This may not quite qualify as a tip or a trick - it is more of a subtle, almost trivial, change in the way the tag block is used that I am trying, plus I have a suggestion for a mod that I think would help.
As some of you know, I am on a bit of a quest to see if there is a way to make my Dolphin sites more "engaging". I think that is one of the reasons for the abysmal failure rate here. The software seems good, but unlike almost any other open source system, the number of really successful sites seems to be few and far between.
I have looked at some sites I do think are engaging - one of them is the big dating site "PlentyofFish" - when Boonex announced 7.0 they also said they had looked at this site, but I am not sure what they took from it. One thing that makes it engaging, I think, is the way they show you other profiles / avatars when you are looking at any given profile. It is simply a strip of about eight other profile avatars that are at the top when you are looking at any profile. This naturally encourages "click around" behavior. I am currently working with a mod developer here to see if I can help make something like that happen.
The other way it is engaging - maybe not as significant, but fairly cool, is their "interests" section. Members enter their interests as a comma separated list. When this is displayed on the profile, each of these interests becomes "clickable" and if you click any one of them - for example "cooking" - a list of other members with that interest will be displayed. It recently occurred to me that this was really similar to the "tags" system on Dolphin. All that is required is a little tweak - change the name from "tags" to "interests" in the profile field, so members know what they are adding, and then change the language key for the block that you can put on the homepage.
Not really a big change - just a change in perspective that I think improves the site a bit. Now, only one problem. The "clickable" interests work fine on the home page block, but it is just regular text when you put this block on the profile. Does anyone know if it is possible, or how hard it would be, to make these interest tags clickable on the profile block as well? I think that would be pretty cool.
