Q: Can I import a single project from one group into another?

Unfortunately, this isn't possible right now, but is something that we'll be considering for a future release.

Tip: Convincing your group.

One of the challenges in incorporating a system like ProjectForum into your workplace is getting people to actually use it. We hear comments like this one all the time:

As the administrator, I think the software is fabulous.  It’s getting the users to actually use it that has become our problem.  It’s a behavior modification that people find hard to adopt, apparently.  We send tantalizing emails to get them to go to the wiki  for information.  I'm thinking of deliberately putting up incorrect information just to make them fix it...

Or this one:

I am actively encouraging my team to use the ProjectForum wiki now to improve collaboration. As we have traditionally not had anything 'central' to support our collaboration efforts, many people in the team have created their own way of doing things, e.g. their own websites, public folders, email lists etc. Encouraging them to change to all use a standard wiki is going to be an interesting challenge. I have to show them that there is value to going to the effort of changing to the wiki, otherwise they won't adopt it.

If these sound familiar to you, you're not alone. Changing existing behaviors is a lot harder than just installing some software and crossing your fingers! This is especially true with software that supports groups, because even with one or two holdouts (if they are critical) it can derail the whole thing.

In fact the whole issue of how to adopt so-called groupware technologies is a not only a large practical question (and one where there are a lot of consultants who may be able to help) but also an ongoing topic of interest in the research communities involved with these sorts of technologies.

We don't have any silver bullets to offer, but here is some general advice:

• first and foremost, make sure there is a benefit for the people using the system; if it's not useful or helpful to them, you've got an uphill battle right from the start. If the system only benefits others (e.g. upper management) and so is instituted by decree, there will be a lot of resistance, not to mention many more Dilbert cartoons appearing on cubicle walls
  
• lead by example; the more you (and anyone else in the initial group of people that was motivated to start using the system) need to generate a lot of the content, taking the lead in migrating other sources of information into the system, spend time helping people get started, and so on
  
• start small, but keep building; obviously, coming in and replacing everyone's existing work practices all of a sudden will cause a huge amount of anxiety. Pick an area that's been a problem in your group, and use that as the first thing you put up on the system, and get people using it. You'll want to add other types of materials to keep the initial momentum going
  
• look for opportunities to transition from other communication media; for example, if you want all meeting agendas to be in the system, email the group a link to the page in question, rather than the contents of it, which will provide more exposure to the system. Similarly, if people are emailing documents around, create a wiki page with the latest version, and point people there. Questions that come up in meetings might better be answered with "I'll create a wiki page about that" instead of "I'll email you about it"
  
• and of course, work with your team, not against them; you'll figure out as a group what things make sense to put into the system, and what things are better left elsewhere. Listen to people's concerns, and realize that any change in work practices may be not only uncomfortable but can have both intended and unintended consequences in terms of productivity, work satisfaction and more
  

Any suggestions of ways that you've found that have made it easier for a group to more successfully adopt ProjectForum?

Q: How can I listen on a single IP address?

If you have multiple IP addresses on your computer, by default CourseForum and ProjectForum (like most server applications) will listen for connections on all of them on the port you choose (default 3455). To listen on just a single IP address, you'll need to use one of the command line versions, and pass it the IP address you'd like to listen on via the "-address" parameter, e.g.

projectforum -address 192.168.0.29

Q: What features will be added in the next year?

While the facetious answer would be "we could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you", the reality is that we don't know exactly. While we do have an internal roadmap that gives us a pretty good idea at any given moment, the reality is that it's always changing. Because of that, it's our policy not to really discuss future versions, at least more specifically than "we're going to be looking at this area sometime in the future".

Things change for a lot of reasons... certain things are more difficult (or rarely, easier) than expected, a new design or approach changes how different features interact with each other, etc. Most importantly, we get new ideas or feedback from customers and other users, which is one of the main factors driving new versions. And of course, all these things cause priorities to shift around. This makes promising particular features in particular timeframes (unless specific arrangements are made) very difficult.

This question is also sometimes asked in terms of "I need to upgrade, so I need to know what will be coming in the next year to figure out if purchasing the upgrade is worth it". Again, while we can't give specifics, it's worth glancing through our changes log to give you an idea of the amount of changes (new features, enhancements and bug fixes) that have been made in the past year. This should give you at least some idea of the magnitude or scope of what's likely to change over the next year.

Having said that, two of the areas that we're going to be looking at sometime in the future are the page editing capabilities and individual user accounts...

Tip: Collaborating on documents.

