Making the site

For developing Helpalot we are now able to freely use the excellent software of Axure.

This software enables you to quickly make a prototype of a website. Being tailor designed to be the best tool for an interaction designer, it helps the design process itself and explaining the concept to others.

At work we recently bought the software and since I enjoyed it so much, I contacted Axure if perhaps they would be able to support Helpalot and here I am typing that Axure is our newest Friend of Helpalot.

I have much more to write about, but I’m too busy at the moment..

I’ll probably write a bigger update on Thursday.

I did some updates on the HTML mockup, The mock-up of the charity page is here. I’ll just have to change the bottom tabs to be the same as the top ones. I’d like to get some feedback on this charity page.

Then I think I’m about done for the charity page and I should focus on the start page and the personal page.

Besides the HTML mock-up, we’re also working on an alpha version of Helpalot that is not ready for public use.

Update 13 november ‘06: I lost the top orange bar, cleaned up the HTML and changed a number of small things. But that also broke some small things.

Friday next week I’ll have my exams. As I won’t be able to show a working test version, I’m now building a mock-up version of the site:

Charity page, visitor (tab on connections)
Charity page, visitor (tab on maps)
Charity page, visitor (tab on graphs)

Charity page, owner (tab on connections)

The tabs are not working on the owner page, but they do work for the visitor. For the owner the personal view, management and visitor view are not working yet.

There is not much color on the page, because I’m first focusing on lay-out. Besides, the site has to be easy to navigate for color-blind people too. So this is a good way to test that.

Feedback would be great .

So the deadlines are coming closer. I have 10 days to write my thesis and concept document. My graduation exams will be August 25, so it would be really nice if I would have my test version ready and some feedback on how it works before the 25th of August.

Building the test version

There are some new developments on the test-version front; I’m working on my Drupal test version, and as I now understand how Drupal works, I also see its limitations. I’ve spoken to my uncle and we’ve found a strategy to tackle the problem I have with Drupal. But, that strategy would include hacking some modules and changing the database a little. I would be able to do this, but hacking would take a lot of time.

The new plan; make a Joomla test site. The advantage of Joomla is that the Joomla community is bigger and older. I’ve learned from the way Drupal works and can use this knowledge to work with Joomla. What I need to find out really quickly is if I don’t run into the same problem I ran into with Drupal. It comes down to this specific part:

The problem

There must be personal profile pages and charity pages, on a profile page you must be able to link to other profile pages (buddy-list) and to charity pages (support-list). On a charity page it must be possible to write news items by the charitypage owner and people with a profile must be able to rate and evaluate the charity so that it influences the overall rating of the charity.

Drupal solution

The Drupal hack would consist of making an extra atribute in the buddylist, making it possible to devide the user table in people and charities. I won’t go into details, but it can work if I change some functions in the buddylist and user module. The problem is, hacking always brings new problems to solve, so that will take too much time.
Joomla solution

For Joomla there is the Community Builder and the groupjive module, making it possible to set up a sort of charity profile page. I’m not sure if is possible to put evaluations on such a page, but there are rating modules.

I shall now put my energy in the Joomla test site, but I will not kill the Drupal test.

Final solution

After my graduation there is a really good chance I will be able to build a real version of Helpalot based on a social network site that is being built right now.

I’m working with someone who’s making this social network site and likes to make Helpalot a reality too. We are doing some research together and I’ll probably do a 9 Questions interview to introduce him. Still, this Helpalot version would not be available in time for my graduation, so I’m still going to build my own test version.

How you can help

If you happen to be an expert on Joomla, maybe you can point me to some important modules I’ll need to use for this test version.

If you happen to be an expert on Drupal and/or PHP and you would like to try to do this buddylist hack, I’ll explain in detail what the strategy would be and perhaps it can be done.

Off topic

Now for some fun; check out the new video clip from Muse - Knights of Cydonia, featuring a kung-fu cowboy with a laser gun. Oh, and unicorn, robot, holograms, police car, communistic flag and much more. Hilarious, at 3:14 you can see ‘the crew’ in the mirror, including fake moustache and everything.

Yay, I made my first Drupal hack, adding avatar pictures to the buddy list. It’s far from perfect (it only shows them in the ‘my buddy list’), but I’m beginning to understand the way everything is set up in Drupal.

You have to be logged in experience this:
http://www.makingthesite.com/drupal_test/

I’ve added my (ugly) code to the Drupal forum for others to enjoy:
http://drupal.org/node/49781#comment-137254