iHacky review

Introduction:
iHacky is supposed to be a sort of social network within a social network. This have some inherent advantages such as using the original social network to spread your own base. But it also seems repetitive. The idea kind of makes you ask yourself, "why?" After actually installing the application and being an avid Facebook user, I'm starting to see the light.

Installation:
As for installation, installing the iHacky application was the easiest out of all the projects so far. All I really had to do was click on the installation link on their installation guide, click okay a few times and there it was. It was a bit spare but I could really see some potential in it. I wasn't able to install the iHacky server side application because PHP is actually really hard and actually convoluted to install. As far as the code goes though, I really don't know PHP as well so it wasn't really worth installing anyway.

Code Review:
Although I don't know too much about PHP, one look at the code and I can tell that it is clearly documented. There really isn't too much code which goes to show just how powerful PHP is with web development but it is not so complex that you can't follow what is going on with each page. To be honest, it looks a lot like the MyIsern project we were working on last week.

Overview:
As for any bugs that I've found, the home page has a link that links back to my own Facebook homepage. Clearly, this is really not necessary. I have a link to that at the top of my page already. I really don't need another one. On top of that, there really is nothing on the homepage at all. Although the base code seems to all be there, there really is nothing functionality-wise. I can find anything that really attracts me to the homepage and gives me something to do while I browse away on Facebook.

On the profile page I find more of the same. There is again a link to my own profile. I don't really see a need for this. Instead, how about a few boxes where I can start editing my own profile already. Somewhere where I can add what languages I'm good at or at least know something about. If not, maybe a little area where I can insert my coding "motto" or a blog section. If this is really going to be a social network, within a social network, you might as well take the best from each social network. There are websites like xanga, myspace, facebook, and orkut. Each one has people attracted to it for a special reason. I think this application needs to find that special something and put a iHacky twist on it.

Tools look like somewhere I could put in something about the languages that I work with but right now it has nothing. There is a cool autofill search toolbar but with so little people on the application, it's not very helpful. Another idea that could be used here would be a section to add/edit/delete my own tools. Hey maybe even a section where I can elaborate on the tool, such as how long I've work with this tool or maybe even where I've used it before. Why not a link to the project itself. The idea is to link people that have common interests, but you can't find people with common interest if you don't list the project you work on. It's easy enough to on sourceforge and look for projects, but what if you wanted to know more about the developer? This would be an awesome niche for that some of interaction.

The more I go through the site, the more it seems like the site should be more compact. There shouldn't be a separate tab for tools, teams, and projects. They should flow into each other and if need be, a search that you can use to find any of the three. This should be easy since we did this through MyIsern.

There is an invite tab but nothing there. I would rather not be enticed with this if there is nothing to do here. Really.

Also, like any good web developer, you don't want all your contact information all over different pages where they might not be relative. If it is then, of course it should be there, but you should also have a page where they could get in contact with you if they need to. Maybe a contact page?

As for any other tasks, tab, or other options, a profile picture would be nice too. Bulletin posts? Maybe you want to send out an announcement to everyone you know about a new project you're starting? This social network was originally based on college student trying to connect to each other, so you should take advantage of this and try to tap into that network. Listing what college you went to will also help you find people in your ICS class that you haven't seen in a while and catch up to them. So why not a message feature as well?