To all of our valued e-NABLE community members:
Short version:
After evaluating suggestions from our community, we are considering a new social platform to bring together all of our e-NABLE resources and make them easier to find. Help us evaluate this platform by visiting hub.e-nable.org to share your feedback.
A video demonstration of the new platform can be found here.
Full version:
As e-NABLE’s diverse, decentralized do-ocracy has grown, its informational resources have spread across a variety of websites. This makes it difficult for both new and seasoned volunteers to find information, and keep informational resources in sync.
Some of us have been working on this problem for a few months now.
When Google decided to shut down the Google+ platform, we had to quickly evaluate and select an alternative social platform for the community. We chose Wikifactory because its staff was welcoming, and their existing and planned features seemed like a good match.
Unfortunately, Wikifactory’s development priorities have not aligned with ours. Our users wanted to host and embed different types of content, to customize notifications for updates, to modify the interface etc. But when utilizing a proprietary platform, you can only go where they go (and if the service ends, as with Google+, you just have to scramble).
So, we have been evaluating open-source social platforms and believe we have found one that will suit our needs. HumHub not only has the features we’ve wanted but, it will allow us to wrap most of our current online e-NABLE resources in a single customizable interface. We’ve used it for several weeks, and now we’re commending it to your attention.
Introducing the e-NABLE Hub.
Here’s what we like:
- It offers a social interface like GooglePlus or Facebook, with a dashboard that presents a stream of recent activity and a “What’s on your mind?” field, where you can simply type something and post.
- It’s immensely customizable. Humhub is organized into “spaces” with optional modules for different types of content and functionality (wikis, calendars, etc.). We’ve found that this allows us to incorporate existing e-NABLE content from Google+, Wikifactory, e-nable.org, enablingthefuture.org, etc.)
- It supports the features we’ve been seeking:
- Ability to embed iframes, html, etc.
- Ability to follow individual spaces (i.e. projects, stories, etc.) and customize alerts about updates. You can select alerts via web and/or email, how frequently you want email summaries, etc.
- A searchable directory of users, groups, spaces, etc.
- A polling feature for soliciting input and feedback. (We’re not suggesting this as a replacement to Loomio, which has a richer set of voting features).
- It’s easy to create and edit content. (No need to “commit” changes).
- It’s open-source.
- We can download the source code and a copy of our database and place it on any server that meets the technical requirements. (For now, we have it installed on HumHub’s cloud hosting servers, as that was the easiest option, but this can always be changed at a later time.
- New modules can be created should that become necessary (HumHub is written in PHP).
- It’s intuitive, responsive, and easy to use. (According to the users we’ve invited to test the platform. Now we’d like you to check it out.)
Proposed transition plan.
We’ve thought through a transition plan that should present new users with a simpler introduction to e-NABLE, give volunteers a richer and more unified collection of resources, and make life easier for e-NABLE’s system administrators. Old web addresses like enablingthefuture.org and enablewebcentral.com will continue to work, but their informational resources will now be accessible within a unified structure consisting of:
- A friendly front page (at e-NABLE.org, as redesigned by the e-NABLE chapter at Deloitte Consulting in London),
- A well-structured and maintainable e-NABLE Hub (hub.e-nable.org) for volunteers and collaborators
We who have been maintaining e-NABLE’s main websites believe this is the way to go, but what is more important is how you feel about this. Therefore, we seek your input and support.
Please try out the e-NABLE Hub by visiting hub.e-nable.org. You can register an account using your existing Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn authentication, or by registering with an email address and password. You may want to watch this video demonstration first to see how the platform works.
The first page you’ll see provides key information about how the hub is currently organized, includes links to a “Getting Started” tour, and provides examples of key e-NABLE resources within the e-NABLE Hub.
Please join us and share your feedback! This is a work in progress and all suggestions are welcome.
Your opinions matter to us. We will review all of the feedback before the end of the month and consider all proposals that would improve the community experience. Thanks for your time and involvement – we couldn’t do it without you!