IMC Feature Requests

Home page needs ability to embed a Flash file or In banner?

If in banner, would need to alter viewlet to allow object embedding instead of showing an image.

In uwosh.theme product, configlet lets you choose image or Flash banner

What if they want Flash banner on home page but images elsewhere?  Viewlet could check if it's the home page and if so show the object otherwise show the image.

In body?
can be done with kupu, currently manually, but ideally add a toolbar icon that is similar to the image link one, that lets you choose an existing Flash or upload a Flash

•     static image files (jpg, gif)

Already doable

•     links to audio/video files that are linkable – with an easy interface to swap them out. 

For embedded video, addressed above (Kupu manually or via new toolbar icon). 

If you mean list of links to videos, that's already doable.

a quadrant of 4 spaces

...that allows flexibility to make one large image, 4 small images, 2 large images, etc.  so the full space can be utilized in any number of ways with multiple file types.

We can create a custom page template that does this.  I estimate a few days of work.  24 hours

Not necessary to create custom page.  Use Kupu to create a table with 2 rows, 2 columns.  Set style of table to be new "no gap quadrant" that prevents gaps from appearing between images (table cells and rows).  Specify the image to place in each quadrant.

Maybe use a product like Collage or Structured Document instead of customizing the template.

Allow end users to upload multiple images and create a rotating banner on the fly

Uploading multiple images is done with a small uploader module.
We currently have uploader module installed/configured?

By rotating banner, do you mean an animated GIF? Or do you mean a banner that changes on page reload? Flash file, not GIF – taking the uploaded images and generating a rotating Flash file within a specified height/width – image resizing would be necessary if images are not in acceptable format.

Where will this rotating banner appear?  In the site banner area?  In the document/page body?  As a portlet on the side?  Will there be more than one rotating banner per site?

Maybe use a new content type that is folderish, containing as many images as the user wants, and generates an animated gif which can be placed anywhere very easily.  Or use Javascript to display the individual images.  Maybe have a way of specifying the size of the rotating banner and the size would be batch applied to all images contained in the folderish object.

Animated GIFs are bad for accessibility reasons.  At the very least they should be designed to play once then stop (as opposed to endlessly looping).

Allow some basic image manipulation (cropping, resizing, color)

Resizing is already in Plone.  Cropping: I need to research what is out there.  What colour changes would you want to make in an uploaded image? 
Please estimate based on below screen shot of commercial product – this is an important feature to allow end users to modify images without the need for additional software:

Nathan has all the features listed in his ATImageEditor product.

Allow end users to create event lists/news/announcement lists to be created and easily create an RSS out of them

Already in Plone.

Already in plone with collections.  Ideally, we'll need to add support for folders also.

Allow end-users to add RSS feed links to page – providing a list of all available RSS feeds to choose from

Already in Plone.  To create a canned list of RSS feeds to choose from, I estimate a few days of work.
Please estimate RSS functionality based on below screen shot:

Need to have folders generate RSS feeds automatically the way collections and searches do.

Need to have formatted RSS feed links for specific RSS readers (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, ?).

Add a new skin template view to show all the RSS feeds on the current Plone site.  Display them one per row including different formats for the different RSS readers.

Add a link to this site RSS view at top right, next to site map.  (site actions).

Add support for adding portlets to the inside of a page to kupu?  A toolbar icon.

Creation of multiple templates per site-section, and multiple page layouts per site-section for the end-user to choose from when creating pages

What sort of templates?  In Plone, a template is a page layout, but I wonder if by template you mean a page that has a particular set of images and colours and fonts as well as a unique layout?  End users can already choose from a list of Plone templates by choosing to add a particular content type; e.g. a News item has a different page template than an Event item. 

The user, when setting up a new page on their site, will need the option to select from several variations of “skins” along with variations on page layout (number of columns, page structure, etc).

Aside from number of columns, what other forms of page structure do you have in mind?

