Upgrading modified

General footbag-related topics that don't fit elsewhere go in here.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 13 Nov 2012 00:19

If you spot something that you think is a bug you can certainly let me know.

The project is hosted at github, which comes with a simple bug tracking. You can find the project here:

https://github.com/royk/new_modified

Simply login or sign in (free) and click on "Issues" to post bugs.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by Asmus » 13 Nov 2012 00:24

Some concerns:

- That if we don't move the entire content of modified (and get everybody onboard) that it will just end up as the the new fourkast / shredglobal /etc

- I like how my modified footblog is a little secret, you have to do some serious diggin to find it through google.

- There are some great articles on modified and I would be very sad to see them get lost. Like:
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11846
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13765
and so on.

Will post more later.
Also I did some graphic work last night Roy. I will fool around with it a little more tonight and then send you some initial ideas.

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 13 Nov 2012 02:04

Thanks Asmus, I really want to see other people's vision for a new site, and work on a non-ugly site :)

I also want to mention that even though I'm pushing ahead as fast as I can with the custom project, if anyone wants to look at a ready made solution, no offense will be taken if we find something ready that works.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by boyle » 15 Nov 2012 13:05

Hi guys - I have been pretty busy lately, not too much time to post. I like the idea, and I was thinking about things and the IFPA is more like something like FIFA (less money and corruption of course). What the new site should be is almost like a "players union", but not in such a sense of officialdom, but in something that is for the players.

Of course the whole thing is about keeping it going. That is always the struggle with everything, but if we can work together as the community and put systems into place where new people can come in if others fall by the way side and have some things automated so even if everything falls apart, it still gets updated.

Do you think we could even do something that gathers anything with #footbag on Twitter, anything for the Facebook group, an RSS feed with all mentions of footbag on blogs, what's the top rating on Reddit. I think this kind of thing could even have it's own page (not the main page)

I think modified can continue as a forum, kind of as it is now. Forums are going "out", but there is plenty of interesting information on here.

I think the key to having good content is have featured bloggers. Maybe 10 or 15 from all around the world. Some blogging in different languages. You know that they are going to post maybe once a week on there. Then have someone who is on top of competitions and events, making sure everything is up to date.

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 17 Nov 2012 23:11

Auto scraping is a good idea, but you'll have to take into account that a big percentage of the result will be unrelated. I have some experience with seeing what kind of content is posted with "footbag" tags on vimeo and youtube, and almost all are unrelated to freestyle, many are commercials or just "footbag" tagged for added traffic.

I plan on getting the site to initial release with blog posts and wall posts, with articles following, so there's a bit of time to think about how to implement them.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by Anz » 18 Nov 2012 02:38

I like where this is going. Footbag needs a website with "links to everything on the same screen". Footbag.org is close to this, but it would need a lot more. Fourkast and Shredglobal failed in frequent updating with interesting content and having interesting subjects for newcomers.

Having several active moderators on the site to add interesting updates is important. Such as people who make videos, frequent bloggers, trick tips, etc.

If you add footbag info and tutorial pages on the site, I can help create the content.

And yet I think what is the most important is the layout of the whole site. If you make it look too hip it might become harder to surf around the site. Adding Java and Flash all over the place makes the site run slower and might cause bugs.

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 18 Nov 2012 07:58

I aim the site's initial version to incorporate the wall of facebook and the blogs and private messaging of modified, and a nice support for videos. I don't want to discourage future feature discussion, but make it clear that right now I'm trying to be laser focused on this minimal functionality.

Regarding the design, it's probably going to be a touchy issue as almost everybody feels strongly about something like this. I'm going to do my best to make the site easy to skin if you know html and css, so that anybody can take the code to their computer & work on a skin. We could then get screenshots of the skins and together decide what goes live.

