[Clipart] OCAL Contact Artist Feature LIVE on site NOW

[Brad Phillips]

Greetings ocal users,

I have some exciting news to share with you all.  I've been working long and hard this week to bring you a long requested feature for the site.  It's a feature that, I feel, has actually turned into the beginnings of many exciting new additions to the ocal site proper.  It all boils down to one essential element, though:

Every registered user can now contact any other artist on the site!  Let's break it down.

When you log in, and you navigate to any artists profile page, like http://openclipart.org/user-detail/pianoBrad, you'll see a new box on the right sidebar called 'Contact [user-name]'.  In this box is a form.  All you need to do is Give the Message a Title and some text, and click 'Send'.  Your message is instantly transmitted to the recipient, along with an e-mail to their inbox letting them know they have a new message waiting for them to read.

If you happen to be the recipient of said message, you'll notice several things when you log into the site.  Firstly, a notifications bar has been created & will display under the top nav (in the same area as the actions bar on the search page).  This bar will let you know how many messages are awaiting you.  If you click on the link in that bar, you'll be taken to your manage profile page: 

http://www.openclipart.org/manage/profile

The manage profile page has now also become the hub for your messaging service.  If you scroll below the edit info & manage url forms, you'll see a new section entitled 'Your Messages'.  Here, all messages you've been sent will display.  To open a message, simply click on the message & the body of the message will instantly be revealed.  Clicking again on the top area of the message will close it back up. 

You have complete control over these messages.  You can click 'Mark Read' to clear the message from the messages notification bar (this bar will update automatically & be removed altogether if you have no new messages).  You can also click 'Delete' to remove the message & it's contents from the site, entirely.  Clicking 'Reply' loads a Reply form, where you can respond to the user who's email you've just read, directly from your profile page!

Another thing you may notice on your manage/profile page, on the right sidebar, is a new box called 'Notifications'.  This box displays the latest message activities (you record of sent & received messages).  To keep track of this, I created a new table called 'ocal_logs'.  I hope this new system can be integrated to cover all actions on the site.

Please test out the messaging system & file bugs or blueprints describing your experience:

https://launchpad.net/openclipart

I hope this will go a long way towards making the site more usable & FUN.  Please enjoy & let us know what you think!!

Cheers,
+Brad