-Kake-

Thanks for getting back to me. I am looking for someone to build significant extensions and add-ons on top of OpenGuides. Hopefully, the features I'm looking to add are compatible with the underlying OpenGuides architecture.

I've already designed the html pages for the user interface so I'm not looking for a designer, although I'm open to suggestions and improvements. I found a hosting service, hostmonster.com, that will allow system administration through a SSH shell and they have already installed all the software neccesary to run OpenGuides on the server side. But yes, I will need a system administrator as I do not have the skills to take care of that by myself.

And now for the descriptions. I need four pages built. 1) Community Maps Page 2) Forums Page 3) Home Page 4) Participant Profile Page. See below for in depth descriptions and mock-ups of each. I've also attached the page descriptions as a Word document.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thanks for your help.

-Michael Heimbinder- 917-318-0480

-----------------------------------------------------------

*Below is a description of each of Habitatmap's first four dynamic pages. Open guides, *http://openguides.org/*, will be the platform within which everything is integrated unless the programmer decides on an alternative set-up.*

* *

*1) Community Maps page*

Mock-up: http://habitatmap.org/mocksite/maps/mapindex.html.

Currently I have the wiki pages embedded inside the map marker bubbles. Be sure to maximize the bubbles to view their contents. Embedding the wiki page inside the map marker bubbles is ideal from a design standpoint but may be difficult to achieve from the programming side. If this is the case feel free to have each marker entry appear on a new page that sits on top of the map.

The map function is as follows:

*Map

-Neighborhood tags, clicking on tag gives zoom*, do not *delineate with visible polylines as is done on overplot. Only markers inside the boundaries of each neighborhood will be visible on the map and listed in the index. See attached map for neighborhood boundaries and centerpoints. When tags are clicked the map will zoom to this centerpoint at zoom level "15" . The website "overplot" will give you an example of how this could be done:

http://persistent.info/overplot/

-Map resizes vertically to fit window

-The default map view is "Hybrid"

-Default zoom is "13"

-Default center point is 40.726, -73.943

*Markers

-Custom map markers that are small and red

*http://www.gmaplive.com/marker_maker.php *

-Hovering over markers gives you marker tooltips (tooltips are the little rectangular boxes that pop off the markers with the marker name inside):

http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/googlemaps/examples/maptips.htm

-clicking on marker gives wiki page, no intermediate marker bubble.

*Map Index

-Alternating bands of light and dark grey separate map marker entries (use colors #999999 and #CCCCCC)

-Index floats on top of map:

http://www.tatuajecigars.com/retailers_gmap.htm

-Hovering over map marker entries gives you marker tooltips (tooltips are the little rectangular boxes that pop off the markers with the marker name inside): *http://www.tatuajecigars.com/retailers_gmap.htm*

-Clicking on index entries gives wiki page, no intermediate marker bubble.

*Wiki Window Displays

-Marker name

-Street map blow-up

-Subscribe to marker *button *(subscriptions are managed from the participant profiles page)

-Find related conversations *button *(this button brings up relevant forum conversations from the forums using the "categories" and "keyword" tags as search terms)

-Edit marker *button*

-History *button *(history of changes to page)

-Participant names *button *(this will list all the participants who have made changes to the page, clicking on the names will allow you to view their profiles)

*-*Report as inappropriate* button *(this information will be reported to the system administrator for review)

-Address

-Coordinates

-Owner/occupant

-Category

-Keywords

-Background

-Pictures which can be clicked for larger view pop-up, picture include notes in smaller font below the picture

-Footnotes

* *

*Add Marker Displays

-Street map blow-up

*-*Show preview* button*

*-*Save changes* button*

-Hyperlink *button *

*-*Subheading *button *(this will read as bold blue font)

*-*Add picture *button* (the photo will be acquired by browsing the participants computer, there will be the option of attaching text below the picture)

*-*References* button *(this will add footnotes to the bottom of the background section just like on wikipedia)

-The* references button, add picture button, hyperlink button, and subheading button* should be incorporated into their own floating bar which stays on top and available as the editor scrolls down and enters information.

-Marker name field

-Participant name autofield

-Date last updated autofield

-Address field

-Coordinates autofield (the coordinates are gathered by the participant double clicking on the inset map. This map behaves as any google map would, i.e. toggle viewing modes, zoom, pan. The default map view is "Map".)

