What we are working on
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Blog of AdminThis is to let citizens know what the Administrators of the Titulia website are working on these days, and what our plans are for the medium term.
There have been lots of requests recently that had to do with various features requiring new kinds of organizations (i.e. a Senate) or subdivisions of Titulia. The nature of these requests is that they usually require a lot of programming work.
Our objective is to create an environment where citizens or their elected leaders can create such features themselves without the involvement of the Administrator. More specifically, for example, we have decided not to create a Senate ourselves. Instead, we are creating an environment in which the citizens can create a Senate or any other similar feature of their liking, and define the rules of those themselves.
The first requirement is to enable citizens to set up more sophisticated websites for entities. Many citizens already decided to work around the current limitations of this website by creating external websites for entities and companies, using external free services such as weebly.com. These websites have a serious limitation: there is currently no way to integrate them with the Titulia website, i.e. letting Titulian citizens log in with their existing account, become members, define roles, etc.
Therefore we will start by installing a website management system that enables any citizen to set up a more sophisticated website for their companies or entities. There are many suitable software products for this purpose, and when selecting one, we have to make an important trade-off: that of between flexibility and that of ease of use by non-technical users.
We could install a system that would enable citizens to do virtually anything, but these systems are very difficult to use by ordinary (i.e. not IT educated) people. On the other hand, we could install a system that is very easy to use, but the possibilities are more limited.
On this scale, we aim to be somewhere in between, but closer to the second. We are currently testing Wordpress, and developing an integration with the Titulia website. This would enable anyone to set up a site, and make any existing citizen a "member" of that site, granting them various levels of access rights. These sites then will have their own possibilities to create votes, polls, discussions, etc., limited to members if the owner of the site choses so.
E.g., this will enable the government to set up an entity called "Senate" and create its website. Then, the government may define the election rules for the Senate, and use the existing custom votes feature to have senators elected. Some government appointed election officer can then make the elected senators members of the Senate website, where they can start to function.
We are hoping that this system will make the Republic of Titulia much less dependent on the Administrator, which is one of our major objectives.
Once this system is in place, our next objective will be to to something with Titulia City to make it more "functional" and interesting, with the objective of involving it more in the daily life of the Republic. This effort is in the brainstorming phase today, and we would appreciate any ideas.
Article published in The Titulia Post
Comments
Jesus Tom this is a disturbing new tactic of yours, coming to propositions and blogs a month later and making snide comments on them. If I was a more suspicious man I would swear you enjoyed having the last word and would wait in the long grass for a month to have it!!!
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You'll have to excuse DD, Admin .. he gets so full of himself sometimes he forgets that no one pays attention to him.
Keep working on the database design and shout if you need a hand. Those of us that don't rely on pre-installed html templates for props will work it out.
Cheers!
Keep working on the database design and shout if you need a hand. Those of us that don't rely on pre-installed html templates for props will work it out.
Cheers!
Admin, you promised features for Titulia companies nine months ago you have yet to implement. You are clearly haven't put the time or money into this site it deserves.
Now you bring up this WordPress business and it makes a lot of folks wonder what do we need you for. I can open a WordPress account and do my own thing right now.
You chose to launch this site, not the citizens. In my opinion, your follow-through on the commitment inherent in that decision has been light years less than it should have been. All along, your plan depended on the citizens doing a lot of your work for you. Yet you didn't give us the tools to do that.
Now 15 months into your deal, this is what you offer? WordPress, for Chrisakes? Is that seriously the best you can do? Not a thing has changed since your post about this in early December. You stood by and let others create sites to fill the lack of activity on your part, using sites like Weebly.com and Web.com, and now this. The least you could have done was introduce this concept before serious efforts were made elsewhere.
But you guys are in way over your heads. You clearly were not prepared for what developed with this site. Right now, among most of the republic's leaders, the reaction to this blog post ranges from "unimpressed" to "insulted."
Of course, Norton is coming to your defense because he is hoping you will overturn his ban, so he is in major suck-up mode. But you can take it to the Bank of Titulia, that the leadership of this republic, which does not include Norton, is not buying what you are selling here.
Now you bring up this WordPress business and it makes a lot of folks wonder what do we need you for. I can open a WordPress account and do my own thing right now.
