What I really miss...: Yahoogroups

Hi,

have you ever thought about to develop a programm like Yahoogroups?

I think this would be very, very, very useful.

Yours,

Alexander

Hi Alexander,

Indeed, we've thought about incorporating Yahoo Groups type functionality into an existing product, especially Gossamer Forum. We're currently investigating the feasibility of this and the time required to develop it, we'll be back with more information soon.

Jack.

Dear Jack,

thx for your message.

Wow, sounds great.

I really hope that you develop such a programm soon. Because in my opinion it would be a great communication tool that really brings life in our websites.

Most important is in my opinion that the programm will be compatible to all the others applications GT offers, mainly GT Links SQL, GT Mail and maybe even (but not necessarily) GT Forum. I know, you are already developing GT Community. Great idea, because it is really important to enable users to log in with just one username/password.

However, in my opinion the programm should have following features:

• the possibility to set up mailinglists (for every logged-in user or at least the admin or both)
• web-based archives (similar to Yahoogroups)
• maybe also small notepads (to enable the moderators as well as the admin to leave important notes to his members/users)
• simple calendars
• and maybe also the possibility to upload/store pictures and/or files
• (link lists are in my opinion not so essential, because therefore LinksSQL is designed)

But my ideas even go further, because I have a very sophisticated understanding of the word "compatibility": I mean, when you are offering GT Mail as well as a script for handling mailinglists, it would be quite useful (and only consequent) if the addresses of the groups a user joins are automatically stored in his personal GT Mail address book.

Another example: In case you are thinking about to integrate a calender in such a new programm, it would in my opinion be a great opportunity to develop also a "personal calender". So users, who have subscribed to -let's say- GT Mail can also use a personal calender, where they can see -let's say- a complete list (with checkboxes!) of all the groups they have joined. Then they can decide each time they make an entry, whether this entry should only be stored in the personal calender or should also be published in one or more groups. And then, of course, it would also be useful, if the user can decide in his personal calender, whether only his personal entries should be visable for him or also group entries.

Another example: In case you are thinking about to integrate a small notepad so that moderators (and the admin) can leave important messages to their members (users), it would in my opinion be a great opportunity to develop also an "online name card service", so that each user can set up a "personal mini homepage" with information about him. You are right, that would be two very different applications. But technically they have in my opinion some similarities, because in both cases the main goal is to enable users to leave short notes.

I know, as more I write as more complicated it becomes for you :-)

But I hope you don't mind that I contribute some ideas.

Yours,

Alex

Hi Alex,

I thank you for your ideas and suggestions, we consider them very valuable. Most definitely everything we build will be integrated in some way, shape or form, to the other products we distribute.

Thanks again,

Jack.

Dear Jack,

thank you very much. I really appreciate your good support.

Here just a short addition to my suggestions: In my opinion it would be great if you not only enhance an existing application with Yahoogroups-style features, but offer the features as a new, own application, because it is really important for me that it looks similar to Yahoogroups since many users are already familiar with this layout style and functions.

However, would be great if you inform us when anything will be decided so that we are able to adjust our strategies.

Yours,

Alex

I've been using Yahoo Groups for the past few weeks, and have to say I *hate* them. The advertising interruptions between messages, replies, constant "reenter password" here and there, and other "nag" stuff drives me up a wall. I think I have these sort of advertisements in the category of pop ups. An article I saw about the effectiveness of popups said "The effectiveness will probably drop as people learn to close the windows properly without clicking on them" <G> Not very effective. High click throughs, low conversions. It's all "white noise" and people really ignore them. Any clicks are accidental, not due to interest.

On the other hand, allowing mini-forums, in GF, and an attached files area (modified fileman), and perhaps even a directory, a sub-area of Links, would be really cool. It would be a matter of a new "root" being defined for each of these programs, under the main root.

Right now I have http://ocbpa.com going to a sub-forum of one of my forums, but I would *really* like to be able to have that area more defined, and "invisible" from main menus, or search, without specifying it -- ie: Search Groups / Seach Whole Site (from in the group)

I'd like it to show the OCBPA as the main topic, with a link to the "Top" or "Groups" area, rather than the whole set of levels.


