DominoGuru.com v3 Teaser / Spec List

08/17/2009 02:07 PM by Chris Toohey

One of the reasons I've written my Domino CMS engine - which I hope to demo sometime this week - was that I've been playing around with a new purpose if you will. Specifically, I want to take it from blog to online resource. Mind you, I'll still be running the site. And there will still be a weblog as a part of this site... but I want it to be more. I think - after all these years - it needs to be more. So I thought that I would outline a few of the features here while I'm adding them to the site (as well as ask for suggestions and requests).

First, the site - as mentioned - will run on my Domino CMS engine. What this means is that the website will no longer be viewed from a NotesDatabase (and this site is today), but rather maintained and generated from a NotesDatabase. Yep, the Domino CMS engine creates end-result files - such as XML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. - based on the content and "configuration" of the Domino CMS NotesDatabase. This allows me not only complete control over what's rendered, but will infinitely speed up the delivery of content. At least... that's the plan.

The site will contain the following sections: my Weblog, Articles, Reviews, Examples & Downloads, Upcoming Events, and my Drawing Board.

My Weblog will continue, but I plan on expanding it. For those of you connected to me on Facebook, you'll note that I often post things to my profile (such as Lotus community news, upcoming Lotus community events, various geek-related content, etc.) that just don't quite make it to this site. I plan putting more content on the weblog, but specifically making it more my weblog than a community information and development tips repository. Hopefully that makes sense...

The more detailed content will go into the Articles, Reviews, and Examples & Downloads sections. Here I'll host My Gear product reviews, detailed topics and development deep-dives, and I'll be putting more demos, examples, and usable product out there for consumption.

The Drawing Board... that will be a microsite containing all of my one-off development endeavors and I wonder if... type of content. Sure, you'll see errors in your browser and all sorts of ugliness with these half-baked (or still-baking in most cases) solutions, but I think that will help a lot of people see how someone in their field does things...

Events. Simply put, this community is starting to have more and more online and real world/physical events to help spread the good/yellow word. The problem is, not many people know what's going on, when, where, etc. I plan on providing a simple click-to-add facility of community events using iCalendar as a cross-platform standard.

There was a concern from some of the early-reviewers of my Domino CMS engine regarding comments. Specifically, how would I handle a submitted content against a particular post if my CMS was not externally facing?

There were multiple options - the best being a specific NotesDatabase that handled a comment submission and proxied it to my Domino CMS, which I didn't like. So as I planned to use Google Friend Connect to allow you to join this site, I thought I would simply use their Comments engine. Why re-write the wheel, right?

A few other features will include some things that you see on other sites today: a mini-feed of my latest Twitter updates, various galleries, an implementation of ShareThis! and countless other nice-to-haves that I've been wanting to get on DominoGuru.com for a long time now.

Are there features that you would like to see in this space? Different categories that I might be overlooking? Make yourself heard in the comments (which are still a part of this NotesDatabase design)!