Repository navigation
Functional Specifications
The Functional Specification is the definitive source manual for Information Architects (IA), Designers and Programmers on the project. One should be able to reference this document to know exactly how something should be programmed, laid-out, and/or designed.
This document is based on a review of the phase-1 requirements, whose full list can be found here.
Zeitgeist Global Connect (ZGC) is a new web platform being developed to harness the potential power of our distributed activist community by enabling communication and collaboration as a connected network of chapters, teams and individuals, in accordance with the aims and principles of the Zeitgeist Movement.
In particular, it will provide a single, comprehensive solution for each chapter and project team to create and administer their own web portal; to channel the skills, experience and commitment of members toward effectively coordinated projects, whether local, regional or global; whilst at the same time establishing more effective global connections with the rest of the Movement.
ZGC: Zeitgeist Global Connect, this website Group: A Chapter or Team area of the site with its own internal communication, tools, members and repositories. Team: A global team, whose members can be global. Chapter: A regional organization of individuals, representing a single chapter. Regional-Chapters: A state, country or continent/region view grouping one or more Chapters into a wider-visible area. Regional-Teams: A state, country or continent/region Group. They have their own internal Group features separate from the Regional-Chapter they represent.
The Global Portal is defined as being the general area of the website, this is where people first land and it is outside of the normal Chapter/Team structure of the site. Global Portal will include some of its own non-Group associated features such as:
TODO
// TODO Little introduction about each session
The Global Portal area must include quick-links to the internal locations in two different ways. These are for anonymous and logged in users.
Anonymous users must have access to:
- Log in / Register
- Team Navigation
- Chapter Geographic Navigation
- Global Blog
- Global Forum
- Global Calendar
- Help
- FAQ
- About
- Homepage widgets [as currently activated]
Logged in users must have access to all links above, plus:
- Same as above, plus:
- Account / Log out
- Groups (user is a part of)
- User-dashboard
ZGC needs to include links to external ZM affiliated websites which is showed in Table 1. These links are: These links should be easily accessible from either the home page, or from some tool bar at the top of the site in the Global Portal area.
| Site | Link |
| TZM Blog | http://blog.thezeitgeistmovement.com |
| Zeitgeist Media Project | http://zeitgeistmediaproject.com |
| ZDAY Global | http://zdayglobal.org |
| Zeit News | http://www.zeitnews.org |
| TZMNetwork | http://www.tzmnetwork.com |
| TZM Radio Show | http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/radio_shows |
| (external) Chapters [on TZM website]* | http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/chapters |
| Voice Chat | http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/teamspeak |
Users need to be able to navigate quickly and easily to the various chapters from the global portal. Links need to be provided to internal ZGC chapter / team pages, but also to external non-ZGC chapter / team pages. Links need to be provided by ZGC platform to chapters / teams pages and vice-versa. This data needs to reflect and be synchronized with chapter / team overview data on the other external TZM websites.
Navigation between internal to ZGC and external to non-ZGC Chapter pages should be seamless. So a user can navigate to their Chapter, and then when they click on that Chapter it either brings them to the ZGC Chapter page, or to the external website. This is a per-chapter decision. The link should have some kind of visual feedback included on it to indicate if the link is going to bring you outside of the website and open in a new tab.
| Chapter | Country | Link |
| [insert all others] | ||
| TZM Brazil | Brazil | http://movimentozeitgeist.com.br/ |
| TZM France | France | http://www.mouvement-zeitgeist.fr/ |
| Team | Country | Region | Link |
| [insert all others] | |||
| Portland | USA | Oregon | http://zeitgeistpdx.org |
// TODO Split this session to Anonymous and Logged In users. The home page should have the following available widgets for the global content team to administer [add, remove and customize]:
The global site will have a listing of document/file resources. These resources can come from two sources: they can be Chapter/Team resources which are promoted to the top-global level by the ZGC community, or they can be internal/external resources, that have been selected for display by the global-content administrators.
File repository data will have the following data properties:
| Name | Description | Type |
| [insert all others] | ||
| Title | Name of the file | String |
| File | Revision controlled file, there could be multiple files attached to one content item for each language in which it has been translated -- or if technically complicated, one zip-file which would contain all languages in the same zip file. | Binary |
| File - link | If file is external rather than on our server, the url to the file instead | String (URL) |
| Thumbnail picture | Optional picture, to be displayed in file preview | Image |
| Type (icon) | Type of file, read from extension and used for icon display of file type | List: png, jpg, gif, psd, doc, xls, ppt, need more types listed here |
| Average Rating | User votes of the file, used as a filter / sorting criteria | Number, your votes and average votes |
| Page views | How popular a file is | Number |
| Language | Which language(s) the file is in | Array, list of language options |
| Geographic location | If pertinent, the geographical location of the file. Divided by city, country/state, region, continent | Multi-field form, Strings and Array (list) |
| Date uploaded | Creation date | Date |
| Topic | Taxonomy field with options relating to possible subject maters, such as: ZDAY, Media Festival, Posters etc. | String (taxonomy) (tbd) if this is a auto-complete or repopulated mutli-select field |
In the global file area, visitors will be able to filter between “official” and “user promoted” content. And then in both lists users will be able to sort by rating, page views [popularity], language, geographic location, topic, and/or date uploaded.
