The Economic Populist will be upgraded. It's quite a massive job but it needs to be done.
Right now I can tell you the upgraded site will be based on Drupal and many of the site features which are custom to The Economic Populist will be ported.
With that, I am asking for a wish list from users.
What kind of features do you want? They can be in your imagination to things you might want from other sites.
I'll read all requests.
Here is the first example. We can use scribd to embed into web pages any spreadsheet, power point presentations.
We can also use Google API to integrate any features desired from Google.
I can also embed the use of LaTex. LaTex is a document formatting language, designed specifically for advanced mathematical formula presentations.
What you can assume is that the current layout, editing features, promotion/demotion system, etc. will be ported, the WYSIWYG will be improved, upgraded.
The comment tracker will be ported.
Also, I encourage thinking outside the box. We are a unique space and do not have to model what other community blogs do, although cross posting portability is a critical feature to maintain.
On the current site, I am aware of some minor issues but instead of chasing these down, I want to move onto the complete upgrade and invest the time in that. No point in fixing minor issues when the entire site will change.
Based on your last comment
Here's a great wish list- extend the ratings system to comments as well. That way, a great comment like "For those so inclined" could be voted all the way up to the front page if enough people agreed.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
uploads, file and image repository
Going to have an area that is searchable, viewable by the public for file uploads, images, graphs, videos. Only registered users will be able to upload and there will be security on uploads, scanning for malware.
Anybody have useful tools, information on either online display and/or conversion of excel spreadsheets, interactive graphs, etc. please put here. This is a major issue since we do a lot of detailed data presentation.
turn blogs into forums and forums into blogs
Sometimes folks get confused since there are two types of posts or they start with a forum and it ends up being a long blog type post or they start with a blog post and decide it should be an instapopulist instead.
Need to have registered users be able to change the content type between the two.
Forum generally sucks. Needs to be more easily to scan text of posts without so many levels of hierarchy (clicks).
Still looking for wish lists from others but I'm also using this thread as my own reminder list.
CAPTCHA/security
improve CAPTCHA algorithm for anonymous drive-bys, supplement with increased heuristics on just anonymous drive-bys. (Two heuristics profiles, one for anonymous drive-bys vs. registered possible blog vs. forum as well)
Note, anyone reading this I'm using this thread as notes to self but also if you have any suggestions, feature wish lists, complaints post them here.
on that upgrade.....
You might all be wondering where that upgrade is and I'm here to give you an update that it is @&*)%&*)@.
What the issue is ....I'm still trying to determine frankly, a lot can go wrong. But while EP is working perfectly, when I migrate the database to any source, I have major errors and I'm still working on it.
Long slow haul...sure Drupal is easy to upgrade, sure thing.
(uh huh).
incoming RSS + blogroll
Middle column should still be highly informative expert level economics blogs, stats, indicators but better formatting and summaries only to actual site.
RSS inputs should be all formats, RSS, Atom, RSS2.
Additional traditional blog roll in some page somewhere for all of our friends and others making the effort.
Reminder, add:
Markets And Policy, which is currently only Atom feeds. A voice from the right who is technically accurate.
Upgrade wish list
A feature that would be great to have for convenience.
Being able to single click for BOLD, Italic and especially
.
Also a one click feature for "links" ... like the agent orange site and I would be in happyland.
Just a suggestion. If these were not incorporated would I stop coming here? No .... I'm a economic junky and when I find another I try to lead them this way.
Thanks for the forum RO!
keep 'em coming
I'll take that you want a better WYSIWYG editor. That' "link" thing you're talking about is some custom AJAX code they have and I've been trying to get AJAX to work in comments and it's one of the things holding up the upgrade.
I'm having financial woes now, I'm looking high and low for income so this upgrade is slow going.
Question on wish list - Twitter, all the rage
Anybody using mobile devices or what some sort of twitter interface etc.?
I don't use twitter at all but it's all the rage these days so I might be able to find some "mobile" and texting types of add ons.
Seems kind of ridiculous in a way because a blog's best feature is the fact we can write detailed long posts with lots of references, so trying to boil down our thought to 16 words at a time...well, what would that be? TEIF? (The Economy is fucked).
admin: forums and categories
I think the forum categories are not adequate for our site topics.
I am thinking we need:
Obama administration
Treasury/Fed
I want recommendations for additional forum categories from you. This is for the Instapopulist, when you put which category a subject belongs to.
Just respond in a comment to this comment. Thanks.
VAT needs to be one
And I think I need the ability, based on the comment I just edited twice in under a minute, to avoid this topic.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
no way
Look, we have a tax policy forum and a VAT is just one policy proposal out of many on tax reforms. Also, I've said this many times, but EP is a reality based economics site. Arguments have to be with numbers and one must be able to add and subtract, analyze or at least comprehend, tax experts analysis on cause and effect of tax policies, recommendations.
site upgrades
Just so you know I'm working on some upgrades. It's slow going and eats up a lot of time too. So I am hoping some of you who are reluctant to write, (commongood) might venture into posting something.
Also, I am going to assume that more and more people are getting a wide variety of screen sizes, dimensions and we have a couple of issues going on with that, one is a scalable site, which I can do, but another is to scale all images which makes a lot of sense.
Instapopulist, categories, heads up EPers
Hi Folks,
I am behind the scenes working on some very hairy site upgrades.
But I noticed people are not posting Instapopulists in the right categorty.
those little tags of categories can actually be very useful in terms of site navigation and finding information, posts on a topic.
To be honest, I haven't really taken advantage of all they have to offer, but in preparation for the site upgrade...
ya all might watch where you post these things (for the database of the site will of course be imported into the upgrade)...but if I increase the use of these "terms" to find stuff....
there will be a host of posts in the wrong categories, which is a bummer because I have to hand move them.
More later, but just a heads up to watch which category you post some of this stuff too.
(Yes, I'm going to increase the categories to consumer, middle class, poverty, any other suggestions as well).