iHacky code review

I am recently very fond of using facebook, so I was excited to try out the iHacky application which is a facebook application designed for developers to communicate and network among themselves.

Installation was very easy. Since I already have a facebook account, I simply followed the link given in their project page and with a simple click of button, the iHakcy application was added to my profile immediately. After trying it out, I decided to check out the source code and try to set up my own iHacky following the instructions on the Developer's guide. That turns out to be not as smooth as the installation. I faced some problem with setting up the Apache server. In the end, it took me a long time to set it up but I am still having error with the PHP and I understand why the team suggested us that we could skip installing it locally.

I am not familiar with PHP, but from the source code, they look pretty organized with plenty of comments. All in all, this application is still in early development phase and I see a lot of improvement in it.

I installed iHacky on Monday and everything was working fine, but as of right now, the iHacky application is down. Clicking on the tabs would lead me to an error pages, so I will give the suggestions based on what I remember from using iHacky on Monday.

In turn of the application's functionality and interface, I have the following suggestions:

1. Allow user to change the hackystat account detail.

2. Provides visual representation of ranking on the facebook profile page. For example, it could be done in an pyramid form like how "Who has the biggest brain" does. It would encourage people to use iHacky more often in order to get to the top.

3. Provides more informative details on the user's profile page. Right now, it is only displaying "My Last time stamp is".

4. Shows which of your friends are also using the application. Right now, I can do so by going to the iHacky development page. It could be just me but it literally took me a while before I remember that I can actually visit the application's homepage by clicking on the tiny link in the bottom of the page to see who is also using the application. Including the friends list in the iHacky homepage or in another tab would be helpful as it would encourage people to use the application if they know a lot of their friends are also using the applications.

5. Allow people to contact the developers directly. Maybe they could have the developers listed there. Facebook can show "I am online" if the user is logged on. So if user can see one of the developer is online, they can message he directly for questions.

Some other suggestions in term of documentation:
1. It would be nice to have a troubleshooting section. When I test my PHP5 installation for the first time, it didn't work. I followed the instruction to set up a test.php but then it only showed an error page.

2. The Wamp could be listed as one of the required components, with a note saying it is for easy installation of the PHP and other components.

All in all, this is still in early development phase and I really look forwards to seeing the end product. Being a Facebook addict I would surely use it everyday to network with other developers.