SoliDeoGloria.com - New Site Design, Need your Help

[Semper Fidelis]

I've been really busy at work lately and have missed some of the discussions. One thing I just set up, however, was a new site design and functionality for http://www.SoliDeoGloria.com

Some of you may have heard of DailyKos.com. It's a place where the godless gather to share in political vitriol. Anyhow, the site is powered by a program called Scoop that is a cross between a content management system, bulletin board, and web blog. It is a very powerful and feature-rich program that allows communities of interest to share articles and information.

I've deployed that technology on SoliDeoGloria.com to create a Reformed community that accomplishes a similar goal. It is not meant to supplant the Puritanboard and other great forums or any other blogs or sites but to complement them. The site allows the posting of articles in multiple categories but also allows personal "diaries". The site is democratic in that article popularity determines frontpage location. Even if articles and diaries don't get front page treatment it still allows the creation of a personal diary space for the posting of Reformed thoughts.

I have thought for a while that it would be a nice feature to have a site where folks could document their theological reflections on a site that would be accessible and more easily referred to. I don't know how many incredible reflections on forum topics that I've run across here that could be captured and refined and then referred to when a specific discussion arises instead of having to re-type the thought.

Anyhow, any way you think you might find it useful I could really use some feedback and participation on the site. I would appreciate folks test-driving the functionality and seeing how it works. The only drawback I've found so far is that it doesn't really have a text editor integrated into the posting feature. It doesn't seem to hold back some really busy sites but I'd appreciate your thoughts about it.

So please signup if you have the time and begin sharing some articles or entering some diary entries. I'm interested to see if this can develop into a useful tool.

 

[jaybird0827]

I'm game. -- Jay

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Thanks Jay.

One person?! Where's the love?

Seriously, even if you decide it's a waste of time it would be nice to get some feedback. I think it will grow eventually because the feature set of Sccop is so useful for sharing stories in communities of interest but in the meantime I would really like some help determining if there are some things that might function or look better.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Rich,
I've looked at it, but you know I'm not techno at all. Looks OK. I hope it scores. Really.

And I haven't forgotten you set me up some e-space related to it. I still have the e-mail with the password, etc. I think I may be trying to do something with it (or some kind of blogage) in the near future. Whenever...

 

[Scott Bushey]

Lt Col,
You do nice work; no denying it. It looks promising. Is your goal to put together a site something like Monergism?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Bruce: Let me know if you still want to have your own blog. You may find this site more useful. It works kind of like a blog where you can post articles but you don't have the overhead of being "your own blog" if that makes sense. The idea of this site is to allow Reformed thoughts to be posted in the form of news, articles, and personal "diaries" from several different categories. Some people find the idea of having their own blog a bit daunting because then it's just their space and they feel a bit compelled to keep contributing to it.

Scott: This isn't intended to really replace Monergism. Monergism is more like an online library of some great Reformed articles. There really aren't too many Sccop sites on the Internet but they all tend to end up being communities of interest where ideas are shared and the best ideas bubble to the top.

It's harder to describe than to just see an example of it. Go to http://www.dailykos.com

That's a HUGE community of Godless liberals. Even John Kerry has a diary there. People post their thoughts. Other people comment on their articles or diaries and "vote" on how good they are. Based on the timeliness and popularity of an article (as qualified by the rating of the article), some articles bubble to the top. Some are merely content to just be at Dailykos to post their mad, liberal rantings in a personal space devoted to hating Bush..

I had originally intended to be a Blog consolidator with Solideogloria.com and still am giving away free subdomains to people who want to have Reformed blogs but I found the Wordpress blog to be too limiting. As Bruce noted, I had contacted him a few months ago and said "Bruce, you're really smart, you should have a blog" or some words to that effect. He mentioned (like some others I've talked to) that they don't really have time for a blog. I can appreciate that. I've never really been the blogging type either. If I put my thoughts in a personal blog I'd want them to be profound enough so people didn't think I just had a blog up as some sort of narcissistic exercise. Paul Manata, Josh Hicks, and Ryan Setliffe among others write some really good and well thought out things. I'd want to do no less if I had a blog.

So, after talking with a friend in the web programming industry, he pointed out DailyKos.com. I hated the politics but I like the site concept. While some may not want to blog for the reasons above, some might not have a problem sharing an occassional article. Even those that don't want to write and article might want to diary some Reformed thoughts on a particular topic. I thought the fact the function that folks could post articles in their own accounts topically would enhance Puritanboard in fact. How? Because it is hard to find some really good stuff that folks post here sometimes. That is not a criticism of the Puritanboard but a reflection of the limitation of forums. I know some people bookmark threads but even with that you have a lot of stuff to sift through to find your own or others thoughts on an issue here. What if some of those great thoughts were also diaried? Maybe they're not blogs, maybe they're not articles, but some of the insights are worth a diary entry that can be found topically.

I remember just recently trying to find something DTK wrote a number of months back and it took me about 30 minutes of trying different search terms to find it. I love the Puritanboard because of the quality of the community and the thoughts it produces but I have trouble finding information that was posted. I mention DTK but I could list a couple dozen other names, including yourself, that I would like to be able to find particular information that somebody might have shared at one point, in the middle of a long thread. I think the Scoop script lends itself to that.

In conclusion, I'm not trying to replace a Monergism or any blogs or forums but to fill in the gaps between them. Monergism (or a site like it) is a library of more scholarly and excellent articles. We need sites like that. Blogs are for people who have aptitude and desire for those kind of things but they are very personal and more journalistic. Forums are places where you can discuss and interact, make point and counterpoint. Solideogloria.com allows articles or news or diaries to be posted for those who want to be read or those who merely want to diary their thoughts.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Originally posted by joshua
Rich, I created an account and posted an "article".

Thanks for the article Josh. It's even gotten to the FRONT PAGE in terms of popularity. That's amazing!

 

[Semper Fidelis]

My site has been having some strange domain interactions. I actually own the domain name internetpundit.com and had the scoop script installed on both domains. It's a very complicated script to install and requires sysadmin expertise with Linux that I don't possess. I hired Indian sysadmins to do the work and they got the Scripts working but every time I make changes to the Internetpundit.com installation it causes the domains to redirect.

Anyhow, if you go to solideogloria.com and the layout seems all gooned up then the database underneath is fine. The sysadmins are working on it and the site will work great soon. These things are frustrating but I learn a lot through them. I've pretty much figured out Scoop now and have made the install look pretty nice.

 

[wsw201]

I'm no techno guy either, but it looks good to me!

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Looks like the bugs have been worked out on the server. Any interested can now create accounts and everything seems to be working fine.

I even figured out a way to integrate a little html editor to generate html formatted posts.

Please join, tell your friends. As I've stated previously, I think it's a good place to post any of your longer ideas expressed here as they will be more readily available to reference and share if the thought needs to be recovered later.

 

[rjlynam]

Signed up.