You Can Add Sites

Last night I put up some new code that will allow onXiam users to add sites to onXiam. Once you submit the necessary site information, the new site will be available for all onXiam users to add to their profile.

This was probably the feature most requested since I launched onXiam. I had always planned on making it available, but the problem was that the process of adding a site is somewhat complex, and I have been struggling with how to make it easy enough that anybody can do it without confusion or error.

Well, I tried and I tried. I coded it one way and then another. I asked my friend for his opinion and tried that way. Then I tried a few other approaches. All of them had shortcomings. You see, the problem is not so much adding a site -- that part is very simple. The problem is creating links to user profile pages on these user-submitted sites. Why is that difficult? Basically it is because URL schemas are different from one website to another. Some websites feature the username in the URL (such as http://www.onxiam.com/people/kevinkmp/), while others do not have usernames in the URL but instead have some other kind of identifier (such as http://upcoming.org/user/22400/). That makes creating these "site templates" quite difficult to put completely in the hands of any user.

You see, in order for onXiam to link directly to people's profile pages on various sites, I have to abstract these profile page URLs. For instance, I have to take the URL, figure out what is the username in it, then replace that with a placeholder of sorts. Now whenever an onXiam user says "On [this-website] I Am [username]", I then merge their username in place of the placeholder in the URL, thus creating a direct link to their profile page on that site.

Now try to imagine how I've been building the "Add a Site" page. It necessitated text such as:

• Do users on this site have their own profile page? If so, what is the URL of one of these?
• What username appears in that URL?
• If no username appears in that URL, then what other identifying code does appear in there (hint: look for something like http://www.website.com/1234 -or- http://www.website.com/page.html?u=1234)

As you can see, this has the potential to be quite confusing, and when I had a few people test it, that was made all the more obvious. So finally I took a step back and re-evaluated what I was trying to accomplish with the "Add a Site" feature. When it came right down to it, the main thing that I was trying to accomplish was to make new sites available to onXiam users by getting them to appear in the dropdown box on the "add an identity" page. The ability to link directly to profile pages is a fringe benefit, not a core requirement.

With this in mind, I thought about how long this had been taking me to build vs how long it would take me to review new sites as they come in and handle providing the direct profile links myself. I decided that since I had already spent two weeks trying to get this feature built, it probably wasn't worth it. Simplify! I would simply provide users with the ability to add a new site. By default, when users add an identity on one of these new sites, it will link to the homepage of the website. As new sites are added, I will be monitoring them and when possible I will tweak them to link directly to user profile pages. I don't think it will be too difficult for me to stay on top of this, and quite honestly, I think it will be easier in the long run.

So there you have it. If you are an active member on CommunitySomethingOrOther.com and you want to add it to onXiam, now you can do so by providing two little pieces of information: Site name and Site URL. So for example:

• Site name: Onxiam
• Site URL: http://www.onxiam.com

That's all there is to it. Upon submitting the site information, it will then be immediately available to all onXiam users. I hope this is the beginning of tapping into the knowledge of the users in order to make onXiam grow even more.