Private and Confidential
As Clearweave, we have been providing websites, and in particular websites for artists, for almost ten years. One of the things I have always stressed is getting other websites to point to yours, as that leads the search engines to rank you higher in the search results than they would otherwise have done. This is not always as easy as it sounds, so I thought I could jump-start the process by organizing a directory – one which was open not just to our clients but to anyone who wanted to register.
The new website service, which allows you to edit your own content, is built on an opensource software package called WordPress. This is a widely used, well supported and immensely extensible system (through both plugins and stylesheets). Even before researching how to add a directory to the network, I had looked at a plugin called BuddyPress that the core WordPress team had developed and which provides “social network” features (similar to Facebook and LinkedIn) – it seemed overkill for what I wanted, but once I had the core WordPress stuff working as I wanted, I took another look and realized that like anything else, I could use as much or as little as I wanted, and modify it to fit with what I needed. I also realized that the whole thing could indeed prove useful, and that perhaps the ultimate strategy was to look at implementing different features over time as the need/opportunity firmed up.
So the core of any network is members. Each member will have a profile, to say if they are artist, gallery or collector, what sort of artist they are, where they are – in other words, information that they can be searched and found on. I originally thought I would want to charge a (small, annual) fee for membership, primarily to stop spam/scam memberships, and I think in the long run that is still the way to go. But to get things going I am looking at having membership be “by invite” – in other words, you would automatically be members, and I would provide you with a mechanism, and sign-up code, to invite more people to become members. A listing of members provides our directory.
I think having some images (art) in the profile is essential, and BuddyPress does not do this so I am working on adding this to the system. I am thinking of allowing up to four images, visible whether someone is logged in or not.
Once someone is a member, they could decide they want a blog and/or website. We already know how to do that.
BuddyPress also doesn’t provide a network events calendar. There are some efforts going on to provide one. I developed (based on someone else’s plugin for a similar purpose) a calendar facility for the websites, and I want to extend that to work with the BuddyPress network (so that anything you add to your site calendar is automatically added to the network calendar).
One of the key reasons for participating in a network is to “socialize” – discuss with others and/or let others know what you are up to or about. BuddyPress has a number of features built-in to do this.
First is there something similar to Facebook’s wall, where a member can login, type text into a box and have it appear in a stream that BuddyPress calls Activity – other members can comment on these items.
The network and member activity streams can also include updates from members’ site posts (as long as that site is part of our network).
Members can organize themselves into groups (such as “Book Artists of Michigan”).
These groups can then start discussions amongst themselves using forums – and indeed, we can have forums that are not group based.
Finally, there are a bunch of other things we can activate, such as tagging other members as “friends” and marking others’ activity items as being “liked” and/or “favorites”, then other logged-in members being able to see who you are friends with and what you like, as well as private messaging between members.
How would this develop
I have websites working now.
I have a few possible plugins to choose from to use for doing the invitations.
I have the addition of images to the profile almost complete.
I need to get started on a planned rewrite of the calendar plugin to include the network/synchronization capability
Once these are complete, we can start inviting new members – so, probably in the new year.
Then we can make the member directory and events calendar visible.
When there are enough members, we can start showing activity streams.
The BuddyPress team are currently reworking the forum software – when that is stable, I can then start a forum for the network
When members start to request it, I can add groups and group forums.
If at any point it seems that the plan is not flying, adding more options can cease.
Even if it is flying, it only needs to go as fast as members join and request new features and I can get them ready.
