Tá Indymedia ag Oscailt

Wednesday June 18, 2003 16:21

by Vinnie - IMC Ireland Tech Group

Indymedia Ireland Gets An Upgrade

After several months of hard work by the Indymedia Ireland Tech Group, the Indymedia Ireland website has been upgraded to use our newly developed codebase called Oscailt.

This software adds several much needed features to the site, such as a search engine, categorisation of stories into topics, regions, and types, the ability to publish audio and video files (although currently disabled due to diskspace and bandwidth limits), and localised frontpages for each county in Ireland and each topic.

Much new functionality has also been added on the site administration side of things, to help editors more easily edit the newswire and publish features.

We hope you like the changes, and we value your feedback. We have tried throughout the development to retain the simple interface and design which makes the site easy to use, so please let us know what you think and if you have any ideas for the future. You can do this through the contact form or by adding comments to this story

Read on to find out more details of the new features ...

Categorisation
When publishing stories you can now select what region, topic and type best suit your story. This means that when reading the newswire people can use the filter bar to narrow the wire to the area they're interested in.

Please note however that there is a vast backlog of stories which have been set to default categorisations. Some editors will be slowly trawling through this to recategorize some of them but the vast bulk will for now remain at the defaults. This means that the usefulness of the categorisation will take some time to kick in.

The process of deciding to create new categories is still up in the air , but in general the idea will be to create general categories rather than specific ones except in exceptional circumstances. If you think we need a new category please suggest it through the contact form.

Filtering
On the top of the newswire there is now a filter bar which allows you to restrict or sort what's shown on the newswire. As well as filtering by the categories mentioned above you can also filter it by media type. This means you get can get a news wire with just images instance. Also available on the filter bar is a mechansism to sort stories by the latest comments. This means that at a glance you now can see which stories, have active discussions going on in the comments section, even if they're far down the newswire.

Localised Frontpages
We now have localised frontpages, which means that for instance the link http://www.indymedia.ie/galway will bring you to a localised front page with a Galway specific newswire and features. Similarly you can do this a for all other counties. You can also do this for topics as well so, so the link http://www.indymedia.ie/irishsocialforum will give you a front page with an Irish Social Forum specific newswire and features. Also these things can be combined so the links http://www.indymedia.ie/cork/antiwar or http://www.indymedia.ie/antiwar/cork will give you you a front page specific to only both those areas.

Search Engine
With our new search engine you can pinpoint specific items on the newswire, bringing back to life all those old articles that disappeared into the wire. As well as using the search engine through the form you can build your own links using the engines functionality.

For instance if your name is bob, you can create a link to all the stories you've published over time as follows http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?author_name=bob. If you have a space in your name you should use the character %20 eg a link to all of Bob Murphy's articles would look like http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?author_name=bob%20murphy. Similarly you can do the same for other search terms such as organisations. A link to all the green party stories would look like: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?organisation_name=green%20party. A way to search all text fields including the story content is also possible. To find all articles mentioning shannon you could use the link: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?search_text=shannon.

All of these search fields are inexact. This means that they are case insensitive and that any fields containing more characters than the ones you specify will also match. For instance the link above to "green party" will also show articles published by "The Green Party". If you wish to get an exact match, you need to add a term similar to the field your searching for to the end of your link like &author_name_exact=on. Also if you wish to extend your link to search comments add &search_comments=on.

The Future
Now that we have a modular base to build on we should be able to easily add new features over time. One such feature will be syndication, which technically means we'll be providing an RSS XML news feed, but for the end user it'll probably mean you can hook up several of the desktop ticker programs out there. So keep an eye out for things to come!

-The Indymedia Ireland Tech Group

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Comments (21 of 21)

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Fantastic

by Andrew

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:04

Only had a chance to have a quick scoot around as I posted the war story but it looks great. Search function also dead cool and much needed.

One minor criticism, probably would have been a good idea to post an announcement to the newswire that this was ABOUT to happen. Several other radical sites on the internet are currently unavailable so people might 'panic' and start posting conspiracy mails when indymedia.ie goes down as well!

But ..

