Contest Work Flow

As I started thinking about the Create Contest page, I realized that I hadn't thought enough yet about the contest work flow. How does a prospective contest admin request that a contest be created? Who can see the help information we'll make available for contest admins? How does a contest admin get selected?

So, in the interests of having as few major changes later as possible, I'm going to take a moment to lay out how I think it'll work.

Step One

A prospective contest admin views the site as a visitor. There will be a page they can access that will have some basic info on what's required to run contests, a "Want To Run A Contest?" sort of page.

That page will have a link form they can fill out to be made a contest admin. They will need to be logged in as a member to view the form and submit it. That way their user name is tagged to the request.

We'll require enough info on that form to discourage tire kickers.

Step Two

The site administrator will have a spot where requests to be made contest admins can be approved.

Step Three

Once a member is made a contest admin (this will be a field in the User object), they will be able to see on their "My Contests" page a link to request a contest be created. They'll fill out the basic information for the contest, and also include some budget info (so we know they've thought enough about the contest to make it work).

Until their request is processed, it shows up as Pending on their My Contests page.

Step Four

The site administrator will be able to see and approve or reject these requests. An approved request shows up as active on the contest admin's My Contests page. A rejected request shows up as such on their My Contests page.

Step Five

The contest admin can then fill out the rest of the contest information (deadlines, etc), and start to take applications for the contest.

That seems like a reasonable work flow for the process, and gives me a number of pages I need to create.

The first would be the "Want To Run A Contest?" page. There won't be much on that right now since it'll be mostly information, but there will be a link to the form to request to be made a contest admin.

That's the second page, the form.

The third page would be the one that lets the site administrator see those requests, and approve or reject them. I'll also need a mechanism to notify the member that their request was approved or rejected.

The fourth page would be the one that lets the contest admin request a contest be created.

The fifth page would be the site adminstrator's way to approve or reject those requests.

The sixth page would be the contest admin's My Contests page.

The seventh page would be the one to let the contest admin edit the contest info.

That's a fair amount to work through, but each one is doable based on what we already know. Other things I will want to do before too long include:

o) Make user names unique in the system, so no two members have the same user name.

o) Add an email address to the user's profile, and require that the email be verified in order to receive site notifications

o) And/or, set up a site based messaging system that stores messages on the site and possibly emails notifications of the messages.

o) Change the "you are not logged in" page so that clicking the Sign In link on it will make sure they get to where they were trying to go when they finish signing in. So if they're trying to go to the form to request being a contest admin, they get there instead of the front page after they sign in.

Those will each require some new techniques.