SteemMakers' review process has been streamlined

Today is a big day for SteemMakers: we've finally added functionality to the site that allows authorized reviewers to add posts themselves. This takes a lot of work out of my and other peoples hands and frees up a lot of time to be spent more useful.

SteemMakers

SteemMakers is a steadily growing community which focuses on uniting, helping and rewarding makers and DIYers on the Steem blockchain. You can find more info about us and how to contact us on our website www.steemmakers.com.

Curation workflow needed upgrading

SteemMakers is being maintained by volunteers with no profit in mind. Most of us have a day job or are studying and everything is done in leisure time with the best intentions.
As I pointed out in an earlier article the review process needed more automation. It was too centralized and cumbersome. It involved quite some manual verification and work which made me a central point of failure and takes time away that could be better spent elsewhere.

Perparation work integrated

In a previous post I explained how I'm exploring the integration of SteemConnect in the SteemMakers website, both server and client side. In another article I showed the basic functionality to add a post and how it was working in an isolated test environment. The final step is off course integrating everything into the site so it can actually all be used.

Add posts

Since only a select number of people can use the functionality I will showcase it with a short animation:

The example starts with the reviewer not yet logged in. Notice the first article "DIY paneled interior door".
The reviewer can log in with his credentials in a safe way using SteemConnect.
He is then redirected back to the SteemMakers website and gets an indication of his logged in state as he see his username and thumbnail. Under the menu there is an 'add post' entry which is only available to a select number of users. Everybody can log in but at this time you can't do anything, only authorized reviewers get extra functionality.
Following that link the reviewer ends up on a new page that makes the addition of articles more streamlined.
The reviewer can just copy paste a link to the article and parse the link. This is not necessary he could as well fill in the fields but obviously copy/pasting is more convenient. Here I copied a link to the "Simple AM-band radio transmitter using an arduino Uno" article.
Once parsed the reviewer can optionally fill the discoverer field, if not filled his own account is used as discoverer.
Next step is to validate the information entered. A preview is given as feedback.
For better content categorization it is required to select at least one keyword.
Then just hit the submit button to add the article to the database.
The article has now been added to the site which can be verified by navigating to the home page.

Next steps

The feature is completely functional and is now being used in a select circle. This will allow us to get a better feeling of it all and see if we need further improvements. Some feedback has already pointed to some small changes. We also thought of some extra verification steps that should be added. And last but not least, the UI needs some further polishing.