Project Detail

Description

The following project is a membership system that delivers blog comments TO THE MEMBERS OWN BLOG.

This is not another blog comment spammer.
This is not another blog comment spammer.
This is not another blog comment spammer.

Rather the objective of this service, is to allow start up blogs that focus in products to have some social activity to help encourage other visitors to join in. The content generation is done by real humans who take real content that has been posted about particular products, and use this unique content engine which we already have to generate quality unique content for site owners.

Please the specs of this project carefully, and understand its requirements before bidding.

Any boilerplate bids will be ignored.

If you don't know what a boilerplate is, you probably don't qualify to complete this project.

This is my 2nd project being posted here. I am taking a risk in posting a larger project since I haven't really tested this network out thoroughly, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Details are as follows:

Objective: Create an automated service which is capable of delivering targeted commentary/review and tweets for its membership.

Problem: Product Blogs that post products or review products often do not gain a readership that will have people leaving commentary. Or starting a new site you have no comments. Without social proof/validation the effectiveness of your posts do not resonate with visitors as strongly. Posting multiple comments under multiple user names with different writing styles is too time consuming and difficult for a blog owner.

Solution: Provide a service which delivers good quality relevant commentary to blog/site owners, while also cross promoting their sites through Twitter and other members blogs via commentary. The content is written by humans, but also use machine to make for high quality hybrid content that can be delivered en’mass.

The watchword in this project is delivering automation to clients. Making the service as simple as possible to use, while also offering them a degree of control.

Front End:

Members Area Login: Using a 3rd party membership system would reduce time in development. Possible membership systems include Amember, Joomla with AEC, or Wordpress with Plugin.

Membership will be setup for two levels, one is free, and the other is paid.

Free membership includes unlimited sites, maximum of 5 comments a day, no access to cross linking their sites to other members, and maximum of 5 tweets per day. We would also be given permission to post our own commentary/tweets of our choice which could be product promotions.

Paid membership includes unlimited sites, 300 comments a month, access to cross linking, and 300 tweets a month.

Managing their Comments should require 4 parts when they setup a Campaign (they should have the option to enable and disable campaigns as well):

Sites – Specify the RSS for the sites which they want to have commentary delivered to. The system will subscribe to their RSS of the site(s) so that when the RSS has been updated with a new post, the system will then activate the process for that site according to the specifications of the campaign.

Category/Groups – Define which categories/groups the sites posts would apply to. This could get fancy with an option to spider a site and automatically match the site to all the current categories we provide based on search results. There should also be an option for clients to input a category suggestion. Any campaigns that have a suggested category would be queued for processing later and would not be active till admin reviews and approves the campaign.

Frequency – Specify how often comments will be posted. This is tricky since the frequency needs to have a degree of randomization, and support higher and lower frequencies. Typical commentary on most active sites will take place in two stages. After an initial post there might be a high level of commentary within the 1st 72 hours of posting, then after that, the second stage is a random frequency. Eg. They might get 10-20 comments within 3 days, and then receive maybe 3 commentaries per week after that. The frequency option needs to allow for this kind of flexibility.

Other Options – This allows the user to specify if they want the campaign to also cross promote their sites with commentary post to other sites, and an option to also post tweets to their own accounts about new commentary. The cross promotion means that the links will only be in the commentary user profile (ie. with each comment you submit your name/alias, email, and website address). This is where the link to other members sites would be used, while the comment posted would be just another relevant commentary for the site.

The Twitter option would require its own set of options. Ie. Frequency of tweets, if tweets should be limited to just their own blog/site commentary, or if other random tweets should be made on related sites or topics.

Users should be able to specify names, emails, and websites that they would like to have associated with their comments, and also have the option to have random names, emails, websites used.

With all options, there needs to be the option to also upload a CSV file to handle multiple sites,category,frequency,options settings.



Admin backend:

The admin backend would require three main functions:

1. Support Ticket system (can be 3rd party)
2. Membership Management (can be 3rd party)
3. Content Management of Comments (using the Hermes system)

The 3rd party systems only mean that its important that the program be able to easily interface or bridge with other programs and their user management. The CMC is a custom system. You can view and test it at the following address:

http://ucss.mydbs1.hopto.org/

This can only create the content, but it has no ability to deliver content. The system would need to be modified to enable delivery of comments to site members. There are a few ways this could be done.

1. Site Plugin
2. CURL interface

There are issues to both of these. If we go with a plugin, it will ensure that comments get posted properly to the site and by-pass any CAPTCHA measures the client might have in place to protect their site against spam. It will also allow us to enable and disable the commenting on individual sites and ensure that for free clients, our own comments are not deleted. The downside to this is that we would need to develop plugins/components for the various CMS out there, and this would not work with hosted services like wordpress.com and blogger.com. In these cases, only a CURL interface would work.

Going with just CURL, we are facing CAPTCHA in many instances. Using decaptcher.com we can bypass this, but the client will have to have the cost passed on to them. This is where a plugin would be superior to just a CURL solution. A combination of both to be able to serve both hosted and owned sites would be best. However, if you have a more creative solution that would work better than what I have suggested, you are welcome to introduce it.

Part of the comment generation requires that each comment has a unique name, email, and sometimes a website address. Names can be the same if not similar in some instances, as can emails when posting to different sites. The website address that posts should be one of the members who are using comment link promotion option so that they can gain links. This part of the system could use the Hermes system to generate names/aliases, while we will use a handful of domains with catchall to generate random email addresses. Website addresses are optional.

Access to the Hermes system can be provided for development once accepted.

Further details can be provided as well.

The successful freelancer will deliver a complete system that can be used immediately. There is a good chance that additional enhancements, and updates will be required for plugins/delivery method, and for the system itself. We will likely contact the successful freelancer for these updates and pay for the work accordingly. If the freelancer is interested in a join venture arrangement for the support updates, then please specify in your bid so that we may further discuss prior to awarding the successful bidder.

To clarify, a joint venture arrangement would be where we will pay you for the work to be completed, possibly at a reduced rate, and continue to give you a % of all paid memberships for ongoing support. You may submit your proposal as part of the bid for whatever you believe would be reasonable. The advantage to us is that the freelancer will now have a more vested interest in delivering a good quality system. The disadvantage is that our programming costs might be higher. This is a trade off we are willing to do for quality.

Payment terms can be done by escrow agreed milestone completions, or payment in full upon delivery.

Being based on popular CMSs, PHP is the preferred programming method, but not a must. Hermes is PHP/MySQL based. However, if you know ROR or C++ or have other web/server methods of delivery for this system, those are welcome.

We look forward to working with the successful freelancer.

Happy Bidding!