iSpot & EML project blog

The plan this week was to finish configuring the servers as part of the iSpot disaster recovery plan. Our new database back-up server was due to be moved in to the IET server rack and occupy the space that was due to be left by another IET server that was being decommissioned. There have been technical problems with moving files off of the old server which has resulted in the iSpot database back-up server still waiting for its new home. This move is now due to happen in the early part of next week so that we can then move on to finish the configuration. Here is an overview of what else has been happening with the iSpot software development this week:

• Taxonomy – Richard G has imported taxonomy data in to the iSpot database
• Images – After a request from Martin, Richard G has started work on developing a more user friendly way to view images at different resolutions after clicking from an observation (e.g. mid, original). Richard is also looking at framing the photographs to make them stand out a little more.
• ‘How did you hear about iSpot?’ – this has been added to the iSpot registration page as an optional piece of information. After a day or so of being live it looks like many new users are giving us this information and this will hopefully be of some use to us. Information that we have received so far shows that a majority of new users (since the functionality went live on Thursday 24/09/09) have come after hearing about iSpot in the OU Sesame magazine. Other sources include mentors, other publications (e.g. BNHS publication, BSBI new) and from OU courses. I am tempted to amend the drop down items slightly to encourage new users to give us additional information for many of the options (e.g. OU course)
• Profile – pictures – users can now upload pictures to their profile. The maximum resolution is 85×85px although iSpot does seem to accept and resize uploaded pictures that are larger than this (Jonathon, I see that you have already tried this functionality). Richard G designed a nice graphic to display in the case of users not having uploaded a picture.
• Profile – User first name and last name – this information can now be added to profiles for users
• Reports – I have been doing some research in to the best way to develop reports for iSpot (there are two main ways in Drupal). Both look feasible for the kind of things we will probably want to report on but I am yet to decide on which way will allow us to develop reports in the most time efficient way and still give the information and functionality that we will need. I have developed a mentor usage report (which Janice has requested) as a guinea pig for testing one of the methods.
• Development environment – Richard G has refreshed the approval site with data from the live site and we have both updated our local development sites. We have also both updated to the latest version of our version control software.

On the horizon:

• Next week we should hopefully be able to continue configuring the servers for the iSpot disaster recovery plan
• I am going to carry on looking at reporting
• I will also be looking at adding a ‘News’ block to the home page, most likely under the latest observation block. It is probably quite easy for some of these new pieces of functionality on iSpot to fall under the radar of many users so I think this is going to be useful. We will hopefully be able to have this as an RSS feed, a separate page with all news links on (with the most several most recent showing on the home page block) and have the content editable by iSpot team members.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.