All About Oikos

One of the major requests for improvement on the first version of Oikos, was for more ways to personalize the Oikos experience. People felt very restricted by the few options. We agreed that something should be done to expand the ways people could make Oikos their own.

Members of the first version of Oikos had two pages, one for self-expression, one for system information. These pages used a very rigid widget system and were difficult to personalize.

But we’ve been improving everything. Oikos V2 has more pages, and the widgets are WAY more flexible. Some features (like comments, blogs, and calendar) have been pulled out of widget form and have been made into full pages so that there’s more breathing room. Things are a little different, but we’re sure you’re going to like the changes.

The header for My Pages holds your avatar and status message. On the far right-hand side of the header are buttons for each of the pages in My Pages. Read on to get an overview of each page.

The Wall is the most exciting new feature of Oikos V2. Here’s where you make use of the revamped widgets. There are widgets for uploading photos, videos, audio and text. You can place these widgets anywhere on your wall. You can also set a background color, or upload a background image.

The image above is an example of how flexible the wall is. Making that wall was a series of simple steps. First, a background image was uploaded. Then several text widgets were put on the wall, each filled with text. The font, size, and color of each widget was then set. The text widgets were moved around (some even overlapping a little) to get a jumbled sort of look. Finally a video was uploaded using the video widget. It was resized and moved around to fit on the wall just right.

The Profile page is where you can tell people a little bit about yourself. They can see a list of all your friends, and they can leave you comments.

In Oikos Version 1, each member had a widget on their page for media uploads, but it wasn’t enough. In the new Oikos, you have a full Media page, where you can create albums and upload photos, videos, and audio.

The blog was another feature that was changed from widget form and turned into a full page. Now there’s plenty of room to share your life with your friends.

The last page in My Pages is the Calendar. The calendar aggregates all the calendar events for all the groups you belong to. You can also add personal events to the calendar, making it easy to keep track of everything on your schedule.