Posted: 10/22/2002 6:59:00 AM
Just wanted to provide some feedback as to what I hope to achieve with In-Portal.
<b>User and Content Management:</b>
1) A flexible solution for organizing our original content as well as external links.
2) Require a login for specific portions/pages of the site while allowing visitors to access other areas without registering. For example, I would like users to have to register in order to view our tutorials, but our advertisers to view our media kit without registration.
3) Automatic login. It would be nice to have a cookie allow registered users to get into the site without having to login everytime they visit.
4) The ability to easily include data from other portions of the site. For example, currently we post news items in a specific forum that allows us to call this data via an SSI call. You can see what I am referring to at http://www.mcmcse.com. The "News" section comes from our "News" forum. On the left side of the page we can also include forum posts, users online, etc. It would be great to have this flexibility with other content and be able to customize these types of includes.
5) Automatic Redirection.. If a user clicks on a link on our site that requires registration to get to and they are not registered, it would be great if after they register, they are automatically taken to the content that they were originally trying to access. This is a common feature on many sites that require user registrations.
<b>Forums:</b>
There are way too many features that people will want to list here, however, they will need to include he majority of the features of the major forum software that has already been discussed. Basically, it will have to be full featured unlike the forum software on this site (no offense)... Obviously, integration with other In-Portal modules and databases will be key.
<b>Newsletter:</b>
I think that this is a very important module and should be fairly high up on the list. I would really like the following:
1) Support for HTML email
2) Tracking
3) The option to automatically subscribe new registrants to the newsletter list(s). Also, the option to automatically remove their user account if they unsubscribe from the newsletter. This is becoming a very popular way of building opt-in lists.
4) Failure feedback. There needs to be a way to keep the lists "clean" and remove dead accounts and addresses.
5) Since it appears that this module will come later on, there needs to be a way that we can continue using our current software and find a way to retrieve the email addresses of new registrants from the database.
If you would like a good piece of software to model after, check out SubscribeMe Enterprise at http://www.siteinteractive.com/subent/
<b>Ad Management:</b>
Again, there are way to many things to discuss here, however, it would be great if there are capabilities to target ads to sections/pages of the site based on content or user registration information. The more targeting capabilities, the better. Keep in mind that performance is often a big stumbling block for larger sites like ours. Adcycle and Webadverts are a couple of decent ad rotation scripts that you might want to model after.
<b>Stats:</b>
The more stats that the software will provide with regards to traffic and user activity, the better. This would be important for security as well as marketing reasons.
<b>Marketing</b>
The more search engine friendly, the better. Many people in the past have expressed concerns that a dynamic version of the software will not fare well with search engines. An optional static version might be a good idea for those of us that get a lot of our traffic from search engines. I would hate to lose my #1 google ranking...
<b>Progress Reports:</b>
I realize that a project of this magnitude is taking some time and you are hesitant to offer completion dates. On the other hand, it has been mentioned by others that some of us have businesses that are hanging in limbo right now while we wait. We need to have some sort of regular ETA update if you hope to have people stick around and wait. I don't mind if the ETA changes and gets pushed back, but people want some sort of ball-park figure with which to plan their activities. We need regular updates if you want us to stick around!!! Furthermore, it would be great if you could start a newsletter that we could sign up for to receive updates so that we do not have to check in all the time.
Just my 2 cents...
Sorry this message is so long...
