[STUFF] A NEW SOCIAL NETWORK SPECIFICALLY FOR TALOSSANS

[Eðo Grischun]

The Prime Ministry recently completed the second Talossan Activity Survey and from that the Seneschal published a report which contained several projects to be pursued by the various Cabinet Ministries.  One such task set to myself in STUFF was "Promoting non Wittenberg ways for Talossans to meet up. The Ministry of STUFF will accelerate and prioritise plans for a Talossan social media system and promote live video and Instant Messaging interactions between Talossans.

I have been working on this in recent weeks.  After many countless hours of work I am ready to release Talossa's newest web asset:

A FULLY FLEDGED SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITE.

I believe this new website will be the next big leap forward for Talossan community interaction and will help move us away from the mindset of being "just a forum board". 

The features of this new website are as follows:

SOCIAL NETWORKING:  The "homepage" of the site is a social media style Activity Feed, which is a "wall" featuring all the latest updates from other citizens.  On this page, much like any other social network, you can post status updates, share photos and media, share documents, post links, etc.  This page, at its widest setting, will display news and status updates from all other citizens and groups, but over time, it will tailor itself to your own individual usage (ie: updates from your groups and contacts will display for you, while omitting updates from groups you opt not to belong to).  This page also has many layers of filtering allowing you to hone the results at any given time to find specific updates better.

"LIKES" SYSTEM:  As an extension of the above, there is a "likes" system which allows you to +1/ thumbs up posts all over the site.

NOTIFICATIONS SYSTEM: Never be out of the loop again!  The site features a "notification bell", which will send you notifications of things that affect you in some way (eg: someone commented on one of your posts).  There are also many account settings so that you can tailor which notifications you receive and which you don't and there are also many options for you to receive email notifications.

MESSAGING SYSTEM:  As it says on the tin really.  The site features PM/DM functions.

SOCIAL GROUPS:  This is a feature I am very excited about.  Citizens can form their own groups and sub-communities.  Any citizen can create and admin a group.  Groups can be set to public, private and hidden.  Group admins have control over how invites are handled. Each group has its own Activity Feed and comms tools .  The example on how this could be used that I gave before was the D&D stuff.  Dungeon Masters could create D&D groups on this site, have their own activity feed for their own status updates and conversations, and then they could use the integrated ZOOM features to host video conferences and chats for their games.  The in-site and email notifications system can be utilised by the group so that everyone is kept up to date with the happenings of the group.  The potential here is huge.  Groups can be created for pretty much anything.  Political parties, cultural projects, organisations, events, committees, games rooms, whatever you can think of.

VIDEO CHATS: Yes! Video conferencing has been integrated into the site via an API with ZOOM.  At present I have this set as a feature of the above mentioned social groups, but it can also be set to create a site-wide open room, which we might make use of at some point in the future.  For now, any social group can set up it's own Zoom meetings and then use the other site features to promote the event, including the activity feeds and notifications systems.  This could be massive!  The system will record and store all videos and also save a copy of the text-chat transcripts.  These are saved to cloud for safekeeping, but you also have the option to download them too. 

CO-BLOG:  CO-BLOG is short for Community Blog.  Every site member can post blog articles on whatever they feel like talking about.  The blog articles are all displayed within a single blog directory, which can be honed to categories for easier sorting.  Citizens can "like" your blog articles and each article page features a comments/discussion section.  Blog articles spit into the main Activity Feeds and you can receive notifications of new comments and likes on your articles.

CO-DOCS:  This is similar in nature to, say, GoogleDOCS.  Citizens can create a document then assign editing rights to other citizens so that a team of people can all work on a single document.  Each citizen has their own Co-Docs Directory and each 'social group' also has their own directory.  Could be a highly useful tool for many, many purposes.

EVENTS:  Simple events calendar system.  You can create events and then promote them via the other social media tools previously mentioned.

TO-DO LISTS:  This isn't really tied into the social media side of the site, but I figured it might be a nice tool to include.  Every citizen can build their own to-do lists.  Each Social group also has a joint to-do list if they want to work together to complete a set of tasks.

DEVICE RESPONSIVE: The site is best viewed and used on desktop, but it does reshape itself for phones and tablets.  It is impossible for me to test every conceivable display layout, so if anybody encounters anything strange then please report it to me with details of which device, browser and screen resolution you had the issue with so that I can hack in a fix.