-Owner/occupant field

-Category field (multiple categories can be selected)

-Keywords field

-Background field

-References field (the participant is prompted to enter references after they have placed the cursor in any field and clicked the footnotes button)

-All marker entries and edits are saved to the profiles page "Maps and Markers" box

-Markers cannot be added outside the Newtwon Creek area. North: 40.7588latitude, South: 40.6916 latitude, West: -73.9713 longitude, East: -73.8861 longitude

* *

***Search Bar Displays

-Date range menu

-Category menu (multiple selections are allowed)

-Neighborhood menu (when a particular neighborhood is selected the map will zoom to that level, multiple selections are not allowed)

-Keywords field

-Submit* button*

*-*Save map *button *(saves to profiles page, "Maps and Markers" box)

-Share map *button *(participant is prompted to enter email addresses of recipients)

-Add marker *button *

* *

Helpful links for making google maps (in order of helpfulness):

Discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API

Tutorial: http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/googlemaps/

API documentation: http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/

Wiki: http://mapki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Custom Overlays: http://vgmap.eyebeamresearch.org/

Library: http://xmaps.busmonster.com/documentation.html

*2) Forums page*

Use http://www.bikeforums.net/ as your guide. phpBB, http://www.phpbb.com/, seems like a promising open source forums application.

-Participants primarily need to be able to search, subscribe, respond, and start a new thread.

-The forum conversations will be linked to the maps page through the "find related conversations" button.

*3) Home page*

Mock-up: http://habitatmap.org/mocksite/home/index.html

Pretty straightforward. The blank space at the top right is where information regarding Habitatmap will appear.

**

*4) Participant Profiles page*

Mock-up 1 (my profile): http://habitatmap.org/mocksite/profiles/myprofile.html

Mock-up 2 (view profile): http://habitatmap.org/mocksite/profiles/viewprofile.html

Mock-up 3 (create profile): http://habitatmap.org/mocksite/profiles/createprofile.html

-Each box can be expanded or contracted like on http://www.bikeforums.net/. Default box height is 10 entries tall. Maximum height with expansion is 50 entries. When minimized only the box title is visible. Entries that exceed height limits are accessed by a scroll bar on the right side of the box.

-There will be check boxes next to each *marker entry* inside the "Subscriptions" box and the "Markers and Maps" box. When these boxes are checked off and the participant clicks "view" they will see a custom map with just the checked markers. They can then share this map with other users by clicking the "share map" button or save the map using the "save map" button both of which are located on the maps page.

-The participant has the option of forwarding their mailbox and subscriptions to their external email accounts. This option will be presented as a checkbox labeled forward in the upper right hand corner of each of these boxes. By default mail forwarding is checked.

*Mailbox

-When the participants clicks the action network button they are composing a message to everyone who has signed onto their action network. Some fail safe will have to be put in place to avoid redundancy, i.e. I am a member of person Z and person Y's action networks, Z sends a message out and I receive it, but then I receive it as a forward from Y who is also part of Z's action network. I have then received the same message twice.

*Subscriptions

-Participants can subscribe to forum conversations, map markers, and other peoples action networks. They can set the notification status for these subscriptions and choose to have them forwarded to their external email accounts. Subscribing means that each time another participant adds to a forums conversation, edits a map marker, or decides to compose an action alert you will be notified. To avoid over notification, i.e. too many messages, participants will only get notified of the first change since their last visit to the site. This is the protocol on bikeforums and it seems to work nicely. If this is not clear please let me know.

*Markers and Maps

-This is a list of all the markers I have contributed to and all the maps that I have saved.

*Action Network

-This is a list of all the participants who have signed on to receive action alerts from me.

-------------------------------------------------

On 3/26/07, Kake L Pugh kake@earth.li wrote:

On Fri 23 Mar 2007, michael heimbinder wrote:

...

Now, I am working to upgrade my current website, www.habitatmap.org, and would like to use OpenGuides as the platform. I hired a programmer to help me out, Rupinder Deol, whom I believe may have contacted you in the recent past. Recently Rupinder has had to step down from the project

due

...

to family obligations, and that leaves me looking for another OpenGuides developer for Habitatmap. Can you guys recommend someone for the job.

Hi Michael,

OpenGuides is designed to work pretty much "out of the box", so the amount of work this would take does depend on what you want it to do that it doesn't do already! We already have Google maps integration, and I don't think it would be too tricky to make our Google maps page (see e.g.

http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?action=index;format=map;index_type=... or http://tinyurl.com/3ccukn ) do what yours does; the main difference I can see is that you have text and an overhead view pop up when someone clicks on a marker, whereas ours just offers a link to the page with the text on.

So it depends on what you want - more details would be very helpful. Also: were you wanting someone with design skills too, or purely programming? How about hosting? Are you going to host and do the sysadmin stuff yourself (upgrading, any database stuff, etc)?

Kake (can you cc the mailing list in reply, please?)