It's that time again, when i'm asking for some of your thoughts and valuable input
Basically... i'm interested in knowing how you would like CP to evolve and cater for your needs over lets say 2 years?
For example, personally i use this site to archive my coding stuff, and chat to other coders in the forums. In 2 years, i would like for there to be more applications to help me manage my source codes and help collaborate on open source stuff as well as show other coders more in depth skills i have via my profile.
So whats the direction you would like this site to go in? What would you like to see here in 2 years time that YOU would PERSONALLY use?
Kind regards,
Scott
P.S. This sites overall mission statement is ultimately where i will be taking this site, but it will cover a lot of your guys "needs" and this topic will make sure i capture them. The "mission" of this site in brief is to help coders prove their skills, link coders together via profile data (skills, interests, etc) and help coders collaborate.
I spend a lot of time on the net searching for function names, source code - information about things such as GD2, ImageMagik and so forth. So I would like Coder Profile to take Google to the next step - I know that sounds ridiculous but bear with me because most of the functionality is here but I think you're trying to build too much!! There is a forum full of information, articles and code pin board etc. But instead of having all these separate apps I would find it really cool if I could come here and do one of two things:
Browse - when I just want to read about anything and everything
Search - when I need something specific!
Say I need information on "Netscaler load balancing" - Coder Profile could suggest relevant articles, discussions AND coders that have the required knowledge. Then whenever I'm programming and need to know an answer something (which I think is the number 1 activity for programmers) I'd always go to Coder Profile! I'd rather do that than use Google because Google specialises in searching only - which its mastered! I think CP should master helping programmers search/browse for information - we all do it, all the time - and if you can tie the recognition into it aswell that'd be ace! The profiles would be a key part because obviously the information has to be written by someone - and that author needs recognition for it!!
I think all these applications make it really bloated and I don't know what to use the site for. I don't know a site that has built a brilliant programming resource yet. There are code repositories, forums with similar features but I'd like to see discussions/articles/source code and people all in one place! It would be valuable to me as a user!
At the moment I only really come for the forum - and I don't think thats what its meant for? I know you've already built most of this but CP has so many features and doesn't really do anything specific?
Anyway thats what I'd like to see - I'd be back every 10 minutes!
I think to get everything more tight integrated as mozermatt wanted it would be the functionality to "embed" content from the other networks, like a source code. No, not the same as with embeding code with the code tags, more like posting a little box, with the image, the name (which is clickable), the description and such from it (as on my attached image).
How I would like CP to evolve would be by basically working a whole lot at the actual profiles, like the about me feature, the commenting there, more apps and so. More customisation features would also be great, like being able to choose amount of shown articles at the frontpage, or the sources, or the comments and so. Also a functionality to add a custom header would be nice, maybe a custom title, things like that.
Also, I would like a statistics feature for each user very much, this showing how many articles has been written, average amount of characters per post on the forum, total lines of code in all posted source codes and such stats.
And yes, more about integration, show users post count in their profiles!
I think the site should be an archive of who you are as a programmer, and how you develop over time.
That said, I would suggest the following:
SVN/CVS server
Project Managment
RSS Feed Imports
Mailing List Imports
I'll see if I think of more later. The point of the RSS and Mailing list imports are to show how you are contributing to the programming community outside of CP. You could import an RRS feed from your profile on another programming site, and import a mailing list to show threads you are/have activily taking part on within those lists.
@MozartMatt - I think that aim would be a little of target for this site. Search as you rightly said is done very well by google, and the fact there are source searches anyway such as http://www.koders.com/ says that market is already being tapped in to (slightly). However, I think search is needed here which will be done in a long time from now, and browsing like you said i aim to achieve using the networks.
I also agree that at the moment this site doesn't really achieve anything other than a forum. I have recognized the problem and started rectifying it in v2.
@Anto - You will be able to embed code snippets soon. The forum stats you asked for have already been on CP but i removed them because they are too time consuming, use to many resources, and don't really contribute much to this sites overall aim.
whole lot at the actual profiles, like the about me feature, the commenting there, more apps and so.
the exact route i'm going down with v2... i feel the same is needed... like this is a profile site, but the profiles still don't really allow much on them.
@Craige - "be an archive of who you are as a programmer" - agreed! Focus on the coders themselves, not their content like every other site does!
I'd like a page that when I log on it shows me the latest forum posts, source codes, articles etc. that are relevent to me. Either i specify that I want to see articles on python or it reads that from my profile and delivers them. Perhaps when a registered member logs on to CP it redirects them from the home page to an updates page?
I also think the user groups need to be developed, perhaps giving them private forums as opposed to the current structure which, in my opinion, is very messy.
I'd also like to see an IRC channel, I think before you mentioned that it would take away from the forums but I don't think it would, many sites implement both and they work perfectly.
To be honest, this topics turned out right. It really is where i'm taking v2... i think v1 was more testing the waters and made a shit load of mistakes.
Though something i will not have is an IRC channel. There not friendly for newbs, CP will have limited control and have no way of adding additional functionality and there easily abused. For instant chat purposes i will be adding features in to the site in v3 that covers IM's and chat rooms. But those deviate away from profiles so it wont be until a later version i'm afraid.
@Seachmall - totally agree, the groups suck at the moment but i do plan on revamping them some time in v2 so they have much more of a "purpose".
Kind regards,
Scott
P.S. A component thats planned early in v2 is actually a forum component that i can bolt on to any content just like with comments. Meaning technically, where ever you see comments there could be a forum... however... for obvious reasons there won't be both
One idea for improving the user groups would be to add private articles/sources/code snippets and such for each group, so they could IE have source codes which only are avaiable for members of the group.
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