The site is ready to go-live.  However, it might always be a work in progress.  New features will be added in as time goes by (for example, I want to start working on an IM chat system and further down the line I want to work on enhancing the notifications system to allow for push notifications to browsers and phones).  One major thing that might change is the site name.  Suggestions are welcome if the current site name doesn't work for you all.  But, we will see.  We can treat it as an advanced and ongoing Beta. It is more than good enough for now though.

I truly hope that you all find this useful and that it helps you to build better and stronger Talossan connections.  As you start using the site if you have suggestions on how it could be improved or have ideas on features or whatever, then please get in touch with me and let me know what you want from this and I will do my best to tailor the site to your wants and needs.

At present, the site might not give you its full potential impact due to the fact that it is empty with no members.  I have created a "Joe Bloggs" account as well as my own account to test things and put a little content on the site, but it will take you to fully flesh it all out. 

Have fun and enjoy. 

I believe I am now ready to go to sleep for several days.

REGISTRATION OPEN:  https://talossa.net

[Eðo Grischun]

Oh.  And, the Jobs Board has been rebuilt into this site.  The system is much more simple than it was before.  Any citizens can both post new jobs and apply for jobs using a single account rather than having to have separate employers and jobseeker accounts.  But, the main benefit to moving it to this site is that when you post a job it spits into the live activity feeds.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

THIS IS THE MOST EPIC THING IN THE HISTORY OF EPICNESS!

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Great work!

[King Txec]

Super exciting!!

[Eðo Grischun]

A handful of signups already.  Thanks!

I will be crafting an email (perhaps even a bit of an email campaign) to send out to the citizenry list over the next few days with the high hopes that we can pull some of the less active folks back into the Talossan fold with all this.  Fingers crossed.

[Iason Taiwos]

Fantastic! Great work, Etho!

[Dame Litz Cjantscheir, UrN]

Looks fab!!! Fantastic work!

[GV]

THIS IS THE MOST EPIC THING IN THE HISTORY OF EPICNESS!

YES!!

[GV]

A handful of signups already.  Thanks!

I will be crafting an email (perhaps even a bit of an email campaign) to send out to the citizenry list over the next few days with the high hopes that we can pull some of the less active folks back into the Talossan fold with all this.  Fingers crossed.

I've been futzing around with this - Is there a native backup utility?  Such beautiful work.

[Eðo Grischun]

A handful of signups already.  Thanks!

I will be crafting an email (perhaps even a bit of an email campaign) to send out to the citizenry list over the next few days with the high hopes that we can pull some of the less active folks back into the Talossan fold with all this.  Fingers crossed.

I've been futzing around with this - Is there a native backup utility?  Such beautiful work.

Yep. It uses similar databases to the ones Witt use.  It's pretty much all just php with SQL databases in the backend.

I ran backups on all web sites (Witt, Wiki and this new site, etc.) last week. 

[Iason Taiwos]

A social media for us, by us. Why hasn't this blown up? There's been a handful of things posted since Eddie announced it. This is a major thing in Talossa, more people should be active in it! As Talossans, we are all family. Post anything and everything. Share your thoughts, pictures, whatever. Let's utilize this amazing thing Eddie has given us. Let us grow closer as a community. (And... somebody is definitely deserving of a knighthood...)

[xpb]

I have been noodling around on the TalossaNet site and really appreciate the Ministry of Stuff efforts for this.

Question - is there a setting or parameter in regard to the Groups that would have the feed come up first when clicking on them?  I think that would be better than the current default of just bringing up the members of the group on first touch.

[Eðo Grischun]

I have been noodling around on the TalossaNet site and really appreciate the Ministry of Stuff efforts for this.

Question - is there a setting or parameter in regard to the Groups that would have the feed come up first when clicking on them?  I think that would be better than the current default of just bringing up the members of the group on first touch.

Done!  Thanks for the suggestion.

[Iac Marscheir]

Vü qe dels uçeirs tiennent så mült latitüd, c'e verschain ünă idéă bună da zonar el linc àls perziuns qi non sint citaxhiéns.

(Given that users have so much latitude, it's probably a good idea to not give the link to people who aren't citizens.)