Communication with Designer Team

Questions: sent on Monday, May 12, 2005

Please find attached a list of questions that would assist us in the
creation of your proposed programming community.

Best Regards,
Group 5.

Addition Document File for the question

Re: Questions 12 May 2005 3:01

Should you have any other questions please feel free to ask. We will try to
answer as soon as possible.

Jakrapun Vacharachaisurapol

Addition Document file for Answer of the question.

More questions ;) 15 May 2005 16:32

Hi guys,
thanks for your quick reply last time.

We have already done a prototype of your website.

Although you have not asked for it, we would like to know if you would be interested into extra asynchronous functions to bring more excitment to the members, such as blog, or a poll (such as a weekly poll i.e. -"Do you think C# is better than Java?-") or a calendar to post important events!

Also you have asked us to implement a Search function for local search and also allied communities.

However this search is limited in its scope (as it only searches for software development material), therefore we suggest to include an global search bar as well such as Google search bar.

Thanks,
Group5

Re: More questions ;): sent on Monday, May 16, 2005

Hi,
It's good to know that you are enjoying with the prototype of
software development community. For your suggestion about Blog or Poll
that are not included in my proporsal, Please feel free to add them if you
like. For the feature of allied communities search, my first intension is
to use "Web Service" technology which are supported by Mambo (Please refer
to Figure 1 in the proposal). This way, we can exchange our local service,
i.e. local search, with allied communities and also the other way around.
However, global search service by Google also a good alternative way. Hope
this helps and please do not hesitate to send me questions if you still
have any.

cheers

jakrapun vacharachaisurapol
Group3

Re: More questions ;) 16 May 2005 10:13

Thanks a lot Jakrapun for your quick and clear reply.

Group5

Sponsoring: sent on Monday, May 16, 2005

Hi all,

We were wondering how you were planning to finance yourselves, since the membership is free.

We would therefore propose different alternatives:
- you can place links to your sponsors on your webpage
- you can have advertising banners
- we were also thinking about implementing a "Book of the week" module that would link to Dymocks (or any other shop of your choice) and upon agreement between you and the reseller, you would get a commisson on each book sold through your portal.

Obviously sponsors links and moreover advertising banners have to be placed in an elegant way not to make your website look like an advertising billboard that would repel the users.

Please let us know what you think about that, we can implement this in our initial proposal and modify it according to your will.
You may also have extra ideas you would like to throw in about this topic.

Thanks & good luck,
Group 5

Prototype: sent on Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Dear clients,

your prototype is now available at
http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/nc/prototype/

from now on let's try to use the Discussion/Forum board to interact between each others!

best of luck,
group5

Few things: sent on Thursday, May 19, 2005

Dear clients,

just a few things to talk about.

-I am not sure if you need to look at the preliminary implementation. Here is a version for you in case:
http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/nc/preliminary.html

-We have not received a reply for our last batch of questions when we were asking about sponsors, banners.... I believe you just forgot about it since usually you always reply in the hour ;-))

- to reply to Jakrapun last night:
"PS: Did you implement it purely with PHPbb or with CMS tools ?"

--> We only used phpBB... took whole day... but the result looks so cool! They use a special file format. *.tpl .... quite interesting!

However it is annoying because we cannot create any db on UTS server so we have to host outside... we have been trying today to implement some chat modules directly into the phpbb... but i think we just cannot do it... we tried both IRC (http://phpbb.123flashchat.com/ (this one looks so lovely!)) and normal chat modules (such as Feeta phpBB Chat V1.0), but we were unsuccessful...

it is just really frustrating to spend all day on that (specially that we did not get to sleep last night because of ccnp3 60% final exam this morning at 8am! :-))) and not to manage to do any progress at all.

it seems that we do not have the resources necessary (java server) and databases permissions to implement it. Moreover ISPs are reluctant in providing the adequate tools to host a chat because it uses bandwidth... it really is a shame because it would look just so good built inside the phpbb layout!

