This is a page where I keep notes about home.smallpicture.com. It's a work in progress and some of these ideas are just blue-sky wishes, part of the ideation process. Not necessarily feature requests.
Templates
Ideally I'd like to have a template to flow each page on the home site through.
The rendering process would work like this:
1. Build a table of documented values that are available to flow through the template.
2. Grab the template, and do string substitutions for everything in <%brackets%>.
3. Pretty sure this is the kind of thing that PHP does well.
I also want users to have a template for their own page, that overrides the system template. This implies that the information that's available for flowing through the template must be documented so that a designer can understand it.
What should flow through the template?
1. <%bodytext%> -- this is the core of every page, the part that's created by the Laconica software. By having it be a macro, the designer can decide where on the page it's placed.
2. <%now%> -- A string representation of the time on the server.
3. <%olderUrl%>, <%newerUrl%> -- the addresses of previous and next pages in sequence. I know this is a problem when you're at the first or last page, so have them point at the page you're on when there is no next or prev.
4. <%feed%> -- this should be a white-on-orange XML icon linking to an RSS 2.0 feed. I understand that other people may want it to be other things, but this is a scripting.com site. Perhaps the representation of this element should be subject to a system preference, see below.
XMPP
Turn on Laconi.ca's XMPP-based firehose of new public messages. (And, then let Bob Wyman subscribe to it!)
System preferences
timezone -- the number of minutes offset from GMT for the server. My sites always operate in the Pacific time zone which is 8 hours before GMT, so my value would be -480.
sysopEmail -- an email address to send problem reports to.
Sysop API
At first I was going to request a browser-based admin, similar to what we had in Manila or Radio, but then realized this would take too long and was unnecessary. All I need is an API for sysadmin. Then I can construct my own tools for administrating. Long-term however, there must be a built-in browser-based admin.
Use OAuth to identify sysops? (More secure than sending passwords in the clear.)
So here's a list of new entrypoints:
Return a list of all users.
Return a list of all users since .
Get and set the global template.
Set attributes of the feed icon. (See above.)
Configure email and IM.
Every new signup issues a post from the sysop account
People can choose to follow or not. By default everyone is subscribed to the sysop?
Global block
If a Twitter is popular enough to attract a user base it will be popular enough to attract abuse. The sysop needs the same ability to block users as individual users have.
Multi-hosting
I'd like to have the ability to offer hosting for other communities.
For example: scoble.smallpicture.com and nakedjen.smallpicture.com, etc.
Built-in URL shortener, payloads
I want a place to enter a URL under the "What's up dave?" box. When I do so, the URL is passed through the internal URL shortener that's hosted on the same domain as the twitter is.
If the URL points to an MP3, AVI or image it's treated as a payload, and the RSS generates an element suitable for a podcast client to catch. When displaying such messages (this is tricky, but doable) create a thumb for the images, when you click they expand in place. Look at FriendFeed for prior art.