Finally, regarding the "links to everything on the same screen", one way to do this is via yahoo! pipes - where you could choose multiple data sources and combine them to a single feed. If someone wants to take this as a project, I can later on make a page that reads the feed and outputs a nice page that shows everything.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by SlashC » 22 Nov 2012 22:17

The progress with new modified is looking really great so far Roy! I took a look at some community websites and brainstormed some features with Chelsea Dagger that we might want to include in our new footbag community website. Feel free to discuss which features you think would be important or whether there's other ones you would like to see. Maybe we can get a poll running and try to put a priority on some of these features to see which ones Roy or other contributors should focus on after the initial features have been implemented?

The following might be top bar items on the website (inspiration taken from hoopcity.ca, eventhubs.com, facebook)

home/front wall
posts or resources that receive a lot of "kudos" trend upwards
also hand selected resources and articles that are of a high quality
top ten resources on side bar

(user name)
Inbox
activity
edit details
posts
my photos
my videos
my blog
my music playlists

learn
online tutorials
online classes(i.e. anz tricks, polish toestall/clipper stall vids, jorden’s instruction vids)
hooping faqs
-> links to other resources
like descriptive system
how to practise footbag articles ect

teach
teaching tutorials
teaching faqs
I think we need to focus our community more on how to teach footbag players how to teach other players then just on how to learn

Clubs
Searchable list of active clubs
Each club can be like a “user” with a wall and activity page
Users can associate themselves with clubs

Events
Event calendar
Users/clubs can add events
Each event has its own wall for users and organizers to comment -> organizers info goes at the top

Videos
Add “Category” feature so that videos can be organized
Possible categories:
Latest Videos
Featured Videos
Big Tricks
Sick Links
Runs
Records
Tutorials
Tournaments/Jams
Performances
Multibagging
Doubles
Ground Footbag (playing while sitting on the ground)
Add in other categories such as multibagging/doubles to help promote things that aren’t popular because they get lost in the noise of more popular stuff (i.e. big tricks)

Equipment
Photo gallery of new stitched bags
bag tutorials (stitching, repair, ect)
shoe tutorials (repair, modification, enhancement, ect)

Photos?
Should be supported, but maybe not a main page feature?
Photo galleries for each user

Forum
Subforums
Similar to modified
Do not have subforums for features already included in website as interactive features (i.e. blogs)

Shop
Marketplace for people to sell things
i.e. stitchers
extra shoes
ect

Music
Custom playlists
Upload or link music
hoopcity as this as a feature and it looks awesome
I would love to be able to share and use other people's playlists when shredding
I can't play without music

Chat?
Do you think if this was implemented that you would use it?
Private person to person chat
Chat room for multiperson chat?

Ads
Side bar ads only
Top bar ads are annoying
Requirement: must be a footbag company or independent equipment i.e. stitcher in order to purchase ad space
i.e. fourkast.com, freedomfootbags.com, worldfootbag.com, planetfootbag.com
companies montly advertising fees $10-$100 depending on traffic, ad placement/size, ect
money earned can pay for website costs and help compensate website creator and/or staff for their efforts
money earned could also go towards footbag community projects

Search
Searchable tags for resources
I think some of the tags should be required in ordre for us to keep track of the resources that we create
For example it would be great if I could search for all vasek videos from worlds 2007 if wanted to
Erik has some really good tagging techniques that he uses for videos on the fourkast website
Here are some possible tag ideas:
players: (rory, byrin, kevin)
city/club: edmonton
tournament: world championships
day:
month:
year:
tricks:

Posts
Separate css post style for posting tricks/combos
i.e. <trick> legbeater > blur > atomsmasher </trick>
would indent and italisize and maybe be a different font or something
make the tricks/combos pop out from the normal text
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 23 Nov 2012 00:50

Thanks! I'm glad that my efforts aren't being overlooked.

These features should also come with "priority", so we know which things we want to be developed before others, as obviously, I can't do everything at once.

On the front page I also want to have 'stickies', like admin announcements, upcoming events, new features, maybe new members..

On the user page I want to have a personal wall, where it shows everything the user posted, AND other people can publicly post there, like "Welcome" to new users and stuff like that.

