oh and i'm good for maintaining/creating content but useless for tech help...

(PS. onlymatt, when did you over take me in forum posts!? :D)

coppermine link looks wrong will

[url]http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php[/url]

searching for that forum soft, i came across ths: http://www.blursoft.com/metaForum/index.php looks interesting, live updating threads etc.

sorry George, I never meant to, it just happened!

I worked on a piece of forum software for my final university project:
http://vennt.net/

tagging, AJAX, simplicity were the main focal points.
At the minute users enter their interests via tags and then the system filters the big pile of topics to just show ones they will be interested in.

Just testing it at the minute and had a decent amount of positive feedback:
http://solutionwatch.com/396/vennt-tag-based-discussion-system/

Wouldn't mind it being integrated into Protein if they were interested.

to throw out some answers to questions asked way up there:

[i]how to get the members more invovled?[/i]
- require minimum relavent postings

[i]how best to aggregate, edit and display that content?[/i]
- let users 'create their own protein page'

[i]how [to] make the OS standout from the rest?[/i]
- get an 'industry professional' from each of the feed categories to write original protein articles

[i]where should the chromo go?[/i]
- in its own feed section

[i]how can we get more people involved and posting?[/i]
- make some super-easy-to-use 'chromo-enabled website' standards (button type things that link to the main site)

[i]how to get some geotagging bizniz going on?![/i]
- offer to mail out some URL stickers to interested protein people

[i]who am i going to get to help build and maintain it?!![/i]
I'll gladly do what I can.

plastic, vennt looks really interesting. any chance of a beta login? :-)

i like barabadam's suggestion of a 'create your own protein page', the modular grid of the current os design would work perfectly (better than, even) like the [url=http://www.google.co.uk/ig?hl=en]google personal homepage[/url] system.

...and you'd be more guaranteed to like the content...

geotagging - hook me up Will!

you know that ...