The people who made Clipmarks recently launched another service that ties in with Clipmarks. Using the wordpressmu they have made a blogging website very much like blogger or wordpress. Except its meant to be a cliplog. [Clog]
I really like their interface, integration and just general theme look. If you use Clipmarks you would probably end up changing the plugin to this, as it auto updates your clips with each post. The new delicious integration is really nice too.
All in all, a powerful service, offered for free. [They even allow CSS edit of skin for which you have to pay for on a .wordpress.com blog.]
So decided to see how quickly I can learn Wordpress theme structure and works. It turned out pretty heavy when working from scratch [13 or so separate php files D:]
But after doing the smart thing and looking at the default themes I managed to create a very cool and unique skin in just one day.
This blog is designed for two people to post stuff, so I decided to go with this dual nature and went for doubles. Red vs Blue, 'tWO' and so on. Here is a screenshot of the completed work from yesterday, I will need to fix some errors and cross browser issues today but the design is pretty much final:
The stuff that I am really proud of:
Rounded corners using just CSS, this was a pretty cool thing to learn, and I used it three times in this design. Silhouettes of the authors, I found some php tweaks I could use in the theme to give custom class to each post based on author, I used that to make the 'red vs blue' feel you see there.
Everything else was just basic styling.
In the end, making a WP skin from scratch I wouldn't recommend to a person thats new to it. I would suggest taking the existing skins and taking a lot of time to see what you can do with the php in them. And then style it all up with CSS. Also be VERY careful of tutorials that you find! I used one from 2007 for 1.5 hours and it turned out that it was outdated, so I had to scrap it all -_-
I will add a link to this page once I am done with browser issues and web standards errors.
Whew, just created an entire company Intranet in under 48 hours. It is a very large but easily accessible system that is currently helping manage over 60 people.
And its done entirely in Joomla!
Its all based around Community Builder [CB] and Project Fork. Project fork being the main thing that has allowed this beast to happen, while CB allowing to tie in all the features that project fork [PF] didn't cover. [both are free but have some neat pay for plugins]
Due to this being on a completely private server I can't share pictures or links, but I will describe some of the functionality that I have added.
And IM and Group chat functionality. The IM happened to be a very great system, allowing for true instant messenger type feel. Using CB connection list it displays the friends that are online. And then when you want to chat it has a facebook style interface [bar at the bottom showing friends and chats] You click on the friend and open up a popup, so you can keep navigating the intranet while chatting separatley. Since the bar is on every page you can easily see chat requests, it also has an ajax notifier and sound. Pretty awesome for a joomla module. [Although it did cost around 15$usd]
The group chat I created by using a simple shoutbox module, with it I could create a clean interface for the whole team to communicate in real time.
PF has its own forums for each project, but it was also necessary to use a separate forum for general team announcements and discussion. I decided to not go the hefty route of a Fireboard install or an Olympus install, instead I found a clean and small ccBoard. It has almost no features besides allowing for CB integration. That made it perfect for quick chatting between users.
I also used the powerful uddIM PMS system to tie the communication closer together.
As for functionality itself, Documents are stored as articles using the main Joomla article manager and carefully constructed sections and categories. Files are stored through the project centred PF, which allows for tree browsing, folder creation and even notes + version checks, right in the front end.
So far the team is very happy with the way it is working out, and hopefully this setup will increase productivity and centralize the entire project in one single place.
If you would like a list of modules that I have used, just comment here.
Now at first glance they look complicated and without much point. But after a closer look you can see that the first one is a pretty revolutionary concept. To sum it up in My own words:
ReFrameIT allows you to make a forum thread out of ANY website. Yes, it gives you a sidebar in which you can comment on the website [or a specific text area/selection/image/video whatever.] Anyone else who happens to drop by the website and who has the ReFrameIt plugin in their browser will also see your message. And they can reply to it, post their own comment etc.
Once again this doesn't sound like much [but in fact its quite the achievement with just the above functionality], but it also offers the ability to directly link to a comment anywhere on the web. So not only are you taken to the specific area of the website, you are also able to reply to the comment and continue a thread like conversation from there. Another thing that it lets you do is have an HTML widget which would list all your comments. And best of all [and the functionality that I really end up using] it allows you to post your message directly into twitter with the link to itself. So when you post the message, your twitter also gets updated.
This is incredibly handy just by itself. Check out what else I do with it later in this entry.
The next Plugin is clipmarks. It has a more practical and every day use, once again the following summary is in my own words:
What it basically lets you do is select any text [or video/image etc] and 'clipmark' it. The clipmark is displayed on your clipmarks profile and can be viewed by anyone [if you so desire].
But the real deal comes in the 'sharing' of your clipmark. You can post it on twitter, or send it directly to any major blog as a complete blog post. Once again to the average user that might not sound like a very exciting thing to do. But from something like a link building or a marketing stand point you can suddenly mark up the Internet the way you want it and display it in as many places as you would possibly need to at once. [You can also do all the major social stuff like 'digg' and 'facebook']
Now that I described what these two things do, on to the experiment.
By adding the twitter api/rss to each blog, it shows what I have 'ReFramed' while whenever I clip something it goes directly to each of the blogs in a clean and well formatted post.
What is this experiment for? Well I want to see if I can establish three things:
Interested Followers
A clean marketing network
A powerful backlink aggregation.
How would the backlinks and marketing function? well lets look at the numbers. Whenever I clip something it ends up on my clipmarks profile [1], then it goes to my live journal [2] my wordpress [3] my blogger [4] and I can send it to my twitter [5]. Now that is 5 instant, keyword filled posts/links in just a few seconds. Not to mention that when I comment on the page or snippet in ReFrameIt it ends up on that page as a comment and it also ends up on my reFrameIt profile. [And here comes the long part] Then it ends up on my twitter, which in turn ends up on the three blogs. This is already double the links that I had before. So what does this come too? Well hopefully a good and quick basic backlink net. [For Free]
I will post in about a month, if it has not picked up by then then this experiment has failed. If it does then it is a good way to spread the word.
A quick guide to set up Clipmarks for a blog:
I am going to list the steps to make the Clipmarks side of this work [as the reframeit is not really necessary unless you actually like what that plugin is doing]
Download the clipmarks widget on the mozzila extensions site: Clicpmarks
Install and restart FireFox.
This should open up a page which tells you the basic instructions on how to get started. [and create the account]
After getting an account and logging in, you can add blogs in your account 'sharing' tab.
The rest is just setting up one of the supported blogs and going from there.
If you would like me to clip something somewhere and see if it helps you get it noticed faster just post a link here and ill see if I can put it up.
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Jul 12 2009, 01:21 PM