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Hi PugDog,

Thanks for your input as well. There are so many possibilities, so little time.

Jack.

Hi Jack,

sorry for disturbing you, I just would like to know if you are still planning to offer something like Yahoogroups anytime??? If not, anybody knows another company that offers such kind of scripts?

Thx,

Alex

Hi Alex,

No, unfortunately we do not have any immediate plans to release something like this within the next few months, and unfortunately, I am not aware of anyone really selling anything similar.

One thing you might want to think about though is using the Forum in the meantime as it has the ability to limit page views/reply/post functions to only certain users within a certain group.

Jack.

Hi Jack,

thank you very much for your quick answer. Unfortunately up till now the Forum is not really an option for me, because in my opinion mailing lists are much more useful than webbased boards. However, I really appreciate your good support.

Yours,

Alex

Hi Alex,

I wanted something like this - a mailing list which you could view online (and I didn't want to use Yahoo because of all the advertising). I started off using mojo mail but found that the mailing list functionality wasn't really supported - it is mainly aimed at sending out newsletters. In the end, I'm using a majordomo list and archiving it to Gossamer Forum using the mailarc plugin which seems to be working well.

Laura.

Hey Laura,

thx for help.

This sounds really interesting. It is a great idea to combine majordomo with GT Forum, although I guess a combination of mailman and GT Forum could be even more useful. However, in my opinion all this becomes only powerful, if everything is compatible, including GT Links SQL, GT Mail and GT Community. But unfortunately my computer skills are very limited. So I can only hope that a good company like Gossamer will develop such a "Yahoogroups" script anytime.

By the way: I am not really in a hurry with this, so I could easily wait a few months. I just think that it is quite important that such a script will be available anytime. Because in my opinion this is the final and most powerful step for each GT-Links-User to be able to compete with the big sites for the masses. However, if there are any other GT-Links-users, who would like to use a "Yahoogroups"-script, please do not hestitate to leave Jack a message here :-)

Yours,

Alex

Does any remember Yahoo clubs? In my opinion they were 100 times better than groups. I had several clubs with over 100,000 memebrs and people loved the clubs traffic was incredible. Once Yahoo decided to join with E-groups it was the end of a great thing. Membership fell and traffic dropped considerably.

If gossamer could come up with a script like the old Yahoo clubs then I'd jump on it! I know this would definitely increase traffic and returning visits.

Craven

Dear Jack, dear fellow GT-Friends,

Please excuse that I do not give up, but I still need a script like Yahoogroups - and I am sure other GT webmasters would like to use such a script as well.

I have searched through numerous sites, but I have not found something like this so far. Thus, I thought about the GT products and their limitations. Here is my comment:

I do not understand why GT makes so little use of the user data/user profile. If I am not wrong, all the user data (user name, user email, user passwort, user location) is stored in one MySQL-table. It should not be too difficult or too timely to expand this table and to set up further tables to store further user data. These tables could easily be used to enable users to run their own "homepages" (name cards) and to open and run their own communities (with blackboard, linklist, calender etc.). Here a description how it could work:

table 1: user's data
nickname
passwort
first name
family name
location
etc.

table 2: user's homepage
page title (user's nickname)
page description
text title
text short
text long
etc.

table 3: user communities
community name
community description
community options (public/not public)
moderator (user's nickname)
etc.

table 4: community members
community name (from above)
member name (user's nickname)
memberdate
etc.

table 4: community's blackboard
community name
member name
notice title
notice (long-text)
noticedate
etc.

(if the community name is left blanck, the notice is only for the user himself viewable, as a private notepad).

table 5: community's linklist
community name
member name
surftipp title
surftipp description (long text)
surftipp url
surftippdate
etc.

(if the community name is left black, the surftipp is only for the user himself viewable => bookmarks)

table 6: community's calender

community name
member name
date of entry
date of notice
notice titel
notice description (long text)
etc.

(if the community name is left black, the surftipp is only for the user himself viewable, personal calender)

However, I do not understand why you do make so little use of the user table. Why don't give users more opportunities to do anything, to set up a own homepage, to have a private notepad and to open and run own communities?

