Roadmap

Road Map

stronger focus on content and people; less on branding, nav and site data – With only registered users and a commitment to focused communications we want to reduce visual distraction as much as possible.
home page becomes personal dashboard – Each registered user will be able to follow other users and groups that are of interest. The user’s home page is where all these feeds come together for scanning and choosing where to go deeper.
section home pages become section dashboards – The site has sections for People, Groups, Resources and Blogs. The home page for each section provides updates for activity within that section for discovering new material from people and groups the user is not yet following.
remain responsive – The JointsWP theme (that we are adapting) is already responsive. We will build on that and, where we can, enhance it.

follow rather than friend – Within an intentional network everyone is already a friend, at least in the Facebook sense. Following, which can be asymmetrical, is more useful in enabling each user to customize the information they want to see.
permission system to meet BFNet needs – Commons In A Box already provides quite a bit of access control of its four channels of communications: blogs, forums, messages and docs. Each subgroup in a site using BFCom will be able to choose who has access to the content in each channel.

In addition, there will be at least three groups of users:

Graduates of Bright Future Now, who are full BFNet members, will be the bulk of the users and who will have access to most of the site
Current participants in a Bright Future Now course, who will have access to only their subgroup/cohort and course related materials
Guests, who can be invited to join a single subgroup that has been organized by BFNet members and who will have limited access to the rest of the site.

Keywords – Create a curated system of keywords/tags that can be applied to groups, people and blog posts and that users can follow.
Events – Add the ability to schedule and track everything from working meetings within a group to public events
Offers and asks – This is an important aspect of mutual support within a network. We will add it in a way that fits within the constraints required for nonprofit organizations.
Better search – Search is still one of the weaker functions in WordPress. We will add a more robust capability that still maintains privacy within the network.