You chose to launch this site, not the citizens. In my opinion, your follow-through on the commitment inherent in that decision has been light years less than it should have been. All along, your plan depended on the citizens doing a lot of your work for you. Yet you didn't give us the tools to do that.
Now 15 months into your deal, this is what you offer? WordPress, for Chrisakes? Is that seriously the best you can do? Not a thing has changed since your post about this in early December. You stood by and let others create sites to fill the lack of activity on your part, using sites like Weebly.com and Web.com, and now this. The least you could have done was introduce this concept before serious efforts were made elsewhere.
But you guys are in way over your heads. You clearly were not prepared for what developed with this site. Right now, among most of the republic's leaders, the reaction to this blog post ranges from "unimpressed" to "insulted."
Of course, Norton is coming to your defense because he is hoping you will overturn his ban, so he is in major suck-up mode. But you can take it to the Bank of Titulia, that the leadership of this republic, which does not include Norton, is not buying what you are selling here.
What people are forgetting is when a software utility (e.g. Wordpress, Mambo, Joomla) is mentioned it's not just a "site" being spoken about. Open source software is exactly that - it can be customised and tweaked beyond the standard appearance and functionality.
To put it another way .. titulia.com isn't to all purposes "a site". It is a website built from open source news blogging software. At one point with the basic services we had at the beginning this worked fine .. but to build the infrastructure wanted it is completely inadequate for the level wanted.
I will defend the Admin on this level because a lot of people don't seem to understand the technical requirements for a lot of the services they are asking for.
Connectivity is impossible across non-dependant platforms. Databases themselves need to be co-dependent or at the very least inter-dependent and use the same authentication module (the coded entity of a database that permits same-service recognition such as citizen names, bank services etc).
What people want is for Admin to build everything and based on a quick analysis of every site change request over the past few months .. the ask is worth an average of 5-10 mySQL and ASP developers (possibly), a good 6 months development and 3 months beta testing and the software and licenses to drive it. Titulia would be ineligible for the free GNU public licences on open source software because they don't qualify for not-for-profit operations. So that means the Corporation would need to purchase the software plus the licences which could easily rack up to become a $5,000-$15,000 investment (labour inclusive) right there. Anyone offering to put their hand in the jar? I think not. A bit more patience is needed all around.
To put it another way .. titulia.com isn't to all purposes "a site". It is a website built from open source news blogging software. At one point with the basic services we had at the beginning this worked fine .. but to build the infrastructure wanted it is completely inadequate for the level wanted.
I will defend the Admin on this level because a lot of people don't seem to understand the technical requirements for a lot of the services they are asking for.
Connectivity is impossible across non-dependant platforms. Databases themselves need to be co-dependent or at the very least inter-dependent and use the same authentication module (the coded entity of a database that permits same-service recognition such as citizen names, bank services etc).
What people want is for Admin to build everything and based on a quick analysis of every site change request over the past few months .. the ask is worth an average of 5-10 mySQL and ASP developers (possibly), a good 6 months development and 3 months beta testing and the software and licenses to drive it. Titulia would be ineligible for the free GNU public licences on open source software because they don't qualify for not-for-profit operations. So that means the Corporation would need to purchase the software plus the licences which could easily rack up to become a $5,000-$15,000 investment (labour inclusive) right there. Anyone offering to put their hand in the jar? I think not. A bit more patience is needed all around.
There is no problem with those external sites citizens set up using tools such as weebly.com whatsoever.
The issue is that it is close to impossible for us to create integration features for sites that are hosted outside the titulia.com website for various technical and security reasons. E.g. we cannot provide you a feature whereas Titulian citizens can easily subscribe to a service you provide using an external website creation tool.
For companies and other entities to function properly, we need an environment that not only allows you to set up a website, it should also enable you to accept logins / subscriptions / payments etc. from citizens using their Titulian identity.
This requires us to provide a website creation tool within the Titulia website, and this is exactly what we are working on. Wordpress was mentioned as a candidate we are testing.
One important requirement for such an environment is that it should enable the easy creation of an unlimited number of websites, but should at the same time maintain a common user base that is integrated with the existing Titulian citizen login.
