We at Morris Communications have used Drupal for several high-profile projects beginning with Bluffton Today more than three years ago, and leading up to the recent launch of WhereTraveler.com for our visitor publication group.
Recently we made a formal decision to proceed with Drupal as a basis for a site management system that we intend to deploy to all of our daily newspapers. Drupal won't do everything but it will be at the core of much site functionality, giving both journalists and community members the ability to create and manage content and interaction. We expect to interoperate with a wide universe of other technologies in the process.
We've also made a formal decision to open-source both the code we develop, and the development process.
This is a significant step. We've already contributed significantly to Drupal by open-sourcing some of the tools Ken Rickard developed -- such as the Domain Access and Mysite modules -- before he moved on to Palantir.
But this goes beyond that. We intend to release not only some more Drupal modules as we create them, but also some base templates and possibly an Drupal "install profile" that could automate the very tedious process of configuring Drupal to meet the needs of a large newspaper.
Open development means others will be included in the development process. We've begun by including developers from some of our newspapers who will be collaborating with Morris DigitalWorks personnel and possibly some contractors. As we get our processes and procedures and communications tools up in running, we'll begin inviting others.
Our project is just getting started and we're not ready to get into the details just yet. But I do want to plant the seed of collaboration right now. If you're working on something similar, we may be able to help one another.
We all tend to fall into old habits on our projects, creating one-off implementations and failing to share back to the community any improvements we might make.
Let this serve as a call to everyone: Open source isn't just about free beer and free speech. It's also about lifting everyone by sharing improvements.
Comments
This sounds great
At the risk of massive understatement, this sounds like an amazing step for an organization to take.
This line: "We all tend to fall into old habits on our projects, creating one-off implementations and failing to share back to the community any improvements we might make." -- rings so true. While it can be more time consuming and complex to create a generalized solution, it is often only incrementally more difficult, and the payoff for developing openly and giving back far outweigh any costs -- at least that's been out experience.
Thanks for making this an explicit goal of your development. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of this.
Cheers,
Bill
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FunnyMonkey
"We all tend to fall into
"We all tend to fall into old habits on our projects, creating one-off implementations and failing to share back to the community any improvements we might make." - I think that's exactly the right wording: there is no lack of good intentions, but sharing back somehow always gets put on the back burner.
Expect some web-to-print modules and InDesign scripts from me come september. I'll be working on them almost fulltime in august and september, and there is some really cool stuff in the pipeline that I'd love to share.
Would be good...
If you'r working on Web to print, it would be good for you to hook up with Dan Pacheco and the Printcasting project.
Wheretraveler mobile
Would you mind telling us if the Wheretraveler mobile site is just the result of a customized Drupal theme or is there more to it?
Thanks,
Geoff
Mobile isn't Drupal
The mobile (iphone) site is a one-off.
@Steve: I've mailed Dan
@Steve: I've mailed Dan Pacheco a few weeks ago to give my take on what's possible and to offer some help or advice, but I think he's still mulling it over as I haven't heard back from him yet. The stuff I'm working on is not meant for fully automated publishing, although I think it would provide a good starting point for what Dan is trying to achieve - I'm working on two-way interaction between Drupal and InDesign, among other things.
Apologies for not getting back to you
Hi,
I just saw this in this thread. July was a busy time, and if I didn't get back to you I offer my apologies.
I vaguely remember someone talking about using Adobe InDesign for web-to-print. We have also looked into using it for Printcasting, going as far as talking to the Adobe InDesign Server team. Ultimately we concluded we couldn't use it based on the 100% open source requirement for our Knight News Challenge grant. That doesn't mean that we can't offer InDesign Server APIs (or any commercial systems for that matter) as an option. It just means that Printcasting must be able to perform all of its key functions without any commercial requirements.
In the meantime, we've been having great success with using a tool called html2ps in conjunction with FPDF. The most exciting discovery is that we're able to design publication templates in CSS, with all the richness of a CSS-driven Web site, including both graphics and typography. The resulting web page is then passed to FPDF to create a PDF file.
The nice thing about this approach is that any Web designer is able to create print templates, either by hand or using whatever CSS web publishing tool they're most comfortable with. Maybe one day all print publications will be designed as Web pages -- fully completing the web-to-print circle. At that point will there be any fundamental difference between web and print? I'm thinking not -- at least for Printcasting.
Interesting!
I would love to be a part of this, sounds like it would benefit my upcoming print and online projects : )
Modules only or recepies also
Hi,
sounds like a great step forward for online-magazines and drupal.
I was wondering though if you're thinking of sharing code only, or if you're sharing recepies. CCK and Views are probably at the core of every news site, but how do you tie them together? How do you implement a workflow? How do you manage digital media assets? Those are questions I ran into after I got past the first steps with available modules.
More and more it's how you put the pieces toghether these days with drupal.
If you and your team would elaborate on that, that would be a great benefit.