CAPSTONE: Taking the Initiative

     The end is near.......of my college career. For my capstone project I will be working with The Dreyfuss Initiative. My role in the Shepherd team is marketing and press. For the upcoming events, September 17 I will be a press liaison. TDI is also looking to us as college students for ways to engage people in this internet savvy age. Additionally, aspects of branding like helping to prepare displays are also a part of the marketing. The events this month introduce an important area of the organization. 

      I have expressed to the executive director of TDI that I am interested in PR aspects as well as the theatre area of TDI. TDI is composed of three different areas. One of the areas focuses on theatre. TDI is holding an American history play competition. Working with the theatre and helping to handle logistics was an idea suggested to me. 

     I also have expressed my enthusiasm to write press releases. At this time the executive director writes the press releases but I hope to at least help get the information to the media if I am not given the opportunity to write any press releases. TDI has a message and I am here to spread it. 

Build a Straw Tower with Meaning

     One plays a game to win, to lose or just play. Whatever the reason there is always an outcome even if the game is left uncompleted. Playing a game involves a series of actions. These actions can have a player gain something in the end or all effort falls to the floor like a leaning straw tower. Random...yet it is an example. Building a straw tower does have meaningful play. 

     Actions have meaning in a game or at least for successful game design the goal is meaningful play according to Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.  

The book describes meaningful play as descriptive and evaluative. 

• Descriptive - relationship between player actions and system outcome 
• Evaluative - relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are discernable and integrated into larger context of the game. 

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsmall/3506616038/

     
     Back to building a tower out of bendy straws as experienced in class every straw added to the tower affected how the tower would respond. For some groups, like mine, the tower would lean and for others the tower would continue to rise. This would be descriptive meaning play. A player would add a straw and the tower, the system, would respond. Support is needed to build a tower and thus straws were added for the intention, meaning, of support. As well as the meaning of adding height. 

     The building of the tower would also be evaluative meaningful play. This description of meaningful play maybe easier to distinguish. 

     Discernability details when a player is aware of the outcome of their action. Grab a diamond theres a sound. Add more straws add more length to the tower. 

     Integration details when an outcome of an action affects the game as a whole. The outcome is not immediate. One can not know how tall a straw tower will be until all straws are added. How a straw is added or the decision of how to add a straw affects the way the tower will look and if it will lean or stand. 

     Actions in a game have meaning to be a successful game. One should think before they act in a game. One should think before they act in life. Every action has a outcome thats immediate and/or intended for a later outcome. 

Media is more than images right Media module?

I downloaded the Media module to see if I could create a video field for Yoxview. The media module can add media into any textarea. This requires Wysiwyg module. The module can also add media field and mass importing of files. I could only get images to upload using this module. 

1. I downloaded Media, Styles module, and Media:YouTube module since I wanted to display a youtube video. 
2. To add or try to add video as a field I went to configuration/media/types. I choose video, audio, image, and other types. 
3. Then I went to my Yoxview content type since I was trying to add video to Yoxview. I added a video content field with multimedia asset field type. 
4. I then clicked on my Yoxview content type, scrolled down to the new video field and tried to upload a youtube video. The popup screen said paste url or embed code here from supported provider. The supported provider was youtube so I tried to copy both the link of the video and embed code. Both did not work.

Rereading documentation they said to add the field to an article content type. I tried this and this time it would let me upload the video url but it uploaded it as a link only. Then when I clicked the link up popped code. 

I can upload images using these module. I can upload from my images folder. 

This module is still in beta and and on the drupal page for the module it does say there are some critical issues that still need to be fixed. This module does seem like an easy to use module when everything does work properly. 

Yoxview the new colorbox/lighbox

     I knew that I wanted to have a colorbox type module on my site. People seemed to have some difficulty with it but they got it to work so I was going to try it out until I saw Yoxview. Yoxview caught my attention because it is like lightbox but it can also display video and other media. Intrigued I downloaded and was confused by then documentation. Then I came across this issues discussion about the module on drupal.  

http://drupal.org/node/1063134

     The person who posted the question was exactly like me so I read on. I found out that it is just a matter of adding a content type and field. Then the module creates the yoxview for you. 

1) Create a content type for yoxview
2) Create a type Gallery field for the content type. The field and widget type is Image.

3) Go to the Manage Display tab for field, and for Gallery field you have to indicate that the format is yoxview and style "thumbnail"

     That’s all you have to do. Much more less confusing. Just click on the yoxview content type and below the body there will be an image upload gallery field. Upload as many pictures as you want and save the page. The pictures will then be there to click on and start yoxview. 

     The images were easy. Yet I could not figure out how to add videos to yoxview. I thought of making a video field to format to yoxview but that did not work. To create a video field I tried the module Media. We didn't entirely get along. 

Wysiwyg Module

     As I am typing this right now I like the options that I have in the toolbar. Bold button, text color button, and text align button to name a few. When typing a page in Drupal you have none of these options unless you just code the words yourself. This isn’t difficult but having modules that make things even easier is always a good thing.

Wysiwyg is a module that easily formats HTML text. 

Wysiwyg will only work if a third party editor is downloaded. As said in the video below it is the “glue” that holds everything together. Wysiwyg does nothing unless an editor is installed.

Once downloaded you can choose which type of editor you want. Then configure that editor to a input format. I chose filtered HTML since that was the format I usually used. After this you can choose which buttons and plugins you want for the editor. Then the editor will display when adding content. 

View content how you want it with Views

     Some modules just have perfect names. The views module is about viewing content. The module allows to organize content and create custom blocks and lists of content. 

     

     I used views for my main page menu links. Fashion, Accessories, and Beauty are all separate views that I set to a page and set to a different content type. I have a fashion, accessories, and beauty content type on my website. 

The user interface for views was a bit imitating at first but after watching this video I was easy to understand. 

     Basically to set up views you just need to filter what type of content you want for that view. Then you change the page settings and path to where you want the page. The module does require Chaos Tools Suite module as well

5 stars for Rate Module

     After switching the idea for my site after difficult modules that do not want to work or just couldn't figure out how I felt a sigh of relief. This came from a simple module called Rate. Simple is good sometimes. 
     Rating can be used on many different types of websites. It is a good way to see what visitors to your site think about a topic or idea.

The Rate module is as simply named as it is easy to use. You can choose from 6 different widget types. 

• Thumbs up
• Thumbs up / down
• Fivestar
• Emotion (this makes me mad, angry...)
• Yes / no
• Custom

All you need to do is upload the module along with the Voting API. 

I found this helpful video on Youtube.

Basically after everything is installed and enabled you can choose which widget you want to use, modify it, and then assign it to a content type. I did this for my fashion content and Yoxview content type which I will talk about soon. 

5 stars to Rate for simplicity and ease.