Build in area for emergency messaging on each template, allowing Emergency Communications people to decide how “deep” the message goes into the site, meaning just homepage, homepage and colleges, homepage and college and dept pages, etc.

I estimate a few weeks of work to refine the requirements then implement the solution if it differs from what we already have.  We already have a module that does something like this.  Any site that includes this module will display the emergency message.  120 hours

Need to track not just alert type but also the audience type.  Use a different RSS feed for the different alert types and the different audiences?

Two products:

    - uwosh.emergency.master: specifies the type/audience mapping matrix
    - uwosh.emergency.client: can specify the web site's audience(s); registers with the master on installation

      Audiences      all    COLS    COEHL   History Clow    Students    Reshall A
Types
weather                x
psycho
cancellation
facility (gas leak)
hall intruder


alerts.uwosh.edu/alerts/weather/RSS
                       /psycho/RSS
                       /etc/RSS
                       /facility/Clow/RSS
                                /ClowFaculty/RSS
                                /Swart/RSS

Use keywords for types and audiences?

Use vocabulary for types?

Create an AlertFolder and an Alert type

How will client know the RSS feed URLs?

How will the master structure/generate the RSS feeds?  Folders of alerts (nested as necessary), collections. 

When the master adds a new feed (type / audience) it has to tell the clients so they can decide if they need to subscribe.

When a client site changes its audience set, it has to ask the master for all the feeds that now apply.

Build in keywords for Internal Search and keywords for SEO

Do you mean Plone keywords?  The Plone search engine already indexes automatically all content.  How would keywords affect SEO?
There should be a place for me to enter in Plone keywords at the page level, which allows IMC to specify for internal search any pages that show up in results for those keywords.  We also need to specify search engine keywords – metadata – for SEO

I doubt that Google PageRank is affected by keyword additions to pages.  Proper page and site structure as well as exposed site structure probably have more effect, and Plone already can expose sitemap.gz to Google.

In Plone, Site Setup -> Site Settings:

(checkbox) Expose sitemap.xml.gz in the portal root
Exposes your content as a file according to the sitemaps.org standard. You can submit this to compliant search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. It allows these search engines to more intelligently crawl your site.

also a text field for:

JavaScript for web statistics support
For enabling web statistics support from external providers (for e.g. Google Analytics). Paste the code snippets provided. It will be included in the rendered HTML as entered near the end of the page.

“smart” search allowing search results to get re-indexed based on user interaction (the more clicks on one result gives it more priority in future searches)

Plone search engine automatically indexes; there is no need to tell it to reindex.  The search engine returns results based on an internal algorithm.  If you want to alter the algorithm I estimate several weeks of work.  The algorithm should be modified to re-index and give priority to search results that get more “clicks” and also allow IMC to specify keywords at the page level that will force pages to show up based on those keywords.  160 hours.

My feeling is that it would be a mistake to implement this feature.  We would need to hire someone who has proven skills in Zope and Plone catalogs.

Form creation

for event management, sign-ups, email collection, data update – that the end-user can create on the fly without needing IT assistance or HTML skill – that allows submission to go into database or email

Plone already does this. 

Jamie has used PloneFormGen and likes it a lot.

Long-term: Need to import current/archive Wordpress data

and re-create UW Oshkosh Today, and re-create format with multiple categories allowing RSS for each category, auto-archiving of articles, along with separate Feature sections that do not rotate/archive with standard articles.

Normally, importing content would be a matter of a few days, and I believe Plone can already do everything you mention.  To be on the safe side, I would estimate a few weeks to get this done to your satisfaction.  160 hours.

This is a large project in itself.  I have not used Wordpress so I am not familiar with all its features, or with the features that you are using.

Consulting Required

• Plone skinning: starting from a Photoshop document; portfolio of sites skinned; 20+ sites
  
• Zope and/or Plone search catalog: experience customizing search results based on page/item popularity
  
• hardware & software setup for large scale production hosting (for 100+ sites)
  
• conversion of Wordpress news content to Plone