With best wishes,
Alex

Your previous post, about yahoo clubs, sums up a lot of issues.

Why write a program that is just a clone, or me-to of a program that has serious flaws. Even Google Groups have serious flaws.

Andy and I have a whole code library of things that just need strug together to a whole lot of other stuff, but we need ideas, and a viable need -- and -- though we hate to say it, some profit incentive, since we have to pay for servers, food, homes, kids, etc.

One really good way to start something like this, is to dummy up a site using HTML, and whatever CGI you can, but actual functioning is not the key, design and functionality is. Once the interface bugs, and feature set is worked out, it's much easier to code module by module to add in the functionality.

The most serious limitation of the GT programs has been lack of a huge number of template sets, and template code fragments.

Maybe with CSS, that will become more of a reality, as less importance is place on globals for performing the layout.

I know this doesn't sound like the same issue, but it is. The templates and custom globals drive the interface of Links, and both enhance -- and limit -- what you can do with it. If there were more widgets -- and I know I've wanted to create a widgets site -- http://sqlwidgets.com/resources/ -- a whole lot of things would be more available.

No one shares template sets. Except for a few from the links 2.0 (non-sql) days, there has not been much in the way of template sharing.

See another post in the discussions area for Links SQL I'm about to make.


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Just bumping this up a bit.

Anyone start thinking about what was proposed here? Or requested?

What about integration of this with a "blog". I have done a bunch of research on this, for the past few days, and still am not sure what a "blog" is, since the software running them all does different stuff. I do know there is some disagreement on whether a "blog" should be a "community" or just a "web log", (eg: have portal-like presence, forums, email, and such).

Once the 3.0 is finally released, i'm going to try to pull all our stuff under one roof, and under one hood, and come up with a completely modified, and/or overridden Links SQL, that does a whole variety of different things. One of the things, is to separate out functions that _require_ the Links libraries, vs the base GT libraries.

If Community can handle the authentication, then that does not have to go through "Links" like most of the programs do now. If a program/plugin is not using page.cgi and Build.pm, then it *should* be able to use the GT libraries for database access and template parsing, without the overhead of the Links SQL libraries.

At first, this will go through Links SQL, as most things will be plugins, but the "eye" to the future would be to make as many independent modules as possible, that rely only on the GT libraries, and some overridden functions, rather than any other "product" libraries.

If you do own GForum, or GMail, then you'd have access to other libraries that come with those, but there are many things that should *not* be dependent on one of the applications, if all it is doing is presenting a screen, and passing data to and from a table or set of tables outside an applications table structure.

For instance, a Newsletter program should be able to allow sign ups, without going through Links' newsletter feature.

A blogger, should allow a community user to set up a blog, without having it run under Links or GForum.

Once GT releases the 3.0 version, or the 3.0.1 version <G>, there will be a flurry of activity as I (and hopefully Andy) will try to link up and rebuild/merge a number of plugins, code modules, and things we have into the larger whole of an on-line "community".

I can see "community" being a real application engine, if GT addresses a few issues, and better help/docs are available. Making other "modules" like a search module or mailer module available would be a way to make Community (or Community Pro) a central module, to which you ADD IN the other programs, or applications.

We can dream :)


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As far as I know...A blog is a script which allows users to post articles and comments on a website. And a community script allows users to exchange news (blackboard), reports (magazin), opinions (forum) and personal messages (webmails).

However, as I already meantioned in the thread http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=267480 I would not hesitate to pay 500 bucks for a GT blogger script (please notice the plural form: "blogger" script) and another 500 bucks for a GT communities script (please notice the plural form: "communities" script), whereby the latter one is in my opinion much more important.

From my point of view (I am not a developer, I am a webmaster), it is really essential that GT focusses much more on user-interactivity! The more the better! The earlier the better!

Using GT community, you can integrate Links SQL, GForum, and GMail. If you just wanted internal messaging, you don't need GMail.

Added to this, is the "blog" that would allow a user to post a running weblog with comments and ratings.

I wonder if it would be possible to then use Gforum, to give each 'blog' it's own message area, but keep it separate from the others (eg: search would only search the current topic.


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