.. to spread the community message. How to bring positive change to your neighborhood? Is there someone else with similar thoughts, wishes and views? How to find them and involve into action? How to build community spirit in your neighborhood? What are the best means for doing this?
These are the main subject we’ll be talking about this month. Our tour takes us to Rakvere, Viljandi and Pärnu. We’ll be sharing the experience of New World Society – a cool neighborhood in Tallinn and introduce some successful cases around the world. And of course how Community Tools can help you in these matters.
Login
- In groups where users are allowed to post content, +add article buttons are now displayed to users who are not logged in. Clicking the button will open a login box.
- Password reminder is now added to login window.
- Facebook button is not displayed if Facebook connect is not adjusted.
Messages
- Users can now adjust their e-mail notices in every tool, whether they want the message sent instantly after new post appears or once a day.
User interface
- Geolocation appointment is now hidden in text editor default view, it’ll appear after clicking the link.
- Text fields are more visible in editing window.
- Buttons are redesigned.
- Improved displays of people attending an event and votes of an ideas.
Map
- Posts can be added directly from map. You’ll find two extra buttons “move map” and “add point”.
- Clicking on a data bubble on map will show you event time in event tool and category tag in problem tool.
General fix
- Clicking on photos in content opens a view that is similar to gallery view. Previously, photos posted in an article were shown in original size.
- Filters and posts on several pages didn’t correspond.
- Translations in Estonian version are updated.
Hooray, CT installation package (alpha) and source code are now public! CT beta testing has been a great experience. We’ve received a lot of valuable feedback from communities who have been testing our tools since September 2010. We are very grateful for your smart ideas, co-operation and patience.
Here you are, this is first CT version update in 2011!
Search and filter You can search and filter posted articles, events, ideas and problems by title, category/tag or by date added.
Improvements in user interface - Listed views in events, ideas and problems tools are now more compact - All titles in listed views refer to the detail view of a given post - Comments of post author appear in coloured background, to be distiguished from all other comments - When you click on a map item, its’ address is displayed in the information bubble
Fixes - In detail view of a posted item, page width was messed up - Since last update new members didn’t receive the automatically generated confirmation e-mail with passwords - Since last update it was impossible to register via FB Connect and ID-card - Ideas tool failed to upload any files - Link for “Please log in to leave a comment” was incorrect
Social media features
You can now easily share content via Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, Delicious or Digg. We’ve added Facebook Like button to posts.
Categories
Whatever you call it (tag, label, category), we’ve got it.
Documents & files
You can add photos or other files to your posts in Article tool, they will appear below text area.
Map
We’ve redesigned bullets on map. In fact, when you add a new tool or change tools’ settings, you can choose which of the icons is used (white, blue, red or yellow). You can designate whether map is used in article tool or not. If you decide to use map, you can define whether map is hidden, shown half page or shown full page.
Events
You can now mark your attending to an event or add event to your calendar. While posting new event, event date and time are now automatically in (chrono)logical order. It’s possible to mark event duration whole day. By default event start time is 10 a.m next day.
Ideas
This is a brand new tool to initiate new actions, share your ideas, start something BIG. Users can vote for or against new Ideas.
Problems
This is another brand new tool to report and map problems in your area. Users can comment and update the status of the described problem (ie fixed).
Login with your ID
Estonian citizens can login with ID-card or use mobile ID for login (supported by openid.ee service).
User interface
We’re working on interface so that the overall appearence will get lighter and easier.
Text styles
We’ ve changed and fixed text styles and line spacing. To separate text sections use Enter, to start writing on new line use the combination of Shift-Enter.
Website name We’ve improved the way title tags are displayed.
A bunch of other small annoying bugs have been fixed. To get a hands-on experience of everything that CT has to offer, please visit the DEMO, register and be very welcome to digg in.
All feedback, as well critics as praise are always welcome.
- You can now create additional menu in page header. It can be used for regular pages, suitable for descriptive content that’s not changed too often. This option is available to pages’ root administrator.
- Our user interface is now using ajax technology for comments display, which makes it much faster, as adding new comment doesn’t require the upload of the whole page.
- Deleting your profile is now possible, you’ll find the Delete button on your profile page.
- Favicon uses CT logo instead of Drupal logo now.
- Fix: body text in event description is now visible for IE8 users, previously it disappeared after klicking on Subject.
- Bugs currently in repair:
_ map is still not working with IE
_ clustering on map and users FB profile photos are disabled until some developments are completed. These are restored with next software update.
Community Tools (CT) received grant from Open Estonia Foundation (OEF) via Good Governance program. The goal of the Good Governance Program is to support the involvement of people in the development of civil society, political consultation with the public and nongovernmental organizations, dissemination of information and access to public information. Attention is paid to increasing the capacity of institutions, people and networks and development of information networks. Additionally, the program supports initiatives aimed at increasing transparency and fighting against corruption.
CT aims to increase coherence in local communities and other civic associations, encourage people to stand up for their interests using modern internet solutions. CT plans to achieve this by including lots of communication, consulting and spreading the word from grass-root level to various concerned associations. We will continue improving usability, functionality and developing several cool new features (ie stuffarium). Stay tuned!
We happily announce that our pages have gone through performance optimizations.
What else is new?
# Users receive daily digest mail about recent updates in their groups (newly added articles, events etc). Digest mail also gives overview of newly added groups in installation. E-mail is sent at 2 p.m and reflect changes made during last 24 hours. You can turn digest mail off by going to http://sitename.selts.eu/admin/build/cmtls and logging in as drupal root admin. This is only a temporary solution. In future, every user will have the option of configuring the frequency and content of his/her notifications.
# Fix: event edit window is now larger and more convenient to use.
# Fix: bubbles on map show intro of the article, you can read full article by clicking on it.
# Fix: map is centered according to community’s actual location.
Eesti keeles 