A great use for a wiki like CourseForum or ProjectForum is collaborating to produce some new document, such as a report. While it may be obvious, at least in the early stages it probably makes sense to do a lot of your work directly as wiki pages. Collecting references, making outlines, writing sections and commenting and discussing as you go just make sense. This is particularly true when you have tools like 'versions' and 'track changes' to help you keep track of what's changed.

Sometimes though, you'll end up with your material in a Word or Excel document, or something else, but you still want to work together on it. In the "bad old days" you'd end up mailing multiple copies around to everyone in the group as you make changes, clogging up everyone's mailbox with large attachments and leaving everyone to wonder what the latest version is.

In ProjectForum, you can at least attach documents to each page (and replace them with newer versions), so at least you'll save the hassle of emailing things around and wondering where to go to find the latest one. But if you've got several people working on things at once, you need more than that to keep coordinated.

We often get asked if there's a way to "lock" a document, so nobody else can make changes (i.e. while you're making your own changes). There's not, and that is on purpose. There is a better way: communicate.

If you're going to be making changes and you don't want anyone else mucking with it, just leave a note in the wiki page (e.g. as a comment, preferably placed right beside the attachment). Even better, let people know what you're mucking with, e.g. "Nancy is currently rewriting the introduction". Everyone else will see that note on the page, and not make their own changes until you're done, particularly in the introduction. Someone else may decide to work on another part, leaving notes like "Bill updating the data analysis.. will merge in after Nancy's changes are posted", followed by "Ok Bill, changes made, merge away - Nancy" and so on.

Being able to communicate in this way, right alongside the documents you're working on, brings with it all kinds of benefits, and provides a much richer way to coordinate than simply locking an entire document. It's one of the big advantages of using a tool like a wiki to coordinate document preparation, rather than a simple file store or shared drive.

Q: How exactly do I add HTML to a page?

Keeping in mind that adding HTML formatting to a page may not always be the best idea (see some earlier posts on this weblog), here's how you do it:

First, go into the 'Group Admin' area; on the main settings page, check the option reading 'Allow use of HTML tags'.

You should then be able to put HTML into the page. You'll find though that sometimes ProjectForum's own markup can "conflict" with your HTML code. In that case you need to tell ProjectForum that a certain bit is HTML, so please leave it alone. Do this using "===html===" dividers like so:

===html===
your html goes here
===html===

Q: What feature is in what version of ProjectForum?

There are two different things to consider. The first is whether a particular feature is included in the free version, or if it requires the basic or standard version. The feature list page shows you these differences.

The second thing is what actual version of the program (e.g. 4.4, 5.1, 5.6, etc.) did the feature first appear in? You can find a comprehensive list of changes between versions that will tell you this.

Tip: America's loss is your gain, for now anyways.

Anybody who's been keeping even half an eye on currency markets over the last while has seen the American dollar tank against most other world currencies. Without commenting on any of the political decisions that might just possibly have led to the current lackluster economy (oops) and subsequent currency devaluation, there are some positives, especially for people outside the USA.

In particular, since the prices for CourseForum and ProjectForum licenses (priced in US$) have stayed the same since January 2006, for all you Europeans, Aussies, Canucks and others, licenses are effectively 15-20% cheaper than only a couple of years ago. So perhaps it might not be too bad a time to reconsider purchasing a new license or upgrading an existing one...?

Because we're in Canada, the currency drop unfortunately cuts into our bottom line. While for the time being our prices aren't increasing to compensate, this is something we'll be re-evaluating early in the new year. Something to consider if your purchasing decisions take a considerable amount of time, but rest assured if we do make any changes, we'll give at least a few weeks advance notice.

Q: What happens when the demo license expires?

Don't worry, all the existing material in the wikis that you have created won't be deleted or anything like that. The software does though revert back to the free version, which has a few less features than the full version which the demo license gives you access to.

So you won't be able to do things like add attachments or look at older versions of pages anymore. You'll also be limited to just a single editable wiki. If you've created more than one, the others will be automatically archived, so their content is still all there and readable, but you won't be able to make any changes.

If you then later purchase a license, all the missing features will be re-activated, and any groups that were automatically archived will be unarchived (subject to how large your license is) and available for editing again.

Power Users: Even more on theme customization.

Last week talked about some of the basic ways that themes can be customized, to change the look and feel of pages in CourseForum and ProjectForum. Things like adding images, changing fonts and colors, removing elements from the page, or moving things around are fairly straightforward to do with a working knowledge of CSS.

But there are limits in terms of what you can do. With regard to moving things far outside of where they were intended to be, we said:

Mucking with positioning is similarly straightforward... except when it isn't. Like most web pages, those in CourseForum and ProjectForum are built up with various nested divs, spans, and so on. If some element is defined within some other element, this can be tricky. For example, the "shortrecentchanges" <div> is located inside an outer <div> with an id of "viewbox". So if you want to position "shortrecentchanges" in an entirely different place on the page, effectively outside of the area occupied by the "viewbox" that can be almost impossible to sort out in CSS.

