I must admit I was a little afraid you would take my suggestion as an insult (I've had similar debates before). I'm happy to see you're promoting all of the positives here, while not forgetting about the negatives.
I'll gladly elaborate on where my affection for BuddyPress-as-a-wiki came from. Before BuddyPress arrived I'd already had a similar idea for WordPress Multisite. The idea then was for users to have their own fully dedicated space (a whole blog) in which they could do more than just create and edit one anothers' wiki pages, but discuss their progress, upload files, connect with third party networks to communicate all on-going activities; all within orderly directories. This idea became fully realizable with BuddyPress (note that I see BP in a collaboration context much more so than casual social networking). Within every Group there's a single board (and with a plugin it can be just like any other forum, with several boards dedicated to major topics within that group) where whatever is on the group's agenda can be discussed at length, and in separate topics instead of a dreadfully long comments section below a single page. (With the upcoming bbPress plugin, page-comments like that will be integrated with the forum, so every discussion going on at any place in WordPress is part of some forum; all of a site's discussion can be traced back to one source, yet can show up wherever you need it). With plugins there's no end to what you can add to a group: Forum, blog, File uploads, media galleries, RSS feeds, CSS customizations and so on. Every group can be unique, in both functionality and looks. At its simplest a group can just be a simple entity that a group of people belong to, with no other gadgets attached to it. At its most advanced, it's a great little collaboration space. In the future there will also be the possibility of establishing pre-determined (and restricted if necessary) groups. On my site, jmonkeyengine.com (building new site at jmonkeyengine.org) we hope to take advantage of this. Some projects are complete, so they just need a place to show off their project, say, with a gallery, an RSS feed of their own blog and some links to their site, that's it. Others are just getting started with a project; they'll need a discussion board, a wiki, file sharing and so on. Best case scenario, users wouldn't even have to add these things one at a time, they could just make a choice between "collaboration space" and "promotion space" in the group creation process, and voilà, the group's got all they need, and nothing more. Of course, there are also means to sort these groups in different categories, else it'd be a mess. It could very well be that I have been thinking about this in the wrong way. Being so fond of BoltWire's small size and simple server requirements, I guess I imagined it would fit better as an add-on to more complex systems, as opposed to growing more complex itself. So long as the core remains the same though, I suppose there's no reason why it shouldn't be extended to great lengths, becoming a full blown collaboration suit. The only catch is that this means tons of work, as opposed to maybe just a single ton of work for something like a BuddyPress integration ;) Martin's suggestion of an advanced API certainly sounds and looks intriguing. I'm not very technical, but I still have this feeling that BoltWire, being so lightweight and not database-driven, would be the ideal mashup software. If not for the long run, then at least for the big breakthrough. I think popping up on several of those extension directories is one of *the* best ways to market your software for free. I think for a successful integration of two different softwares, there's one deciding factor that's come in the way of mass-adoption of every integration script to date: Theming. It's why for instance the WordPress developers have chosen to remake the currently stand-alone forum script bbPress into a plugin, sacrificing some speed and simplicity in favor of, most of all, effortless theme integration. Do you think there's any way BoltWire could somehow just inherit some other system's theming? Sort of just taking the body of a page and wrapping the 'parent system''s theme around it. I've no clue... Some WordPress resources that might be of interest: http://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Post_Types (The big new feature in 3.0) http://wordpress.tv/2009/09/13/introduction-to-hookpress/ (Could ease non-intrusive integration, I dunno) On Jul 22, 6:44 pm, Martin <[email protected]> wrote: > An api to Boltwire would allow to use Boltwire as a convienent CMS and > connect it with other programs or devices or do some mashups. > > This is what people do with the tumblr api > > http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/apps > > Greetings, Martin > > The Editor schrieb: > > > > > That's a very interesting project. I'm certainly open to making > > BoltWire available in some way to another CMS, but am not familiar > > enough with any to lead out in such a project. I could just provide > > support to someone else taking the initiative. > > > I'm curious though what prompted you to think along these lines? Do > > you feel BoltWire is deficient on the CMS side of things? If so where, > > and could we strengthen BoltWire somehow? It seems simpler with our > > architecture to expand BoltWire where needed, than to try and connect > > it to a separate system. I use BoltWire for an active and quite > > complex online school and it works beautifully for all my CMS > > functions. There is significant custom coding, but I plan to > > generalize some of that if we ever get around to a BoltWire 4.xx plus > > version... > > > I don't know much about BuddyPress, though of course I've heard of > > WordPress. On my site for example, I have pretty much everything > > listed on their home page: activity streams, extended profiles, friend > > connections, private messaging, a blog, and groups (classes). Can't > > compare the caliber of the two, but all of these were quite easy to > > build into BoltWire. I'm not sure how scalable my solution is though, > > as it is not currently database driven. > > > This is an interesting thread if others want to chime in. Particularly > > as strengthening BoltWire on the CMS side of things is one of my main > > goals for 4.xx. It's also one of the reasons I left PmWiki--it was too > > hard to use as a real CMS. My preference however is not integration > > but expansion of BoltWire to make it more competitive as a CMS. Piggy > > backing on WordPress might be a smart move, and likely result in a > > better product, but it would take some really committed to making it > > happen. > > > Cheers, > > Dan > > > On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Erlend Sogge Heggen <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > Have you ever considered integrating BoltWire with an existing CMS? I > > > kept this question pending for quite some time, thinking maybe it was > > > too far-fetched to even mention, but then I came by this discussion: > > > >http://buddypress.org/community/groups/creating-extending/forum/topic... > > > > I happened to come by it exactly because BuddyPress was the CMS, or > > > more precisely the collaborative suit I was going to suggest you could > > > integrate BoltWire with. Such a plugin could very well be a commercial > > > one, and through the WordPress ecosystem you could very easily market > > > yourself. > > > > Just a thought. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BoltWire" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/boltwire?hl=en.
