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lester
- 17th October 2008, 15:15
Crownhill is involved with the development, production, sale and support of several software development tools. Users of this forum will be familiar with our activities relating to MicroEngineering Labs PIC Basic and Crownhill Proton Basic for PIC's.

There is no doubt that in the future Crownhill will continue to support use of the BASIC language on the PIC microcontroller.

Crownhill own the domains PICBASIC.NET, PICBASIC.CO.UK and PICBASIC.ORG.

Crownhill own and run the forums supporting, Proton Basic and MEL PICBasic both for the PIC Microcontroller.

Under consideration is a rationalisation of Crownhill's presence on the web in relation to PIC BASIC. Crownhill would like to open discussion with the users of Proton and MEL PIC Basics as to their thoughts on the proposed rationalisation.

Proposal: Subject to adequate resource being available, Crownhill proposes that the domain PICBASIC.NET should become the portal through which MEL and Proton PIC Basic users should access the resources provided by Crownhill. This may also extend to any other PIC BASIC product that Crownhill may offer in the future.

Under this proposal PICBASIC.NET would be launched in the form of a dynamic portal, driven by a content management system. This new portal will give users access to their dedicated forums (which will stay as they are under the existing domains PICBASIC.CO.UK and PIC BASIC.ORG), in addition the portal will provide quick and easy access to supporting areas such as News, Associated Information, User project areas and more...

It is envisaged that users will have access to their own dedicated web space, in which they can publish projects, code examples and tutorials. The CMS will allow managers to pull content from the users sites through to the relevant sections of the portal in a dynamic and engaging fashion. A site wide search feature will provide access to the user sites in a similar fashion to a Google search.

The content management system will allow the the managers to keep track of every piece of content on the Web site, much like a public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Once setup and mainatenined by Crownhill, it is proposed that the PICBASIC.NET portal should be managed by volunteers from the PIC BASIC community, over seen by Crownhills IT manager. Volunteers would have access to specific aspects of the portal, working individualy or in small teams to build the portal presence based upon information drawn from the Net, the users sites and the forums.

The object of this post is to encourage discussion amongst users of this site, to help Crownhill guage the demand for such a portal and the users feelings about Crownhill taking a more proactive role in the provision of the above mentioned resources. Including the consolidation of its position in supporting differing flavours of BASIC for the PIC Micro

lester
- 29th October 2008, 06:21
OK we are one step closer. We have just secured a deal that will allow us to offer users of the new portal, individual web space on subdomains of the portal.

UNLIMITED web space

UNLIMITED bandwidth

Subject to the user keping the subject matter of the content related to electronics, NO MLM, Spamming, porn etc.

Darrel Taylor
- 30th October 2008, 00:53
... We have just secured a deal ...
I'd hate to think what you gave up for that.

individual web space on subdomains of the portal.
Like DT.picbasic.co.uk, wow, cool.
added: or DT.picbasic.net

UNLIMITED web space

UNLIMITED bandwidth
Wow'er, cool'er!

Subject to the user keping the subject matter of the content related to electronics, NO MLM, Spamming, porn etc.
Just call me the "Spaminator".

lester
- 30th October 2008, 21:51
Hi, I've not actualy worked out (decided) if it will be;
DT.picbasic.net
or
www.picbasic.net/DT

or

users.picbasic.net/DT

but whatever, it will be free and it will be unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth

and it will be limited to PIC basic projcets , support or code snippets.

It will not be file sharing, music video, porn spam etc

with the exception of training video's or video's of PIC Basic projcet etc.

What i'm trying to achieve a a single user name and password log into the portal, and forum and wiki and web space.

and a system for moderation to allow approval of web space content before it goes live

lester
- 2nd November 2008, 01:10
Update, proposed web space facility:

We plan to give users their own site with a variable number of pages but we will retain complete control over publishing. ( pages will be moderated before they are made live - just to ensure their is no abuse of the facility).

Users will be automatically ( when the log in for the first time) allocated web space in which they can manage their own site, complete with automatically generated navigation and a selection of built in page templates.

Page types currently planned:


Standard html pages, free form, created with wysiwyg editor - very simple and completely flexible
Contact pages, details like name, address, phone, email address, website - fixed format
Image Gallery pages, with slide shows, themes, auto thumbnail generation, watermarking and dynamic image display
Repository pages, with links to allow file downloads


Other funtionality:

Subdomains based on the login user name
Template system to allow customising user output
Users can select themes for their own site
Integrated comments system, allowing the user base to add comments on the content of each web site
Top level directory of all visible pages ordered by categories.
Multiple site categories
Simple User control panel and management menu
Automatic generation of menu for all pages, with manual reordering as necessary
Pages can be worked upon until ready then published, or they can be automatically published when saved
Pages can be marked as private so they will only be visible to the owner and administrator
A custom header and footer can be specified for their site by the user
Page hits are recorded and displayed on each page.
Administrators have full control over the number of pages each user is allowed to create.
Admin will prevent pages from being visible until approved.


I'm working on a single login for the portal, forum, wiki and web space.....but its not proving to be easy. So far login to the portal and web space is working, but log in to the forum is still a separate process as is log to the wiki (only for editing, viewing of the wiki requires no login)

Its all moving forward as planned. Could be faster and available sooner if i had a PHP / MySql proficient volenteer to assist with some installation and testing.

lester
- 2nd November 2008, 20:30
Login for portal user web space and forum seems to be OK. So pretty much all testing is complete and we are now working on building the facility.

Joe S.
- 29th April 2009, 22:21
Hi Lester,
How is this progressing ?