February 2016

At about 10:30 on February 19, 2016, the Yorubaname.com dictionary became fully accessible to the general public.

This enabled users to not only search and view names in the dictionary, but to also submit names and suggest improvement for already published names.

The release on February 19, 2016 was the beta release of the Yorubaname.com dictionary, the result of about one year of active development.

What do we have in the Beta release?

We have a functional website for the dictionary, and a dashboard application to manage the names in the dictionary.

For a bit over twelve months, the Yorubaname development team has been neck deep busy, bringing to life the core functionalities that will be needed to run a name dictionary.

Little by little we saw the features slowly taking shape and about 2 months ago we agreed that the core foundation for the dictionary had been laid. We had made enough progress to have a functionally working dictionary although we might not have finished building all the features we wanted.

And this is what this Beta release is about: it signifies that the dictionary is now usable, with its core foundation laid, providing the groundwork for us to work on future features and improvements. I will quickly touch on some of the core part of the dictionary that is now functional with the beta release.

We now have a functional website
The Yorubaname dictionary is available at Yorubaname.com. It is the public facing part of the dictionary. In the beta release users can:

1. Search the database for names
2. View the details of names if already present in the database
3. Submit a name, if a name is not present
4. Submit feedback to names already published

Search the database for names
At the homepage at Yorubaname.com, a user can start their name search experience, by typing in the name in the search box. We provide an auto-complete feature to aid with this:

The auto-complete feature shows the first 5 entries that match what is being typed it is in no way a list of all the names in the dictionary. The user will know if a name exists by just pressing “enter” after entering the name, even if it does not show in the auto-complete bar.

Should a user have a specific name in mind, and know its tone marks, they would be happy to know that this beta version has an onscreen keyboard to help make their search as exact as possible:

Another alternative to aid with tone-marking is to grab the Yoruba keyboard layout we made for Windows and Mac users here.

View the details of names if already present in the database
When a name that has already been included in the dictionary is searched for, the user would be redirected to a result page with details like below;

The name entry page shows the following attributes of a name:

• Meaning and extended meaning
• Its morphology and gloss
• Geo location, i.e. region a name is mostly found or where the name originates
• Media links and famous people who bear the name
• Variants to the name

Power User tip: you can try searching the database not just for a name but also using an English word…for example search for “love”…this is part of a feature we are working on, a sort of baby name finder, that allows parent to find the perfect name for their kids by specifying certain attributes.

Submit a name, if a name is not present
If per chance the name you are looking for is not in the database, do not despair: we have a functionality that allows the user to submit a name. Our lexicographers would see the suggested name and work on adding it to the database.

Submit feedback to names already published
If a user thinks something is not accurate about a name, or some part of the attributes can be improved, then the user can contribute to making our dictionary more accurate by leaving a feedback for the name.

names can also be listed alphabetically:

This basically provides an overview of what we have worked on, with the beta release at Yorubaname.com. Next up is the back office: where I provide a brief overview of what comes with the beta release in terms of the dashboard application.

We now have a functional Dashboard

The website at Yorubaname.com is the public side of the Yorubaname dictionary, and is the major point of interaction for users. However, the past twelve months of work have not solely been about building this public facing side of the dictionary, we have also worked on the dashboard application: the part of Yorubaname.com used by lexicographers to manage the name entries in the dictionary.

With the beta release, we have been able to build the following core functionalities into the dashboard.

1. Ability to add, modify, and delete names in the database
2. Ability to publish names, which is the act of making names in the dictionary available to be seen on the dictionary website
3. Ability to see all the feedback given by users to name entries
4. Ability to see and react to names submitted by users
5. An access control system that allows admins to control what lexicographers can do and not do within the dashboard

Here are some screenshots of how the dashboard looks

Although a lot of work has gone into creating a very functional dashboard as of today, we have plans to make it much better in the coming months.

After a Beta, what’s next?

A lot.

The beta release was definitely a milestone, but it does not in any way mark the completion of our efforts with the Yorùbá Names Dictionary. There is still a lot to do and we are ever pumped up to continue what we have started.

Our backlog is bursting with interesting features, yet to be implemented: like the baby name finder tool I hinted at.

Apart from the new features, activities are on-going to refine the ones already implemented. Other things in the pipeline include a “Text to Speech” feature, which will give users the ability to hear the pronunciation of the listed names.

We will also be making the dictionary itself more wiki like, so as to enable more collaborative editing of name entries by users. Also, we plan to work on internalization which will allow the dictionary website to be available in other language apart from English. The list of the features still left to be built is almost endless and the interesting work is just beginning!

Another thing we would also like to do, moving forward, is to have the development of the application more in the open. This would involve us making our backlog public and moving the code base for both the dashboard and website to a public repository (most likely Github). This would be the first step towards having an open source tool out of the efforts of Yorùbá Names Dictionary, with the next step being extracting the core of yorubaname.com into a separate codebase.

Why open source? We believe and hope by making the software part of creating a dictionary (either for names or otherwise) available, we would be able to inspire others to create similar dictionaries, thereby contributing to capturing and preserving the wealth of knowledge that may be in languages that are not readily represented on the world wide web.

We wish to congratulate all who have been part of this journey thus far: the developers and volunteers who have helped in various capacities and the supporters who backed up the Indigogo fund.

Truth is…a ṣẹ̀ṣẹ̀ n mú ẹyẹ bọ̀ l’ápò ni.