Done with Spring Break...

That break went by super fast! Can I get a rewind? Home (Maui) was super relaxing. It was a great time to chill and hang out with family and friends back home. But now it's time to get back to business and continue working on the Dorm Energy Competition website. As I mentioned, I will now be working with Nate as a group. Our main focus for this milestone is to figure out how the activities and goals are carried out for the competition. So far we came up with a bunch of "activity manager" type of modules that we will be testing for the next coming days.

On a side note, I've downloaded the Android SDK last week. Being a phone geek, I want to start learning how to develop mobile apps. I currently have an iPhone but Apple requires a fee to to be a developer. Android is free and is really picking up since it first came out. Didn't have the time to set up everything on my machine yet but I will soon. I'll blog about it later once I have everything set up and running. That's all for now.

-David Joel Lazaro

Milestone 3: Time to collaborate!

Milestone two came and went and now we are halfway through the semester. Our Joomla prototype has come a long way since the project started but there's still a lot of work to do. We are down to two CMS for this milestone. Our group dropped Silverstripe and dotCMS to focus more on Drupal and Joomla. My partner, Nathaniel Ashe, will be working with me to continue development for Joomla. Our plan is to continue adding features needed for the competition and combining them together at the end.

For this milestone, our focus shifts from mockups to actually developing the more necessary features of the competition like commitments, activity, and goal processing. This week, we plan to work on the illustration of kukui nuts accumulated by each floors. By the way, Kukui nuts is the point system used for the competition. So the more kukui nuts you have, it means the more points you accumulated. We are looking at using Google chart APIs for this part of the prototype. Lots of work needs to be done but collaboration should ease up the work for us a little. Stay tuned for more updates later.

-David Joel Lazaro

End of Milestone 2

Here we are finally at the end of milestone 2. This version of the Joomla mockup site is better and contains some new useful features for the dorm energy competition. Let's start by having a tour of the updated mockup site.

Here we see the homepage that the general public can access. Currently it contains a featured youtube video, a chart that shows the energy usage of the dorms, a slideshow, and a little description of what the website is about. Also on the left is the Login button that uses the UH CAS login for authenticating the participants.

The user will be taken to this page once they click on the Login button.

If the user tries to login is not listed as a participant, they will be redirected back to the homepage with an error message. Before I forget, if you look at the right side of the top menu, a random tips ticker is displayed. A new tip is displayed every time a page is loaded.

This is where things change depending on what type of permission the user has. The screen shot on the left shows the homepage for an administrator while the one on the right shows the homepage for a regular participant. There are some noticeable differences. The administrator will have an extra item on the top menu named Admin. This takes the user to the admin page where they can modify the website.

The admin also has extra items in the user menu on the left column of the page. These extra options are for adding content to the site. You'll also notice a bunch of edit buttons in the homepage. This is because the administrator have the ability to edit these items. Those edit buttons are hidden for regular participants.

Remember the error that shows up when a non-participant tries to login? Joomla actually creates a user for them but by default they are disabled. The administrator has the ability to grant them access by enabling them or the admin can also delete the user.

Nothing new with the forums page so moving along.

This page provides users with a brief overview of a Dorm Energy Competition. There are videos which will allow individuals to browse through several videos pertaining to Dorm Energy. It also contains links to other universities doing dorm energy competitions. The Resources menu contains three submenu pages, Dorm Energy, Energy Hub, and Have Fun. Only the Dorm Energy page is implemented in this mockup.

Next is a work in progress stoplight page. This page is mainly to test the stoplight group's google gadget app.

This page shows the user information about the Dorm Energy Competition.

Next is a work in progress stoplight page. This page is mainly to test the stoplight group's google gadget app.

The kiosk serves as the billboard page that will be displayed in tv monitors. This gives people a general info about the dorm competition at a glance.

This is the help page of the dorm competition website. It includes contact info incase users run into problems using the website.

This page shows upcoming events related to the competition. This menu item only shows up once the user logs in successfully.

The last two screen shots shows how the user can edit their personal info. They also have the option of posting a profile picture.

For more information about this project, please visit Google Project Hosting. There's info on how you can download and give this mockup site a testdrive on your own server. You'll also find the current status of the project there (ie. what works and what doesn't work, bugs, etc.). I will continue working and improving this prototype website.

-David Joel Lazaro

Lots of catching up to do..

After being stuck with trying to fix the CAS login, Professor Johnson suggested that we move on to other parts of the mockup. I got caught up with this bug and now my Joomla mockup is behind others' CMS. So this final week of Milestone 2 will be dedicated to pumping out as many webpages as I can to catch up and have a close-to-functional website for the dorm energy competition.

For the next coming days I have some important features lined up to be implemented in my mockup site. I might also change the theme (CSS) of the website. If I find one that looks better and easier to work with then I might implement it before the end of the second milestone. Once I have enough pages done I will update you guys with screen shots of the mockup site. I have a feeling this week will be a long one..

-David Joel Lazaro