Guest books, Tooyoo style. (hotshotsdesigns.co.uk/tooyoo/)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	hotshotsdesigns.co.uk/tooyoo/
Date:	06/06/02 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can be fun, Lots of members, Make new friends

Disadvantages: Talking animals allowed, Not used to full potential

For a long time now, people have been complaining about the so-called community spirit on Dooyoo (or rather their interpretation of it), and how it could be improved. One idea that kept cropping up in suggestions was the use of a guest book, but Dooyoo were in no shape to supply such a thing at this time due to commitments to their brand spanking new back end system called Aurora ("Coming soon to a consumer website near you!").

One member in a fit of boredom posted a message on OpCom, telling us all how he'd coded a small application which enabled people to read random Dooyoo opinions. (This is a great thing, and you should all give it a go!) Shortly afterwards, the same member (ILoveJackDaniels, or ILJD) also posted to say that he'd also coded a set of guest books for Dooyoo members in the absence of the planned, but as yet unreleased official guest books.

*** The Guest Books ***

From fairly humble beginnings, the guest books have evolved both due to ILJD's own creativity and ideas, and the ideas of Dooyoo members who were using the guest books. From a dozen members who signed up at the start, there are now around 258 members who use Tooyoo regularly, with more people joining every day.

First of all, you must sign up to be able to get a guest book, although you can surf around other people's guest books to see what other people are up to (more on this later). In order to sign on, you supply a name (most people use their Dooyoo name), and a password. You are then taken to your rather bland guest book where you can begin to customise Tooyoo to suit you if you wish. When you return to Tooyoo, you must sign in again to be able to access your guest book. If you desire, you can be set to "invisible", which means no-one can see that you're logged into the site (unless you leave a message, of course!)

The site is split into several main areas, and the ones you visit will depend on how you
choose to use Tooyoo.

By going into the "settings" page you can customise six things in terms of colour, and depending on your artistic skills, you can end up with some colourful, but still pretty guest books. Sometimes though, people have guest books which look like they've been done by a blind man and are horrific to look at and hard to read.

You can also set your guest book to private from here, so that no one but yourself can read any messages that are left for you. I think this is an excellent idea, and something that Dooyoo should consider when implementing their own guest book system.

You can delete messages from your own guest book individually, or as a whole from the settings page, so that you can free up some disk space, or simply keep the number of messages you have to a minimum, although some members have well over 500 messages in their guest books.

Your proper guest book is where you will read messages sent to you. Replying to a message is simple. You click on the senders' name and this takes you to their guest book and you can leave a nice message for them. If you are writing a message from scratch, and not replying to a message then you can find a member by clicking on the "members" link, then the first letter of the person you want to send a message to (e.g. click 'T' for TheDuke). Unless they've set their guest book to "private", you can pick their name from a list, and type your message in, remembering to tick the "private" box if you want only the recipient to view the message.

When typing your message, you can add emoticons (or "smilies") to them, and when your message is posted, you get a nice little graphic which pops up instead (rather like those ones in MSN Messenger, only animated, less colourful, and more varied). A downside to these smilies is that they use a lot of bandwidth, and excessive use slows down the site. It has beco
me a recent "trend" to use many (i.e. 50 or 100) of these in a single, short message which slows the site down considerably. This is nothing to do with the designer though, but the members who have followed this "trend". ILJD is in the process of finding somewhere else to store the smilies, plus apply some tweaking, which should help matters considerably.

ILJD has also supplied a general message area where you can leave messages for other users, and so that ILJD himself can leave messages for all members regarding new features, news items etc. that are important for all Tooyoo members. Sometimes, members have pseudo conversations on this page as well (more on this later).

There's a link to the chatroom which is a java applet, and can be a bit slow and unstable at times, but is great fun when you get in. However, you might prefer to use a proper chat program instead which is a lot more stable, and usually a bit faster than the applet. Try mIRC, which is only approximately a 1Mb download (about 5 mins on an ordinary modem) from http://www.mirc.co.uk and if you need any help in getting it set up, then leave a message in my guest book, and I'll give you a hand.

*** Tooyoo and the Dooyoo Community ***

ILJD once told me that he hoped the guest books would help bridge the gap between Dooyoo, the members, OpCom, and the chatroom. It has been successful in some aspects, but not in others.

The chatroom has become busier, and lots of new people have joined, and liked it there although it's busiest after 9pm, sometimes people do pop in during the day. OpCom hasn't really been affected, and it's a shame as it could be a great resource for those who are prepared to give it a go, and use it properly.

The general message area (GMA) on Tooyoo, rather than be a specific place where (in my opinion) you post a query, question or plea for help and get responses in your guest book the GMA is rat
her a very slow chatroom where people seem to post the most inane messages, and then hang around for 10 minutes waiting for a response. As there are usually at least half a dozen members online at one time (those are the ones that are "visible"), then to me it would make more sense to use the chatroom link, rather than waste Dave's valuable bandwidth allocation with useless messages.

Has Tooyoo helped the Dooyoo community? Personally, I have my doubts. Yes, it can be fun, and it is a brilliant tool for exchanging messages with other Dooyoo members. But, going around people's guest books (specifically, those you have never communicated with before) and just typing "Hello" or similar is not building a community, at least not in my book, although it is nice to see these pointless messages are no longer polluting the comments threads of opinions ("I'm going down to the shops now"). Perhaps it's simply a touch of "new toy" syndrome, and a lot of members are still finding the novelty of being able to have semi-real time contact with other people too exciting.

*** Overall ***

The site is a great idea, with some excellent features which could prove to be quite useful. It's very plain to look at, but quick to load and easy to navigate. But somehow, it doesn't seem to fulfil it's full potential which, in my opinion, is due to the membership, not the designer.

I especially like some of the features, like the ability to log in invisibly, or to keep my GB private so that other people can't see who is saying what to me. I hope that when Dooyoo add their own guest book to the site, they can add some features like this.

*** Information ***

OpCom can be found at:
http://dooyoo.community.everyone.net
http://opinionated.community.everyone.net

The Tooyoo Guest book site can be found at:
http://www.hotshotsdesigns.co.uk/tooyoo/

In th
e unlikely event you would want to leave me a message:
http://www.hotshotsdesigns.co.uk/tooyoo/book.p hp?user=TheDuke

Get mIRC from:
http://www.mirc.co.uk

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