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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 1 week ago · View Updated the privacy page

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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 2 weeks ago · View I’ve rigged it so that you the user can post images and videos. Here’s how:
  upload your pictures to Flickr or upload your videos to YouTube
  Then just cut and paste the URL for the image or video into the ”activity” input box (it should work for blog post comments too).
  here’s a sample – all I did was paste hxxp://www.flickr.com/photos/29538918@N05/4566530780/ below this line of text – replacing hxx with htt
  

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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 2 weeks ago · View As part of the move to the beta2 look I have deleted the forum feature of the website because it was too deeply buried for anyone to find it. Instead the ”activity” stream provides a way for people to give input. So that the info from the forums wasn’t lost I cross-posted it into the activity stream before deleting the forums.

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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 2 weeks ago · View Those posts that I copied over from the forum appeared 5 months ago, then one month ago. So as you can see I’ve moved to a new look. This isn’t the final look though. I’ve moved to this look because it enables a me to use more up to date software and offer some more features. But I still have some work to do to get the new design I really want and also to reproduce it in French. More detail soon on what feature improvements this change to beta2 offers.

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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 2 weeks ago · View Originally posted in the now deleted ”forum”
  What’s Taking So Long (with the ”new look”)
  post1
  It’s getting on 2 months ago that GuideGatineau users voted on a new look. Often with a WordPress blog changing the look takes only a few clicks, so what’s the delay?
  Here’s the chain we’re moving through.
  1) GuideGatineau isn’t a “regular” WordPress site, it uses BuddyPress which needs special “themes” (that’s the look).
  2) We’re doing a custom theme (partly because few to none free themes exist yet for BuddyPress) and that takes time.
  3) While we’re working on this BuddyPress is shifting beneath our feet. While WordPress is fairly mature software, BuddyPress is in early days. For instance the BuddyPress roadmap predicted version 1.2 would include stronger privacy controls. Instead the open source development community saw an opportunity in greater interactivity with site users and that’s where their effort has gone for 1.2.
  4) We’ll see a stable BuddyPress 1.2 in February
  5) We’ll need to install that on our test server to make sure things don’t break for GuideGatineau.
  6) We’ll code the new look (theme) to fit BuddyPress 1.2 and test that too.
  7) To make GuideGatineau bilingual we then need to reproduce the theme with all the buttons and labels in French (I’m thrilled to report that we’ve already had several offers of help in making the site bilingual.)
  The new look theme will then be moved to the GuideGatineau site and hopefully nothing will break too badly because of the change.
  9) Some content, like videos, will begin to show up in both languages and other things, like user generated material, will accumulate uniligually as the user produces it.
  You’ll notice that the new look doesn’t appear where we want it until step (8). So although I’d like to move faster, it looks like it will be a while yet before we get there.
  Post2
  At last we’re making some progress! The new look is being transmuted into code and so you might even get to see it in action before too long.
  The delay has been frustrating on this side of the glass because while we’ve been waiting, our underlying technology BuddyPress has moved to better and better versions, and we didn’t want to jump from this look to a second look and then to the “new look.” That would have been discombobulating to website users. But this look isn’t supported in the newer BuddyPress versions (they are now at 1.2.3, we’re stuck at 1.1.3) so I’m grinding my teeth.
  As soon as the “new look” works I’ll roll it out and then try to bring the additional elements we want along behind.

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  Charles Hodgson posted an update in the group GuideGat Development:   3 months, 2 weeks ago · View Originally posted in the now deleted ”forum”
  It has been a hope of mine that instead of further splintering the various online sources that people use to find out about ski conditions in Gatineau Park, a single database could be established that could feed the numerous websites that already exist.
  XCOttawa has taken a good first step at doing this with http://skitrails.xcottawa.ca
  GuideGatineau has begun including the reports posted there and available via RSS
  I’ve been talking with Craig Storey, the XCOttawa developer, about his wonderful initiative and I hope we can find ways to even better integrate the reporting.
  For instance, will it be possible in future for posts made at GuideGatineau to be added into the XCOttawa feed (and not re-echo as a duplicate post back at GuideGatineau).
  The two approaches to reporting each have their advantages (for instance at GuideGatineau maps, photos and videos can be added simply by including a flickr or YouTube URL, while at XCOttawa ski areas outside Gatineau Park are included) and it would be nice to see how many features can be shared.
  And of course there is the question of integrating with other trail reporting websites.
  If you have thoughts or questions about cross country ski trail reporting I’d welcome them here.

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  Charles Hodgson posted on the forum topic What's Taking So Long (with the "new look") in the group GuideGat Development:

  At last we're making some progress! The new look is being transmuted into code and so you might even get to see it in action before too long.
  The delay has been frustrating on this side of the glass because while we've been waiting, our underlying technology BuddyPress has moved to better and better versions, and [...]

    4 months, 1 week ago · View

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  Charles Hodgson wrote on the wire of the group GuideGat Development:

  I thought I'd update on the move to a new look. This has been thrown off schedule but is indeed moving forward. I'm shooting for an English version in April and working in parallel to see how I can progress a French side.

    5 months, 1 week ago · View

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  Charles Hodgson wrote on the wire of the group GuideGat Development:

  When the site moves to BuddyPress version 1.2 it will have a more refined ability for on-site conversations. What had been called the wire (still is here, until I can upgrade) and status will become updates in a revised activity stream. The activity stream will offer an input window right at the top and so, [...]

    5 months, 1 week ago · View

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  Charles Hodgson wrote on the wire of the group GuideGat Development:

  I've been working behind the scenes to try and move the website from BuddyPress version 1.1.3 to version 1.2 but have hit a snag. I'm blaming it on BuddyPress. For a few descriptions of the problem check the links below. To some extent this is also holding up my move to a bilingual website. Any [...]

    5 months, 1 week ago · View