So now that I've gone and open sourced SlideSix I thought I'd start by laying out some of the primary needs for the project. If you're interested in playing along at home you can pull a copy down from GitHub and install it.

Getting the app up and running fully can take some time with setting up event gateways, installing Open Office (if you don't have it already) and whatnot, but once you get the hang of it and get the first steps out of the way you should be all set. Since the application uses the built in ORM functionality of ColdFusion 9 you don't have to worry about any database creation -- just run the app once the settings are in place and CF will take care of all of that for you (assuming you've created a DSN and configured SlideSix properly). If you have problems installing please post to the group and we'll get everything figured out.

The 'plumbing' of the app is pretty complete at this point. The model and services are all in place and the Flex bits have been properly wired up so everything should 'just work'. You can register users (which initiates a verification email) and login. Once logged in you can hit the slide manager and upload presentations, create and edit groups and edit your profile. The default user (admin/admin) is flagged as an admin and you should notice a few links for the beginnings of a proper admin system where you can search/browse and make simple edits. This all may sound kinda obvious since SlideSix already exists, but it's been a lot of work to get back to this point since the entire model and services have just about been completely rewritten. Oh - I should also mention that if you've configured a SOLR collection presentations will be indexed, updated and deleted (if necessary) within the collection as appropriate, but there is no front end interface for search at this point.

There are a few features that I'd like to consider adding, but at this point I'd really like to focus on getting the layout and design a little more polished. The primary needs (I think) are getting new design up and running including a few logos - one for the SlideSix 'project' and one for the relaunch. I've often struggled with layout for the application as well, so anyone with ideas for the home page, group pages, user profile pages, slideshow view pages and slideshow/user/group list pages would be more then appreciated. I haven't obtained the new domain name yet, but anyone interested in helping with the design can contact me offline and I'll share my ideas privately until I can obtain the domain.

What else? Since SlideSix is now 'our' project I'd love to hear people's ideas on what they'd like to see supported. Let me know your ideas below or in the Google Group. Do you plan on using the app/code somewhere?

Oh I almost forgot. The project has now also been added to RIAForge which mainly points over to a lot of the content on GitHub but it's always good to cross promote.