Progress will seem to slow down on the site in the upcoming days. Since most of the core functionality is ready, I'm working on refactoring the code and adding much needed tests. It doesn't produce any new functionality for the site, but it helps that in the future, adding new functionality will be safer and easier.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by SlashC » 23 Nov 2012 02:56

I will wait a few days for other people to brainstorm ideas for features/requirements and then I will compile a google form where we can rate the priority of each suggested main/sub feature. The results of the form should give us a rough consensus of which features should be added in and in what order.

Also, I will add in a field for suggesting and/or voting on possible names for the website.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by boyle » 23 Nov 2012 12:56

I like the music idea - just have to make sure we don't get taken down as a pirate site or something - I guess if we are linking to content that is already out there, then it doesn't matter (it also doesn't take up space on the site hosting).

I like the events as well, that is one of the most important things.

I guess the biggest question is do we want to completely replace Modified, leave Modified going with all the information that has gone through here in 10 or so years.

I guess the best thing that the site can do is get people talking about Footbag regularly - what they're working on, competitions they're going to, music they're listening to, new videos, etc.

I think the new site should not have a forum in this sense of a forum - but should be a place where people can talk about the sport.

I think maybe photos should not be supported. Maybe something where you can easily link the photos in from an outside source. There are so many places where you can host photos, do we need to add those photos again to the site?

I don't think chat is a worthwhile addition. People can chat on Facebook and various other places.

I also think the shop section (could be added later), but to begin, that should be left to Fourkast, Freedom and companies. Though there is no reason why players can't have a blog talking about what they're doing, including creation of footbag companies, or their day to day lifestyles. Then if they're feeling great about the site, they can get some adverts.

Something to consider will be what the ongoing costs will be.

Have you also thought about making the blogs run so that the latest post is first? I think if it's not in a forum style, that is the way to go.

It's all beginning to take shape, I guess a few of us need to get posting and bring it to life more.

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 23 Nov 2012 22:55

Don't post too seriously there yet, it's still on a development database, and I don't know if at some point I'll have to delete everything..
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by sen » 24 Nov 2012 11:54

PoisonTaffy wrote:Don't post too seriously there yet, it's still on a development database, and I don't know if at some point I'll have to delete everything..
This is true and for that reason I don't think it should become our sole means of communication or record keeping, but posting and bring the site to life is posssibly the only way to properly test it out. I just made a blog, changed the title, posted a video and sent a message.

When I tried to post a comment on one of your blog posts I got an error and it didn't work.

Edit: Can't seem to post comments on ANY blog. Tried Daniel's, my own and Roy's. Also, is there a way to allow nicknames to be shorter. I can't use 'sen' because it needs to be at least 4 characters long.

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 24 Nov 2012 12:51

Fixed both issues, thanks.

I also added an option in the cog menu posts/videos/blog items where you can change its privacy. Something that is private is never shown to unregistered users.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by sen » 24 Nov 2012 13:20

When does the notification alert go away? You gave me kudo's on my vid and blog so it shows a 2 next to the comment logo thing at the top. How do we reset it so we can notice new stuff we haven't seen yet?

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 25 Nov 2012 00:24

Just like facebook, when you click on it. Since I don't have ajax support yet, it will only go away next time the page reloads.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by sen » 25 Nov 2012 08:16

Ah, alright then it is working. :-)

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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 26 Nov 2012 01:53

Feature suggestion, basically by Matthew from another thread:

That each user can select what type of content to see on the front page (toggle on/off videos, posts, blog posts, maybe even select posts from specific blogs)
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 27 Nov 2012 02:06

The new hosting(http://modified-env-g78w6hekix.elasticbeanstalk.com/) is much better than the current hosting (http://tranquil-dusk-9441.herokuapp.com/), so I'm thinking of shutting the current hosting down to avoid confusion and duplication.

Is it ok if I delete everything that's already there, or do you guys want me to spend a bit of time on copying the data we have there to the new hosting?
Last edited by PoisonTaffy on 27 Nov 2012 05:49, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Upgrading modified

Post by PoisonTaffy » 27 Nov 2012 05:49

Double post.
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