Nathan Garrett :: Blog

I'm relocating this blog to my conversation.cgu.edu/garrettn/  elgg installation.  Please update your rss feeds and bookmarks to point to the new location.  Eduspaces has been good to me, but I prefer having my blog at a .edu site.

I've updated folio to work with Elgg v.8, as there was a problem with updating file properties.  The file, as always, is in my files.

Okay, I've updated folio with more minor bug fixes, as well as some minor graphical enhancements.

http://eduspaces.net/garrettn/files/9579 

Thanks to Jason Cormie, Ian Frame, and Martin Dove for the suggestions.

Okay, thanks to a number of helpful bug reporters, folio has been updated to v.62.  Highly recommended update, as it fixes a large number of issues.

Again, after updating from an older version, be sure to run the /mod/folio/html/setupdb.php page when logged in as news to update the db.

I haven't tested it, but am told that folio works fairly well (but not perfectly) with the forum plugin.

http://eduspaces.net/garrettn/files/9480 

Okay everyone, I've been spending a ton of time getting bug fixes in the folio plug-in implemented.  I'd HIGHLY recommend installing this fix, as it corrects a ton of problems (some minor, some major).

I can never seem to post a good .zip file, so here's a link to the tarball version of it. http://eduspaces.net/garrettn/files/

This version includes many more options for the way the folio interacts with the side menu.  You can use /mod/folio/config.php to have the folio leave the blog / file sidebars alone, and only add its own link.  Other options allow you to add/remove any options on the top or side bar.

As always, please let me know of any problems encountered.

Thanks to feedback and advice from a number of different people, I've started work on the next version of the folio plug-in.  After emailing back & forth with Stan a couple of times, I changed the main sidebar.  Local administrators can now very easily choose if they want to use the default sidebar or mine.  If they don't want to use the sidebar as a 'collasped' entry, then they just leave the default settings on and it only shows the wiki.  I also changed it to only display if we're looking at another user's page.  Lastly, it expands the wiki entry, making it a much more dynamic & interesting entry.  The name of the root homepage is now shown instead of the generic 'wiki page' tag.  If the use doesn't have a homepage, then nothing is shown.  very clean...

I'm fixing a bunch of bugs & things at the moment, ranging from user icon troubles to linking page titles.  I got carried away with the GUI enhancements this weekend, but will be working on the debugging stuff soon as well.   

Brian Thoms & I recently presented our claremontconversation.org site at the 2007 DESRIST conference. It's a 20 minute presentation, and I really think that it went well.

 

Okay, this is really annoying.  Every time I upload a .zip file, it ends up corrupted after a period of time.  It'll work for a while, day / week / month, but eventually it dies again.  I'll find some other way of posting the file, maybe on google pages or something. 

Update: Okay, I loaded the .zip file off-site here.  Hopefully it'll stay okay now.

I'm surprised no one else put a link up, but it seems that Wired has given Elgg some press...

http://www.wired.com/culture/education/news/2007/04/myspaceforschool

Of course, they get a couple of the details wrong, but publicity is a wonderful thing... 

Hello all;

I'm happy to annouce that my group has finished putting together our first Elgg conference paper.  We're very happy with the results, and think that they show the value of Elgg in an academic community.  We're just now finishing up the 2nd term using claremontconversation.org, and both students & faculty have been very encouraging. 

Key conclusions?  Students like the idea of a social network for an academic community, think privacy controls and ownership are important, and (with some exceptions) think the software is easy to use.  The folio turned out to be used a lot, especially in the creation of group papers that wouldn't have been possible without Elgg.

DESRIST Paper