Tendenci – The Open Source AMS Blog
Community Blog for Open Source AMS Makers
Due to electrical maintenance in our offices, there may be short interruptions in accessing your development sites that are hosted in our office today, 4/14/08, between 5:30 PM and 6:00 PM CST.
This will only affect sites with a http://yourdomain.schipul.net URL.
For additional questions, contact support@tendenci.com or 281-497-6567 ext. 411.
Ever wanted to create an event, show it to everyone, but
only give access to a privileged few? Create events and protect the event with a unique password for each one. These events will display as regular events
do but the event can only be registered for and details can only be viewed if
you’re equipped with the super secret password.
Our current tendenci help files is in the process of being transfered to a new and improved help files module. What does this mean? Question and answer format, easily request a help file, better searching capabilities, new stream-line interface, and the ability to use the module on your own tendenci web site! Here is a screenshot of the new module:
Some features for administrators:
We had a really great Tendenci User Conference this year – thanks to our amazing clients and partners! With around 100 attendees, there was a lot of connecting, knowledge sharing and Tendenci feedback going on.
For those who couldn’t make it this year (we missed you), we have uploaded our presentations from both the Tendenci User Conference and the Web Marketing Bootcamp training sessions. Definitely check them out online!
Also be sure to take a peek at our User Conference photos and Anniversary party photos. We had a really great time – especially as this was the first time that many of us got to meet clients that we spoke to so regularly. Can’t wait to see you all next year!
Great news! We are holding our very first annual Tendenci User Conference on Friday, September 28th (you can register online here).
This will be a great chance for you to connect with other users, learn more about the Tendenci software and help us grow the Tendenci software with your ideas and insights.
The User Conference will give you some face-to-face time with our teams, not to mention provide you with a chance to meet and interact with other Tendenci users. Some topics that will be discussed:
We’ve also got other events going on around the Tendenci User Conference that you should know about (and hopefully attend!):
Web Marketing Bootcamp – A day full of intensive training sessions covering Web marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media and more! These sessions will be a little more advanced than our normal Tendenci training curriculum – so get ready for a great mental workout and come with questions!!
Breakfast With Ed – A pre-conference morning kick-off event with Ed Schipul and team. This will be a laidback breakfast and coffee hour to get yourself revved up for the day’s events and have a little one-on-one with some of our team.
Tendenci 10-Year Anniversary ‘Thank You’ Party!!! – Join the Schipul gang, family and friends for a celebratory ‘Thank You’ party in honor of 10 great years!
Knowledge is power – especially on the Web where a good understanding of your site’s traffic patterns can mean the difference between growing your business and staying stagnant.
Tendenci’s built-in statistical reporting utilities enable you to learn what content is the most popular on your site, see how your email distribution lists have grown, how many contacts you have received through your site and much, much more.
Check out these great help files for more information on your Web site’s event logs:
Thanksgiving has already passed (can you believe it?!?) and we are officially knee-deep in the Holiday season.
As hectic as these weeks may be, we want to be sure that you know how grateful we are for clients like you. We are honored to work with you and wish you a peaceful and prosperous remainder of 2006.
Need help or have any questions during the last few days of 2006? Give us a call at (281) 497.6567.
The earlier distributed denial of service (ddos) attack has been thwarted. To help reduce the chances of web services being affected by such attacks in the future Schipul has added more redundant name servers to the network. If we have access to your registrar we have made these updates for you. If we don’t have access to your registrar please add the new name servers, as primary NS2.DNSPARK.NET, and NS4.DNSPARK.NET as your third name server.
If you are able to list all five the sequence should be NS2.DNSPARK.NET, NS1.DNSPARK.NET, NS4.DNSPARK.NET, NS3.DNSPARK.NET, and NS5.DNSPARK.NET.
Sparklines are one of my favorite additions to Tendenci. Within the "articles search" section of any Tendenci website, you will see a small line graphic that shows the up and down viewing trends of a particular article. Holding your cursor over the graphic will review an "ALT Tag" that shows the highest viewing an article has received since the article was created. (Please refer to the image on the left as an example.)
Edward R. Tufte defines sparklines as: "datawords" – data-intense, design simple, word-sized graphics.
Within a second you can tell if an article is "sporadically viewed", "a growing trend", "steadily viewed", or
"not viewed at all". This also helps to communicate simple interactive relationships. For example, "How much does viewership declines when an article is made member-only view?" I have included an image (click to enlarge) to help demonstrate the effects of an article that requires a "log-in".
The sparkline graphic also includes a "highest reads point (green dot)", a "lowest reads point (blue dot)" and a current position marked by the red dot. The visualization that is produced from the small graphics may help an organization better understand the growing needs of the membership and the hot topics of the day. Thanks to Jenny Qian for her work on integrating sparklines into Tendenci.
The Business Directory search page within Tendenci contains a "tag cloud" listing that helps users visulalize the amount of content within a particular category. Often the value of "weighted text lists" is misunderstood as "a jumble of mixed-sized fonts". Instead the developers of Tendenci see the lists as an easy means of communicating the popularity of content.
Visualization is an important theme in Tendenci. The value of human communication and interaction is weaved through every part, including putting tag clouds on Business Directory listings to help communicate the value of the content.
For more on the theory behind tag clouds, I suggest reviewing these powerpoint slides by Rashmi Sinha. Rashmi put together some slides that help to explain the theories behind tag clouds. Here is also a link to Rashmi’s site: http://www.rashmisinha.com/.