shrey.puranik's diary

This has really got me thinking.

For those readers of UPSU.net, who may not know, members of the web-team can add things to the website via a restricted Content Management System (CMS). UPSU.net runs off the Mambo platform and was created, tweaked by last years MAPO Alex, and is now under the management of Mr Tom Worman. I didn't know that much about CMS's a few years ago, but maintaining a few websites has given me an understanding of what they can do, and how easily they can just slot in and 'do the task in hand'. 

A lot of CMS's happen to be free and heavily customisable and I guess this website's is no different. 

What really intrigued me however is what else we could do with this system that could allow our Union's website to be the best it could possibly be and at the same time improve the relationship between the website and its users. Now the following ideas may be looking way WAY into the future, or some may not even work, but I hope you'll be able to see where I'm coming from. 

•  Profiles-UPSU Profiles already is a firm base for what could potentially be a 'restricted/limited' rival to Facebook. I really like the fact that there is a calendar function on the main website which displays the forthcoming events and dates. Facebook, of course, is notorious for its events and group pages, but can we do something with the profiles and the Union? Imagine being able to add yourselves to these events within UPSU.net and then have reminders et al sent out to you. Whilst Facebook is awesome, we can't expect it to be up forever and with it being events within OUR Union, I reckon having the event management withing OUR website would improve the exclusivity. 
• Still on the topic of UPSU Profiles,would it be possible to have some form of status updates like on Facebook/MySpace/Twitter.  These status's could then be imported directly onto the front page under a 'What are YOU doing?' style box so we could have: 'Joey Bloggs is getting ready for Purple Wednesdays'. The only problem I can see with the logistics is that people may end up promoting other nightclubs/bars outside of UPSU/UPEL which isnt really ideal. 
• Fred Bradley mentioned an idea about using Twitter to allow the Sabbs to update the website easily. In my opinion, that is a superb idea as it keeps things ticking nicely and even if there is no major breaking news in Portsmouth one evening, it would still be nice to see the page change with the latest news on who's turn it is to make the hot chocolates!

On that note, I think I'm going to go down to the kitchen and make me a cup of hot chocolate!

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Hi Shrey 
I've just found the UPSU blogs - when I was helping a Project student look for something on the UPSU site.  
I like your ideas about what the Union site could offer - I've commented on it & related ideas in my blog. (http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog )

Emma Duke-Willaims (School of Computing - Lecturer.) - Tue, 09 Dec 2008