So as an example, here's what we'd like to accomplish. Take the "shortrecentchanges" area (which we've already shown how to hide from up near the top of the page), and place it just below the "post your comments" box, near the bottom of the page, which is itself located in a <div> with an id of "commentarea", definitely outside of the "viewbox" <div>.

Ok, so can it be done? Yes, but it requires using not just CSS, but also a bit of Javascript.

While using CSS doesn't require us to add anything to the HTML page, using Javascript does mean we need to modify the page. Luckily, themes give us the ability to insert arbitrary HTML (and thus Javascript) code into any page. This is done through "HTML includes", as described in the custom themes HOWTO.

For the sake of keeping the Javascript in this example a bit simpler, we'll use a Javascript library called Prototype, which takes some of the drudgery away from writing Javascript. Prototype is actually included in CourseForum and ProjectForum, as it's used on the edit page, and in a few other places. So the first thing we'll need to do is include Prototype itself into our pages. To do so, go into the theme editor and modify the "pagetop" include to read:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/admin/prototype.js"></script>

Now, what we want to do is insert the same HTML that is used in "shortrecentchanges" at the bottom of the "commentarea" <div>. Modify the "pagebottom" include in the theme editor to read:

<script>

/* only do this on the view pages that have a shortrecentchanges area! */

if (document.getElementById('shortrecentchanges')!=null) {

   new Insertion.Bottom($('commentarea'), $('shortrecentchanges').innerHTML);

}

</script>

After you save the theme changes, and then reload a forum page using that theme, you should see the recent changes area show up underneath the post your comments box.

This only scratches the surface of what is possible using Javascript to manipulate the DOM that describes the web page. It's possible to move things around, change existing elements, add new ones, and a lot more. No, it's not necessarily easy to do all this, and does require knowing CSS and Javascript, but with a bit of work, it is possible to make some changes you'd never thought were possible.

CourseForum / ProjectForum 5.6 Available.

Version 5.6.0 of both ProjectForum and CourseForum are now available for download from our website. There are a couple of new features in this one, and a bunch of other incremental enhancements. Browse the full list of changes for details.

Q: Can I use your hosting service without paying with PayPal?

While PayPal makes it easy for both you and us (by automatically handling the monthly payments without any intervention), we can certainly handle things other ways. Some people choose to prepay (via a one-time credit card payment or a purchase order), usually for several months or up to one year in advance. But if you have your own preferences, please just contact us.

Tip: Existing documentation and resources.

Just a reminder of a few of the available resources to help you learn more about CourseForum or ProjectForum, the features that are available, and what to do if you get stuck:

• If you're just getting going, our getting started page is a great resource.
  
• The User's Guide is a PDF file that will take you through how to use the software in details.
  
• Our Frequently Asked Questions page contains answers to some of the most common questions about setting up, administering, using and licensing the software.
  
• On the top of our FAQ page you'll also find links to a number of "HOWTO" documents, which provide information on some of the more advanced and/or esoteric things you can do with ProjectForum.
  
• Our support forum is a ProjectForum site where you can ask questions and more
  
• Of course, you can also email us at support@courseforum.com about any aspect of the software. Whether it's a question, suggestion, compliment or complaint, we'll be happy to hear from you.
  

Q: Why don't you support underlining, or pink lettering, or...?

People who have used other wikis (some of which pride themselves on providing wiki-like markup for practically every formatting option under the sun) often ask us why their favorite formatting markup isn't provided.

It's not that adding more formatting options is technically hard to do (it's quite easy, which may explain why so many wiki implementors go crazy with options). But, we believe that every additional option we add makes it harder for your users to use your wikis. Because of that, we've chosen to be fairly conservative with the markup we provide.

Say what? Fundamentally, we believe that a wiki is a communication tool, rather than another easy way to make simple HTML pages. For wiki-style communication to be successful, it needs to be fast and easy for everyone in the group to contribute information, whether it's adding new ideas, critiquing existing ones, filling in missing pieces, or just fixing up a typo here and there.

With too many commands available, or too many formatting options, people end up spending less time on content and more time worrying about how things are formatted, or understanding the markup that someone else has used in order to make their own changes. Keeping things simple and direct makes it easy for everyone to contribute everywhere. Even if just a few users learn all kinds of extra complex markup, it still affects everyone else when they want to make changes.

