p2pnet - rss feed: ccHost: media sharing
p2p news / p2pnet: An open source project with web-based infrastructure to support collaboration, sharing, and storage of multi-media using Creative Commons licenses and metadata, has just gone online.
ccHost version 2.0 allows users to download, install, and build online media sharing communities.
You can see it in action in the Creative Commons ccMixter, an online music social network service that supports media sharing and remixing powered by ccHost.
"Perhaps the largest features in this release are to aid feedback between community members," says CC.
"First, the addition of native reviews no longer relies upon phpBB. This drastically makes installation of ccHost easier for average users while integrating the previously separate review system into ccHost. Also, now all users have to do to rate submissions is to hover over the star ratings for a media file, and select how many stars. Then, rather than requiring a refresh of the browser, the ratings automatically update."
Other user enhancements include optional text formatting for descriptions, bread crumb path display for easier site navigation, not safe for work (NSFW) flagging, and a ‘How I Did It’ browser.
"Also, for audio-based installations there is support for M3U-based radio. While previous versions of ccHost had RSS support, ccHost 2.0 now supports the ATOM feed standard and caching for all feed types.
"Beyond these, the most major under-the-hood enhancement to the codebase is in general performance enhancements which provide noticeable improvement in all areas of the site, most notably on user profile pages."
On the admin side, ccHost now ships with the sample pool API turned on to allow for multiple different ccHost installations to query each other for samples.
"Beyond the basic usage of multiple ccHost installations communicating through this RESTful API, anyone may also use the simple sample pool API to write code that interacts with a ccHost installation’s sample pool," says Creative Commons, adding:
"Other administrative additions include import and export of settings, internationalization accessible through a string editor, replacement of magpie with custom code, a new ratings panel, stricter fairness policies, and various administrative options for administrators to customize ccHost. The monthly archives, statistics, and charts pages barely made it into this release, and require more testing and usage, yet are already solidly functioning on ccmixter.org."
Now ccHost is looking for new developers.
It already supports major audio formats such as mp3, MIDI, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, video and still image formats but, "Future development needs more contributors to add more media (file-type) functionality to ccHost as well as help with internationalization (i18n) support for multiple languages," it says.
Adding language support doesn’t require coding experience since one can use the administrative string editor to add localization to a ccHost installation.
If this project interests you, chat with other developers on irc channel #cc on irc.freenode.org, and/or join the project mailing list, and edit the wiki page to help shape this project’s future direction.
Project Website
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ccHost
ccHost Download
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?
group_id=80503&package_id=156675
Feature Requests
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=80503&atid=559969
Bug Reports
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=559966&group_id=80503&func=browse
Roadmap (Project Timeline)
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcHost_Roadmap
