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Comments

1. Editable comments. I always want to tweak my comments and fix typos after I see them in the blog.
2. Threaded comments. Make it easier to follow multiple conversations.
3. No captcha. I've read there are other ways to stop comment SPAM.
4. No markup for comments. Keep the comments simple. Two newlines to leave a blank line. Markup/Rich Text makes me spend too much time making it look pretty. The only exception to this is a way to put code into a comment that is correctly formatted/indented.
5. No automatic quoting in comments. Too often I see people quote too much from a previous comment. If they have to type it that limits them to a smaller quote.
6. Picture/video embedding in the blog (not the comments).
7. Code displayed in the blog correctly formatted and indented.
8. Automatic blog publishing at a configurable date/time. This way you can write blog posts in advance and have them appear at the exact time that you want them. This lets you get away on vacation and still have the blog be active.

@Rob:
Awesome - please keep'em coming!

As for the sharing of the template with the community - absolutely! I would share this one if I wasn't absolutely embarrased...

Come on, Chris, put your power into the Blogsphere template!

You can add so many necessary or nice things to the one, big free blog template. You can sharpen your wits and contribute - do not write the things that already have been written again!

And this way, not only one person, but thousands and thousands can benefit from your expertise and your sweat!

Contact Declan and come onboard. You could start with the mentioned email notifications. :-)

Thomas

@Thomas:

Thanks - now I'll look like a jerk if I say "no" ;-)

I have some ideas for this new template that go against the standard Domino architectures and methodologies at this point, so I don't want to much up someone's works. I'm going to open source this from the initial stages to the "go live" v1.0 - if it's successful and works how I hope it does, I'll be more than happy to bother Dec with my shenanigans.

I want this to be a community effort as much as possible, and I've come up with a way that I think will facilitate that want for "exposure" to the process while also coming up with a partner in crime.

More (possibly) later today on that though...

Actually, I would suggest building it using xpages instead of more traditional Domino development. There's no point in flexing muscles you already have. Try out the new stuff.

You're on the beta. You're able to get the pre-release and install a server and Designer. Once the public beta is available, you're free to make the 8.5 server public-facing.

Instead of being yet-another-template, why not take a big step forward and advance the art?

@Nathan:

My only hesitation with using the xpages architecture is that, in order to gain any benefit from this work, you'll need to upgrade your environment.

My current plan is to utilize Web Services for all data maintenance, and Web Services are available with all currently "supported" versions of Domino. Not to mention that phase 2 of this plan warrants non-Domino development, so utilizing a proprietary (no matter how slick) architecture component would ultimately limit the intended solutions.

I know I'm being vague here, but that's slightly on purpose - I need to discuss a few things with the co-architect on this and get their input before I publically discuss anything that could get me into a "but you said it would..."-situation.

Also - quite frankly - Web Services is "new muscles" for a lot of developers out there. I know that I'm fairly inept compared to my mentioned co-architect when it comes to their utilization, so I think that utilizing them in the architecture will hit a lot more of the target area. Thoughts?

Just a high level suggestion. Build a solid solution with focus on ease of use by default. Then have everything else be an add-on. There are so many examples of this, Firefox, Wordpress, where the original offing is a solid foundation that other members of the community, or other uses can build on... the bells and whistles. Build it (solid) and they will enhance. This will also increase your time to market; then you can build a couple cool add-ons.