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Creating JustSayKnow.net
How do you create a sophisticated custom Content Management System (CMS) that is easy enough for a couple of twelve year olds to use? The answer was easy: use MODx and make it as simple as filling in a form.
About the site
Just Say Know is built for the under-20 market. The site reviews books and movies for youth by youth. Kids write the reviews and all of the content. There are three primary sections to the site: Books, Movies and Just Say Know Radio. JSK Radio os filled with podcasts the kids create.
Features
Just Say Know allows users to interact with it on multiple levels. You can comment on each article / review and become part of the discussion. Comments are moderated to avoid any bad language or malicious gibes.
At the bottom of each review users can rate the book or movie. The rating system works on a 5-star system an only allows users to vote once.
Each week JSK asks users to participate in a new poll. The poll shows cumulative results.
One of the most important features of the site is allowing users to contribute their own reviews and podcasts. Put simply, JSK asks you to participate.
Podcasts are an important feature as well. It took 5 minutes to teach the kids how to create a podcast in Garage Band - Apple Computer's gem of an application. They learned to save their podcast in the smallest file size possible for the web and to upload them through the CMS. (For the MODxers out there, this was done through a Template Variable). The podcast shows up at the bottom of the review and they also have a podcast section on the site. If there is no podcast for a particular review the system simply skips it. I used a jQuery plug-in to create the front-end delivery of the podcast.
Site Design
The kids involved wanted a dark design (black) with one primary link color. In the end, we decided on two shades of lime green (links and headers), and a light grey for text. The site needed to be set up for advertising - big plans down the road. You can see some of this now with the affiliate links to Fandango and Amazon. A full banner ad can go above the top menu.
Dark sites can be difficult because your design choices are more limited. White space and font choices become more important. I decided to use a grunge font for the headers and one primary image for each page.
The main menu takes advantage of some CSS hover sprites. This adds an effect and keeps image loads and files to a minimum.
Conclusion
The kids create their own text links on Amazon through their Affiliate account. They create their own podcasts using Garage Band. They upload their own images with a couple of clicks of the mouse and they monitor the site themselves. And there you have it. A full-fledged CMS managed by a couple of 12 year olds. The final manual (which they no longer use) was only 7 pages long. It doesn't get much easier!
A side note: given the users the site expects to get, we did NOT support IE6.
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