We will still try again to host it on one of the member's home server tonight (it's our last cartridge)and with www.freesql.org, but I am pessimistic about it... so it looks like we will have to use those free communities websites for that.... not as aesthetic but no other choice...

we wish UTS would give us some permission on the MySQL server.......

Anyway, this is where we are up to so far.

good luck,
group5

Re: few things 20 May 2005 0:41

Hi Gaetan,
Sorry for late reply, ^_^' you were right, it wasn't my style to reply
this late. Well allow me to answer the questions.
1. It was very thoughtful of you about Sponser or Advertising Banner, we
totally agree that it's a great idea. Since this will help for our financial
problem that may occur in the future. ;) and as you mentioned, it's better
to put those advertisements in a way that don't disturb our members while
they navigate around the community.
2. I had a look with your Preliminary doc already. It covered most details
that we've agreed so far.
3. I appreciate that you put lots of effort on developing this community and
your current forum looks great. We looking forward to see the progress.

Cheers
Jakrapun Vacharachaisurapol
Group3 member

chat beta version: sent on Saturday, May 21, 2005

Dear Customers,

it's been a tough day trying to implement the chat function.
We had to just restart everything from scratch but it seems to be working now.
The discussion forum layout has changed, it will get back to what it was before for the final version.

The chat window will also have a different layout.

Have a play with the chat, it's not as good as some professional chats, but we were a few people logged in tonight and it was coping well.

The links to the discussion and chat had to be changed, but they are still accessible form the same address http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/nc/prototype/

thank you,
group5

GREAT news!: sent on Saturday, May 21, 2005

Hi all again!

I have some wonderful news. The Discussion, Chat and even Poll are now fully operating! And all using phpBB2 as required by our dear clients :-)!

Please test it and give us some feedbacks. We just setup all features for public access so feel free.

However the chat requires a login so just create a quick one, it takes 30 seconds!

Once you have created a login, you can send private messages to each others, and moreover enjoy the many tools available.

Have fun!

group5

P.S: you can access the prototype from:
http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/nc/prototype/
(and click the discussion, chat or poll links)

or directly access phphBB2 at
http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/phpBB2

News + Let's use it!: sent on Sunday, May 22, 2005

Hi all,

Many new exciting things happening, please check the "News" topic in the Dicussion Board.
(accessible from http://home.exetel.com.au/gaetan/nc/prototype/)

Please also visit the "Poll" topic where you can vote!

Also one important thing is that we shoud use the discussion board to communicate between each others.
For this purpose, I have setup a topic called:
Communication between Developer and Client

You need to register to use this topic. There is a thread inside called "Give us some feedbacks please". Please some something there and let us know what you think about YOUR community! :-))
If we don't use it we can't test it!

We should also try to gather on the chat to test it, maybe not all of us but a member of each team maybe? Let us know what you think about that. At least please try it between yourselves, we have already tested it with 6 people, it worked fine.

About this chat, I received an email from Alder this morning.
I thought I'd reply to him here as it concerns everyone!

QUESTIONS:
> the emotions can not support click function?? like just click the
> For the moment i testing now, the emotion have to type the
> combination text for display the emotion.
> and only can join 1 chatroom at one time ..... can i join 2 or 3
> chatroom at the same time?????

ANSWER:
-yes you are right there is no option for just clicking the emoticon. You need to type its code in, this is made to help you improve your typing speed :-)))

-yes you can also only join one room at a time, I had a look at the code and it seems that there is no way you can change that easily. This is php/mysql based and it does not allow for concurrency. Not as flexible as java chats, although I have tried the java based chat on http://www.communityzero.com/ and it is very basic and does not even allow for emoticons at all and has an ugly grey layout.

See you on the Community Forum!

group5

Full implementation done! 28 May 2005 20:17

From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Full implementation done!
Date: 28 ??????? 2548 20:17

Dear clients,

We have finished the implementation for your community.
As required, it is using phpBB2 for most of the features.
Modules not available in phpBB2 (such as mailing list, blog...) have been implemented separately using php and integrated into the community environment.

We hope you like and enjoy it!
Please let us know if you find any problems.

Have fun!
group5