Blogging Roller

To integrate group blogging into Roller, we had to make some fairly big changes to the Roller UI. We're hoping to deploy Roller 2.0 next month, so it's time to start getting some feedback on the new look (and testing). Unfortuately, I still don't have the promised standalone demo ready, but I do have some preliminary screenshots. So, without further ado...

First up, the front page. Not much change here, but you are introduced to the new layout and color-scheme used in the new UI. Unlike Roller 1.X, there are no tabs on this page, but we still need to add some sort of tabs here for when the Planet Roller aggregator is enabled -- perhaps one tab (and newsfeed) per aggregation group that is defined?

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/ss-roller2-1-front-sm.png" title="Roller 2.0 screenshot" alt="screenshot" border="0" />

Next up, the main page. If your user account has just one blog, then you'll go straight to the Roller weblog edit page when you login (just as you did in 1.X). If you don't have a blog yet or you have more than one then you'll land on the main page, shown below. This page allows you to manage your weblogs, create weblogs and accept/decline invitations to join weblogs. We've broken the Roller UI up into three portions: 1) the main menu page, 2) weblog edit/admin pages and 3) server admin pages. From the main page, you can drill right into any of your weblogs by clicking New Entry, Edit Entries or Manage to get to the weblog edit/admin pages. You can enter the server admin pages by clicking the Server Adminstration link.

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/ss-roller2-2-main-sm.png" title="Roller 2.0 screenshot" alt="screenshot" border="0" />

The Create new weblog page, available from the Main Menu, is shown below. Note the new format and the help text for each field. We've added this type of help on many of the forms in the Roller UI.

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/ss-roller2-3-createweblog-sm.png" title="Roller 2.0 screenshot" alt="screenshot" border="0" />

From the Main Menu, you can access the New Entry page, shown below, for any of your weblogs. This hasn't changed much from Roller 1.X, but do note the new Pending Entries box. New weblog entries from LIMITED users will show up here. LIMITED users are not allowed to post, instead they submit posts for review by AUTHOR or ADMIN users. If there were any posts up for review in the weblog, they'd be listed in the Pending Entries box

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/ss-roller2-4-edit-sm.png" title="Roller 2.0 screenshot" alt="screenshot" border="0" />

Finally, we have the Member Permissions page, which a weblog ADMIN user can use to manage the users in a weblog. You can change permissions, revoke permissions or invite new members to join up.

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/ss-roller2-5-members-sm.png" title="Roller 2.0 screenshot" alt="screenshot" border="0" />

That's all I have time for right now. I still hope to have a really easy to install standalone demo ready in the next couple of days so you can try this stuff for yourself.