Service provider interview: YouNet

We are starting our interview series with individuals and companies creating all kinds of products and solutions for Oxwall. The first in the spotlight is YouNet company. Here we go:


YouNet is a leading niche social network consulting company with more than 120 engineers. We offer full services for Oxwall including Consulting, Plugins, Templates and Customization. With more than 4 years of experience, having completed 400+ social projects, we are the best partner for your success.

Q: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your experience in web development.

A: Formed in 2008, we are a company dedicated to services on open source platforms for social networks. Over the years, we have developed many useful tools and solutions for social network development projects. We have completed more than 400 projects so far including governmental projects.

Q: What level of projects are you ready to tackle for the benefit of Oxwall users?

A: We provide full-cycle services starting from consulting, design, development and maintenance. Consulting is very important as it is the first step to build a successful project in terms of cost, schedule, and quality. During consultation, we synthesize our technical experience with our client business concepts to develop a feasible and successful social network.

Q: What sort of client-company communication model do you employ? Share the rules and regulations if you have any.

A: One of our strengths is the communication process with clients. We use Online Project Management Tracking System (Jira) in which clients can work/communicate with us as a leader of project so that they can monitor all activities/changes of the project with Agile Model. In addition, we also provide chat and phone for further communication when needed.

younet
Figure 1: YouNet Communication Process

Q: Do you see any particular shortcomings within Oxwall software that need immediate attention?

A: The first prominent shortcoming of Oxwall is that it does not provide rich options for Admin configuration, especially for layout customization; For instance, it seems that widget option to drag/drop is not supported in many pages, but only Homepage and Dashboard. The provided layout and functionality also introduce some uncommon designs, such as when users want to embed a YouTube video link in Feeds, they have to copy whole embed code instead of URL only, which may make users confused.

Q: Do you have any plans to develop and release purely Open Source products for Oxwall?

A: We plan to develop most popular plugins for Oxwall platform by the end of this year. With these plugins, we hope to bring the community a complete productivity suit to further advance their social network to the next level.

Q: Are you currently developing your own plugins and templates for Oxwall? What can we expect in the nearest future?

A: Yes, we are working on some plugins. We are going to have a dedicated team making templates and plugins for Oxwall as well. That is our commitment in supporting Oxwall community.


Check out YouNet store profile and feel free to ask your own questions in comments bellow. We hope to have company representatives answer them.

Oxwall Launchpad from Skalfa LLC

Good news!

Our good friends at Skalfa announced the launch of professional services for Oxwall.

Skalfa is not the first company to offer commercial assistance for Oxwall software, but this offer is unique. It’s a service from the original Oxwall authors, since Oxwall was created as one of Skalfa projects. Also, it’s positioned as “Oxwall for everybody” and claimed to be “affordable for projects with any budget”.

All in all, emerging commercial services are a good sign and a valuable addition for the Oxwall project. We encourage other companies to take notice and fulfill the growing demand.

Feel free to check what Skalfa has to offer: skalfa.com/launchpad.

Oxwall team

Oxwall Market Partners oDesk

Dear friends,

For quite a while now we’ve been looking into introducing improvements for Oxwall Market to streamline its entire operation. To do that we’ve partnered with oDesk – the world largest and fastest-growing online community of freelance developers.

For your convenience we’ve placed oDesk widget on the Oxwall Market page, listing all available developers pre-screened as qualified for Oxwall Jobs. The database of contractors can be searched right from within Oxwall Market, with the option to filter results by hourly rates, location, feedback score, etc., to find the best developer for the job.

We believe the partnership will boost Oxwall Market efficiency, and bring the community directly in contact with professional developers offering quality help.

Oxwall Market Partners oDesk

Complete your Oxwall Market profile

Oxwall Market (read: the place where you can post your Oxwall-related tasks and find a skilled specialist to execute them) is in its infancy yet but we already see ways to improve it.

Now to list your profile at Oxwall specialists section you need to:

1) check job types you are willing to perform;
2) write more detailed description about your services.

You can do that on profile edit page. Please note that if you don’t fill both questions you will not be listed as a specialist in Oxwall Market.

This new detailed description aims at creating your advertisement message, not merely listing your profile as it was before. This is the proper place to let others know more why they should work with you, not anyone else.

IMPORTANT: Developers, please do not advertise your services in Jobs section. It is only intended for customers to post jobs that you can respond to. We will have to remove such listings because they cause confusion.

Oxwall Market – post your Oxwall-related jobs

Need to hire an Oxwall expert for a one-time gig or for continuous support? Need a helping hand with installation, troubleshooting, translation, theme design?

As of today we open Oxwall Market – a place to post your jobs for developer community. One of the available specialists will then contact you regarding your listing and offer their service.

We hope to engage more specialists to meet sophisticated needs of your project and healthy activity in the Oxwall Market will surely help. So enough waiting with that project you keep postponing – start today, add your listing and run an excellent community site using Oxwall software.

Developers

By editing your profile and checking which types of services you offer you can participate in Oxwall Market and start building your freelance business with Oxwall.