Social Network for CIOs and IT Professionals with Original IT Content

[billg97]

Website URL  http://www.ciozone.com

Template:    Blue Element From Joomlashack

Joomla 1.0.13, Lamp Stack, Godaddy Hosted
Additional Extensions (Components, Modules, Plug ins): CB, GroupJive, Fireboard, SEF404, PMS, JACL, DOC Man, Seyret, Yanc, Mamblog

Custom Development: minimal at this point. Seeking suggestions for badly needed components for Joomla, We wish to
develop and give back to the community..

Other Features: We have an award winning editorial staff, that generates new content each day. I will be starting the
Open Source Group and Forum with a Joomla Specific Section

Three (at least) specific areas of my site that I'd like feedback on (design, code, graphics, etc.): Usability, navigation, optimization

Additional Comments: If you are an IT professional please come and visit, register and connect with me and others of similar interests... Thanks to the Joomla Community for a great platform!!

Bill Gerneglia

[jrajani1]

Bill,

The site has great content and a lot of room for interaction with peers in the groups, forums and blog features. The ability to create groups with specific topics is a great idea for a sustainable community.

[billg97]

Thanks for your comment, we are working hard with some well known and respected technology journalists to publish information relevant to the IT community.
We are a joomla platform built completely with a lamp stack and an openads ad server.  We are trying to build a community that can learn from the content and then comment on it along with other members. We are launching a new section on mentoring in partnership with some Faculty from Columbia Univ.

I just redesigned the profile page in community builder to give it a better user experience. I am using the profile completion indicator module that works well.

[billg97]

I am interested in any feedback on why an IT professional such as yourself would or would not join our site, and any suggestions on
how to make it better.

thanks

[jrajani1]

When it co

I am interested in any feedback on why an IT professional such as yourself would or would not join our site, and any suggestions on
how to make it better.

thanks

I would join the site if it provides interesting information technology content that I can use to learn which topics are of interest to employers in the industry. In addition, a site that allows me to connect with peers in the IT world is an important feature to me. Although Linked in does a good job in allowing networking opportunity a niche network is critical when trying to resolve IT issues that may arise on a day to day basis on the job.

Hope this helps.

[ssardam]

Bill,

How did you make the dynamic header image - i can't seem to figure this out for my site.

[zhastro]

Love the design dude! that's what a pro work, and seem like there's alot of things in there..

congrats

[billg97]

The "Dynamic Header Image" as you refer to it is actually a flash based leaderboard ad provided by one of our advertisers. It is simply a .swf file that is served by an openads server, and plays until someone clicks through or moves on to a new page.

I hope this helps and thanks for the positive comments.

[jrajani1]

Bill,

I love the slideshow on your site, can you tell me how it's been implemented?

[billg97]

The slide show player on our homepage was purchased from http://www.joomlaworks.gr/ for a very reasonable fee, i think it was 30 Euro. We use it to highlight new content items that we are posting to the site on a daily basis. Since our site is targeted to IT types the player permits us to highlight our original IT content.The player allows us to provide a link to our story along with an associated image that relates to the story. I caution users to make sure you optimize your images before adding to the player - the homepage can become quickly bloated due to image size and this of course can slow down page load times..

If you want more information about the platform I wrote a few blogs about the CIOZone.com platform using the mamblog component on ciozone.com. In these blogs I speak about how we have integrated the joomla CMS with the openads ( now openx ) ad server.

Thanks

Bill Gerneglia

[guitarhangar]

Wow. Nice site. You put mine to shame. Suddenly I feel motivated to make some improvements.

Oh wait, my boss is a design turtle.

Nice job on showing what Joomla can do. Here are my suggestions:

As you scroll down the web page, the left and right sidebar seem to become less defined, and the modules/content in them cease to be continously aligned. You might want to look into some way to properly align the elements. If you include (occasionally) a block style element (look at my webpage , note the news flashes thing, thats one of the few changes I was able to make with my boss's approval ) you will redefine the column as a column and give the website a more stable feel. You could also bring the left/right "fade" lines down a little more. The right Sun Microsystems ad that I see actually accomplishes this because it appears to span the width of the column , even with its negative space- the square ad on the left, however, doesn't. You could embed that add in a block-bevel thing and it might look nicer, or make one of those left elements a block type thing. If you made the CIO's online thing in a "ticker type" format, (a smaller box with a scrolling dynamic list), that would look cool and accomplish this objective. Obviously you don't want too much action on the webpage (avoid the dancing hamster effect) but there can be one or two active elements per "browsing window" of approx. 1200x800.

The blue color scheme is a good choice.

See if you can move:

News & Noteworthy Archive
Past News Items From Reuters

To the left column, you should have that quick comment thing be the center of the show in the footer.

Anyway, I've gotta move on to other things, good luck with your venture, ill bookmark your site and look at it here and there even though im not an IT guy technically

[billg97]

Thanks for the comments - the site is currently changing and hopefully improving.. I rearranged the left column as
you suggested and it looks better.

I understand what you mean when you say your boss is a design turtle. I purchased this template mainly because I really like the suckerfish slider menu bar rather than drop downs and was directed to promptly remove them. Now that we have many more features and content than we did at launch I need to reintroduce them!!!

As an FYI we now have more than 2000 members..

[h229229]

That is a great site with great content. You done Joomla proud as a CMS portal. By the way, do you have to pay to get all these good content and how do you get the site updated with the lastest information.

Well Done.

[billg97]

Hi, thanks for the positive words regarding www.ciozone.com. As a social network we now have more than 3000
members - we are focused on IT folks .. our registration is FREE so please join and participate. Thanks for stopping
by.

[billg97]

Thanks for the content question,

the content that we put on our site is IT based and it is either original content ( we have a staff of 4 writers ) or it is user generated by our users. In order to participate you simply need to register
at http://www.ciozone.com

In addition, we also have some partnerships with research organizations.

[billg97]

We have just implement a new menu system using the joomlashack Blue Element template, check out the suckerfish menus. They display submenu items in a horizontal manner..

[nyak]

I've seen your site, and its look very profesional and well maintain.

BTW, I love the suckerfish menus in your site.

[jrajani1]

Hi all,

In 2008 we optimized http://www.ciozone.com further by improving our ad serving capabilities, introducing widgets, audiocasts, videocasts, increased content partnerships.

In 2009 we plan on introducing a mobile version of the site among other features.

If you have additional comments we'd love to hear them.

Best,

CIOZone Staff

[jrajani1]

We've recently removed the bloat and it should be in the kb range. Let me know if you still find its too large. Can you tell me the tool you used to measure it? Thanks for your feedback.

Jay

[billg971]

The CIOZone.com mobile application has been released and is in production.

You may view it here

http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/CIOZon ... ition.html

Developed in house and works in conjunction with the main site.

alternatively you may view it with your mobile device at http://m.ciozone.com

[jrajani1]

CIOZone.com has launched a new product guide feature:

http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/review ... _m653.html

Please let us know what you think of the guide and any additional features you'd like to see implemented.

Thank You,

Jay Rajani

[jrajani1]

The original template for the site is JS Element (Blue) and the Product Guide is driven by Jreviews using the default template.

[AaronColorado]

Bill,
The site is nice with a bunch of interesting information. I would suggest improving the design so the web site looks wider and information placed more visibly.

[joomfriend]

Your site is taking long to load. Too many objects on your pages. You should definably optimize them. Anyway, nice site.