Site features
Here’s what ResearchPages can do.
CMS pages
The fundamental feature of ResearchPages is the ability for site members to create pages of content without having to use html / ftp, set up a web server, get a domain and other time-consuming things. This is achieved through a simple content management system (CMS) we’ve written called Apparatus. It uses the very simple textile markup language, and will also take some simple html for those who prefer it. Just plain text will also work. Personal pages and group pages alike are edited using the Apparatus content management system.
The philosophy behind providing CMS tools to researchers is the founding principle of ResearchPages: that researchers should spend what time they have for disseminating their work on the web on content creation rather than learning how to build web pages. I have seen many researcher’s ‘home’ pages of their own creation looking lovely (or in some cases, not-so-lovely) but being devoid of content (presumably because so much time was spent engineering) and never being updated (because the time required to edit the code and upload it all again was too much). With ResearchPages and Apparatus, editing your web pages is almost as easy as editing a Word Doc.
Wiki pages
Each group can have a wiki, and pages are editable in a similar way to normal CMS pages.
Applications
Outside of the CMS pages there are a series of ‘applications’ which work to provide data ‘straight from the database’. You don’t have the opportunity to edit these pages in the way that you can the CMS pages, but they provide other important functionality. Here’s a list of them:
Publications
The publications database is clever – if you add a publication, any other site members who are also authors on the page will be ‘linked’ to the publication – it will turn up in their publications list, people will be able to click through to their page from the author list. Publications can be associated with a file upload of the document (pdf or word etc) and can be linked in to the DOI database. Keywords and descriptions help search engines find your publications.
Resources
Resources are files. You upload them, and choose who to share them with. These people (be they site members or members of the public) download them at their leisure. Sharing files has never been easier! Have a look at my resources page to get an idea.
Groups
Groups can set up their public-facing, and private (i.e. ‘intranet’) pages on researchpages with ease. Each group memeber will have a page within the group pages (a carbon copy of his or her personal page – compare https://researchpages.net/people/martin-johnson and https://researchpages.net/ESMG/people/martin-johnson). Also groups can maintain their own publications and resources lists. To set up a group on ResearchPages, please .
Blogs, News and Events.
Each member of the site has a blog, each group has news and events sections. Friends and group members will be notified if you post a blog item and group members and (soon) group ‘watchers’ will be notified of group news and events. In all cases this will only occur if you have made your blog/news/event item public or available to your friends/group members. If you have, they can come along and add comments – a good forum for discussions.
Messages
You can send messages to your friends, and to your groups. In the future this may evolve to have similar functionality to forums. For now though, it’s just messages.
Friends
You can request to be someone’s ‘friend’. If they agree, you will receive updates on your private home page (see below) whenever they update their details, pages or blog (and in the future, their publications list – will be working on that soon).
Home
Your home page (link on the global navigation at the top of the page if you’re logged in) contains notifications of the activities of your friends and groups and group members to keep you in touch with what’s going on on the site, and links to all of the pages you edit, amongst other things. Only you can see your personal home page.
New features
We’re constantly thinking about ways to make the site better, but as only one of us is a developer, and currently has another full time job to do as well, things don’t always happen very quickly. If you’re a python / django developer and would like to help, please get in touch and we’ll put you to work however we can. If you have suggestions for improvements to the site, please don’t hesitate to contact us .