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:13

As you may have already noticed some stories from months back have appeared in the first and second pages of the newwire. The stories have their dates changed to today but the comments have their old dates which gives it away. Something to do with adding classification to old stories?

Try looking at it on a Mac

by Mr Soya Bean Man

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:15

The left sidebar is all over the place

i feel honoured.

by "BOB"

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:18

:-)

new IMC in

by ipsiphi

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:34

Andorra.
http://andorra.indymedia.org/
it's also called.
http://laseudurgell.indymedia.org/

aint that cool! remember back in the days of
Oscailt uimhir a 3º someone sent us an article about mosque building in Andorra and all the muslims were sleeping under a motorway?

Fidels sin Espais!
Espais sin Fidels!

Is maith liom an céad mhile failte romhat ar an Oscailt.
:-)
& Bob's happy too.

Well done guys

by Ray

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:44

Its brilliant. Words fail me.

One small step for IMC ...

by Dave

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:50

Congrats on the great 'leap' forward. The search engine is my favourite!

Andrew

by Vinnie

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:55

Have fixed wrong dates, only a few got muddled

tis cool

by pc

how do i look for previous articles with audio files on certain subject

FANTASTICO!!!!!!!!!

by ollie - katalyzer

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:57

C'est ca! A much needed shot in the arm, or perhaps, a snifter of an uplifting essential oil, say....ylang-ylang, if you prefer nature to needles......

ANYWAYZ, well done to the good ppl who have made this site so good

Mac

Mr soy bean could you let know whether it was mac System 9 or OSX. Also what browser were you using, and I'll get on to fixing it. Thanks

Audio

Wed Jun 18, 2003 17:59

Unfortunatly we don't have space for audio or video yet and all exiting auio is hosted by imc uk so you can't do amedia serach for it. try just typing "audio" in the searchh bar though or ".wav" or ".mp3"

MAC PROBLEM ALSO

by William

Wed Jun 18, 2003 19:47

Same problem with the sidebar. Mac system 9, Internet Explorer.

a search engine , oh baby

by hunter

Wed Jun 18, 2003 23:51

nice one indyheads! you have just improved this site by about 25%.

now if only we could agree a truce between the socialists and the anarchists...

(well we can dream can't we)

go raibh maith agat

Should that not be 'Tá Oscailt ag Indymedia'?

by Palmiro Togliatti

Thu Jun 19, 2003 01:15

Nice one.

Left sidebar looks fine on Mac running OS10,2,5 and Safari.

The top banner looks a bit funny - all the text is right-aligned.

Everything else looks more or less all right, as far as I can tell. But it'd be nice to have the full list of links to other IMCs back on the front page.

Great Job -- what about Syndication? (RSS)

by Markos

Thu Jun 19, 2003 02:14

Lovely Job on the Content Management system -- The search and toolbar at the top make the site an awful lot easier to use.

Are you going to release the code under an Open Source licence?

Also, an RSS feed from the site so that other sites can carry Indymedia's headlines would be another great addition.

It would encourage traffic and Bloggers to pick up and comment on Indymedia stories.

RSS feeds please!

Vinnie

Thu Jun 19, 2003 10:18

Working on updating the problems.

The full list of IMC's on the sidebar will return sometime today.

RSS syndication is partially finished and will be up in week or two.

For those who don't know what RSS is you can find out here http://www.indymedia.org/syndication.php3

Back to work ...

Thu Jun 19, 2003 10:21

Yes code will be released under the GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Expect a website with downloads in a couple of weeks. I'll announce it on the wire

Maith sibh!

by Seán

Thu Jun 19, 2003 13:05

Maith sibh as an uasghrádú ach go h-áirithe ó tharla go ligean sé do scríobhnóireacht as Gaeilge.
Tá go leor fáthanna eile go maith an rud é an uasghrádú ach táthar luaite cheana.

Arís maith sibh!

Failte romhat a Shean.

by iosaf/ipsiphi

Thu Jun 19, 2003 15:20

is tusa ár scríobhnóireacht.

.....

by Acidburn

Thu Jun 19, 2003 19:46

Lovin this search engine! Nice one.

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Comments (21 of 21)