The ZGC will have a simple and advanced search capability
Simple search will browse the content’s body and title for the text in question. Results will be divided into three parts, the first part will show you global-area results [non chapter/team related], the second part will show you results from chapters you are a member of, the third part will show you results from any chapter. User’s can easily hide or show the different visible areas from the results.
Results will show you what kind of content they are, recent / quantity of comments [if applicable], post date, author [if applicable], and the link to read full piece of content. If the content item has an image attached, that image will also be shown.
The following types of content are searched by the basic search:
- Forum posts
- Wiki documents
- Tasks
- Calendar events
- Blog entries
- File / document resources
| Search Result | Content Type |
| [others?] | |
| Kind of content | String (Node Type) |
| Name | String |
| Post date (if applicable) | Date |
| Last comment date (if applicable) | Date |
| Number of unread comments | Number + String (suffix “new comments”) |
| Thumbnail image | Image [thumb nail sized] |
| Author (if applicable) | User name (linked) |
| Read more (or title clickable) | Link (to node) |
| Download (if applicable) | Link |
| Rating (if applicable) | Rating, clickable (give your rating) |
| Number of views (popularity) | Number |
| Chapter / Team (if applicable) | String, link to Chapter/Team |
| Geographic location (if applicable) | Multi-string (city, country/state, region) |
| Global resource (if not associated to any Chapter / Team) | Boolean |
The advanced search option will allow users to search within the various types and areas of content directly, via a set of check and radio boxes. User’s should be able to select any of the following content types to narrow their results:
- User accounts
- Forum posts
- Wiki documents
- Tasks
- Calendar events
- Blog entries
- File / document resources
User’s can also narrow the search by location and language:
- Region
- Country/State
- City
- (Officially translated) Language(s)
And with the following properties:
| [others?] | |
| Global (only) | Limits the search to only global [non affiliated] content, content which is “promoted” from Chapters/Teams to global content will be included in results |
| Popular | Pre-sort items by most popular / number of views/downloads |
| Special term(s) | Predetermined key taxonomy terms. (example: ZDay 2012) This list should be managed by the global-admin of the ZGC. New terms can be added to the list by the ZGC and will appear as selection options on content once added by the global-admin. |
| High rated | Pre-sort results by highest rating |
| Author | Filter results by a specific user name |
| My content | Filter results by your own content |
The global blog is to be the main content stream of the global portal. It will display blog content that is created for direct display there interspersed with blog posts that are promoted or ranked highly from the chapters and teams pages. Content would be for internal audience, with a focus on those who are active.
The ZGC blog is not intended to replace or compete with blog.tzm, zeitnews or any other official content source.
Any site user would have the ability to rank a blog post with a score such as number of starts 1-5. Popular posts would automatically flow up to display in the portal level page feed.
Blog posts such as those from regional or global coordinators would be given a weight above those ranking high. Allowing important posts to be sticky at the top of blog feed or stay higher ranked longer.
On the main portal, the global calendar will have a minified view with only shaded days where events are scheduled. An abbreviated list of links of Upcoming events will accompany the calendar. Selecting the calendar will display a view that showed events at a global and regional level. Additional filtering or views would be included to look at specific types of events, such as local level chapter meetings, teamspeak meetings, taxonomy (Zday, educational, activism, etc) others?.
Clicking on the event either on the calendar or from the Upcoming list will bring users to the event page which will have been posted in a group (Chapter or Team). There will be no link to create an event from the calendar itself. Users will only have this option from the calendar of a Chapter/Team group that they are a member of.
[insert definition, Chapters is a grouped Blog/Calendar, Regional Coordination Teams have fully-featured groups for managing the output that a regional area is responsible for. See relationship diagram.]
[insert definition, distinguish between anonymous and logged in]
[insert definition of properties of this data-type]
Procedures for people to maintain / add content types, administer the ZGC platform. Will the Dev Team have a Group here that people can post ideas, needs, suggestions, problems about the ZGC platform to? How does the Dev Team want to deal with these kinds of topics / issues / needs.
[if in scope... insert definition]