"But I absolutely need to have text that is in superscript and strike-through for my usage!". If we included everyone's special case, we'd have the same situation as in Microsoft Word, where everyone only uses 5% of the available commands and options, but everyone has a different 5% (and where they're on their fifth or sixth attempt to organize and simplify how to access all those commands).

If you do need extra formatting, you've got two options. First, turn on the HTML formatting option for the forum, and insert HTML markup directly. Except for fairly localized uses, this may not be the best idea, for the same reason that adding tons of extra formatting markup can cause problems - it's one more thing users need to learn to make changes. The other approach, which can be much easier on users, is to take advantage of the "Custom Links" facility to create new easy-to-use formatting commands specific for your own needs.

Power Users: Theme Customization.

CourseForum and ProjectForum come with a number of built-in themes, which govern the look and feel of each page. It is also possible to create a new custom theme, which is done by the Site Administrator, using the Theme Editor.

For the mostpart, creating a new theme requires some knowledge of CSS (a.k.a. "cascading style sheets", which is what most websites use to control their appearance). Typically, you'd create a new theme based on one of the existing ones, and then make one or more tweaks to the CSS for the theme to create the look you want.

Some things are pretty easy to do. For example, changing colors and fonts isn't too bad. Adding images (such as a company logo) is also pretty straightforward. You can also do things like playing with the positioning of certain elements, or hiding them altogether. To do this, you first need to figure out exactly what element to modify, which you can do by viewing the HTML source of a page using the theme.

For example, let's say you've created a new theme based on the standard one, but would like to remove the recent changes area at the top of each page in the forum, just under the blue bar. Go into a forum page, and do "view source" in your browser, and you'll find in there something like this bit of HTML code:

<div id="shortrecentchanges">

Changes [Sep 14, 2007]: 

<a title="Modified Sep 14, 2007" href="10">Home</a>, 

<a title="Modified Sep 14, 2007" href="8">Help</a>, 

 ... <a href="Changes">MORE</a>

</div>

So the recent changes area that is being displayed is contained in an HTML <div> having an id of "shortrecentchanges". If you then go into the CSS file for your theme, you'll find a style named "#recentchanges" which controls how that block of HTML is displayed. So if you wanted to remove it altogether, you could change it to read:

#shortrecentchanges { display:none; }

Mucking with positioning is similarly straightforward... except when it isn't. Like most web pages, those in CourseForum and ProjectForum are built up with various nested divs, spans, and so on. If some element is defined within some other element, this can be tricky. For example, the "shortrecentchanges" <div> is located inside an outer <div> with an id of "viewbox". So if you want to position "shortrecentchanges" in an entirely different place on the page, effectively outside of the area occupied by the "viewbox" that can be almost impossible to sort out in CSS.

Or is it? More on that next week...

Q: If I buy now, can I upgrade to more groups later?

This question also usually comes paired with "and if I do so, do I get credit for the original purchase, or do I have to pay full price for more groups?".

You can easily upgrade to a larger number of groups at a later time, and you do get credit for the earlier purchase. In fact, if the upgrade comes soon after the original, the upgrade will cost just the difference in price. (Over time, there is some additional cost, because we take into account that the original purchase price includes the license and one year of software updates and support).

If and when you do want to upgrade your license to use more groups, make sure you contact us rather than just ordering a new license on the website. We'll be able to give you an up-to-date price that takes into account your existing license, and then be able to issue a new license key for the total number of new groups you'll have running on your server.

Tip: Selectively restoring older content.

The "Versions" link near the bottom right of each forum page is a very useful facility that lets you review each and every change made to the page over time. You can quickly see who made each change, when the change was made, and exactly what on the page was changed.

It's also easy to restore the page to an older version. This can be useful if you'd like to remove one or more inappropriate changes to a page, and return to the last good version. To do this, you'd use the "Prev" and "Next" buttons to navigate to the version you want, and click the "Make this Version Current" button.

But what if you want to restore just a part of an older version of the page? So for example, there was some good material that was accidentally deleted a while ago, that you'd like to bring back. But, you don't want to lose all the other changes that have been made since then.

This too can be done with the Versions tool:

• Again, navigate using "Prev" and "Next" to the older version that contains the material you want to reintroduce to the page.
  
• From the "Show:" popup, choose "Unformatted version of the page". This will show you the content of the page as it would appear in the Edit window.
  
• Select the material you'd like to restore with your mouse, and copy it to the clipboard via the "Copy" command from your web browser's "Edit" menu.
  
• Click on "Back to Page" to exit the Versions area.
  
• Click on "Edit this Page" to bring up the Edit page, paste the material (with the browser's "Paste" command) into the editor in the appropriate location, and then save your changes.