One other important point about Admin's original plan — they expected to make money on the site by selling tollars. But that strategy failed for the same reason Admin finds themselves the owner of a stagnant site — the site isn't interesting enough or competitive enough to attract the American audience they covet. So, whose gonna buy tollars with real-world currency when there is nothing to do.
The truth of the matter is this: Admin has sat on their asses and not done the things to avert this crisis. They stalled for awhile, claiming to be busy working on the legislature. Now it is clear that was not true.
To be honest, that they would even make a post such as this reveals how weak they are.
The truth of the matter is this: Admin has sat on their asses and not done the things to avert this crisis. They stalled for awhile, claiming to be busy working on the legislature. Now it is clear that was not true.
To be honest, that they would even make a post such as this reveals how weak they are.
Admin, my greater issue is this is essentially the same post you made a few months ago. Clearly, you have done little in the interim, because you are admittedly still in the "brainstorming" phase. This combined with the fact that you have logged in less regularly, sometimes going more than 24 hours without logging in, paints a bleak picture of what we can expect from you.
On top of that, you insult those of us who have stepped forward to pick up your slack. I will say this for Weebly — they look like geniuses compared to your efforts.
Your attitude might be a little easier to stomach had you been holding up your end of this bargain. But you haven't. You haven't advertised or taken other promotional measures to increase immigration. You've done essentially nothing to make the site more attractive or user-friendly. Things you promised nine months ago for companies, such as the ability to add subscribers and communicate with your customers, have yet to materialize. There is little question that failure on your part has contributed to the stagnation of the economy.
From the beginning, your plan has been for the citizens to do a lot of the work normally done by the site owners. You admitted as much in a message to me, which I still have. You have declined to meet with a contingency of the republic's leaders for a discussion of the site's future. You decline on the basis of not wanting to be involved with something not open to the entire republic, but I believe you are just attempting to obscure the fact that you are in way over your head. You had a good idea, but hardly a clue about how to pull it off.
And that is why we are sitting here today, more than a year after the launch, "brainstorming" how to make the site worth something. Pathetic.
On top of that, you insult those of us who have stepped forward to pick up your slack. I will say this for Weebly — they look like geniuses compared to your efforts.
Your attitude might be a little easier to stomach had you been holding up your end of this bargain. But you haven't. You haven't advertised or taken other promotional measures to increase immigration. You've done essentially nothing to make the site more attractive or user-friendly. Things you promised nine months ago for companies, such as the ability to add subscribers and communicate with your customers, have yet to materialize. There is little question that failure on your part has contributed to the stagnation of the economy.
From the beginning, your plan has been for the citizens to do a lot of the work normally done by the site owners. You admitted as much in a message to me, which I still have. You have declined to meet with a contingency of the republic's leaders for a discussion of the site's future. You decline on the basis of not wanting to be involved with something not open to the entire republic, but I believe you are just attempting to obscure the fact that you are in way over your head. You had a good idea, but hardly a clue about how to pull it off.
And that is why we are sitting here today, more than a year after the launch, "brainstorming" how to make the site worth something. Pathetic.
You can get plugins for wordpress to have all sorts of fancy features like forums and stuff.
Wordpress is only one of the packages we are evaluating at the moment.
As a common utility .. Wordpress is more known as a blog tool. But in truth to the heart of its platform, Wordpress is an open source framework that can be coded/customed to any environment. At the end of the day the database (.db) is just any coded file that's driven by mySQL and can evolve into anything the end-used codes it for.
I have a client that sells professional car photography and his eCommerce site is driven by the Wordpress framework.
I have a client that sells professional car photography and his eCommerce site is driven by the Wordpress framework.
You should consider working with Google instead.
This doesn't sound like a good idea. Wordpress is blog software. We need more than that.
This is something similar to our discussions months back and it's the right way to go. Everything on the boards will cause some like and dislkike in equal measure. This direction provides citizens with the platform to create what they want to suit their own needs and desires - the best outcome available.
But that is the caution often spoken about. If citizens aren't highly sophisticated in IT (and it's doubtful many - if not any are of a high calibre) then they will find the tradeoff difficult. But this is a good step and well done to the "B Team" :-o)
But that is the caution often spoken about. If citizens aren't highly sophisticated in IT (and it's doubtful many - if not any are of a high calibre) then they will find the tradeoff difficult. But this is a good step and well done to the "B Team" :-o)
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