Now that my job's over, I've been thinking about what to do here with Xepher.net for the past week. I've been torn between two ideas that I've had. On the one hand, I mentioned the idea of dedicated comic hosting. On the other, I've been wanting to write this CMS (content management system) that I've had in mind for a while as well. The CMS would basically be an automated website system, that would be highly customizable. It would be extensible/modular, but the base system would all you to have a comic automation system, complete with archives, automatic updates, rants, etc. a news/blog system, complete with in-browser rich text editor (aka "buttons to make things bold or change colors or add links") an art/image gallery system, everything complete with the ability for users to post comments, a threaded forum system, and other stuff... all of it integrated together, and full searchable. It would use the Smarty template engine (
http://smarty.php.net) so that users could completely customize the layout and look of everything.
Now I'm thinking how to integrate this with xepher.net itself. The goal here has always been Free Hosting for Free Thinkers... or as I tried to explain that from time to time... Recurring, original, creative content. Thing is, I've always been trying to build this place into a community. Phase 2 I tried to drag more people together with the newsbox and featured sites and such. It hasn't worked out so well. For the most part, everyone's doing their own thing here... there's no centralization, no real community, save the few of us that actually hang around the forums here. So I looked around at what actually make popular community driven sites. Sadly, what I came across was DeviantArt, KeenSpace (Comic Genesis now), Yerf and that sort. Look at Yerf for an example. It's VERY simple. You can upload an image, give it a description, and people can see it. The centralization stuff is nice though, like the "Recent Uploads" page, which shows the most recent art from everyone. See something you like? Click that artist to go to their own gallery. DA's got stuff like "favorites" where an artist can actually point to someone else's work on her on page. Likewise, you can "watch" certain artists that you like to know when they update. The comment system is rather useful to, IMHO. It lets artists get feedback on their stuff, without having to jump through the hoops of a seperate forum. Keenspace/CG... If you've got a comic, it's simple, it's easy, it does archives, and you don't have to worry about keeping so much stuff organized.
Now, comics/art/writing... that covers about 95% of the content on Xepher.net I think. So why can't I integrate all those things into one system? Thing is, I think I can. Basically picture the
Artica stuff I described, especially the modernation/karma/whuffie system, but combined with modules for comics, writing, news, etc. Add on the ability for each user to truely customize the layout of their own site, but still have things integrated, so that if they upload art to their own gallery, it'll show up site-wide in "new art" or in "watched artists" and all that other stuff. Same for stories/fiction, or new comics.
Bottom line is that I think I could write a really good CMS that would allow for both full customization/uniquness, while at the same time, keeping everything integrated. While over the past few years, I've intentionally shied away from such things, prefering to keep up the "traditional" hosting model, with no provisions at all for content management or anything, I come to realize that it's just not working that well. What's taking off are things that make life easier online. Most people would rather have a gallery they could update in a few seconds via their browser than having the full freedom to code and layout every single detail themselves. At least, that's how it seems to me.
So the question becomes, how would this work (or not work) for you guys... the users here? Would it ruin things or make them better?
P.S. I realize I may not be extremely clear here on how things would work. Feel free to ask questions or tell me where I confused you.