Showcase of a Twitter clone, using Drupal.

Many times I've scratched my head at Drupal why I couldn't create a simple micro-blogging site. All the ingredients and modules are there, such as, Views, Rules, Flag, User management modules, CCK, Content Types. Yet one part was failing, which goes to the core of micro-blogging, to only list content of users you choose to follow. You can flag users, but you can not yet filter content to only list the nodes of the user you flagged.

However using Friendlist, now we can. The friendlist module (which I'm proudly co-maintaining) has the ability to list content created of the established users relations. This is through use of an unofficial patch, which is currently being tested. By creating this test site, I'm looking into how far Drupal can be used to clone Twitter. I think I've gotten quite far, I have not tested it extensively and I encourage you to jump in and see for yourself.

The module used are:
- Friendlist
- Views
- Rules
- Flag
- CCK
- Automatic Nodetitles
- Form Block
- Filefield
- ImageAPI
- Imagefield
- ImageCache
- Imagecache Profile Pictures
- Pathauto
- Quick Tabs
- Reg with Pic
- Time Ago
- Token
- String Overrides

* Not all these modules are required, but to create the Twitter clone, you do pretty much need them.

There are a bunch of user profiles pre-created based on Marvel characters. See the list here: http://druplr.ywamnation.com/characters. The all share the same password: marvel, except Captain America, who is reserved for the admin.

Feel free to log in on any of these accounts and test it out. Or spend some more time and register another Marvel character. That way you can test the Rules integration for email notification.

As you gathered from the url above, I have set up a test domain at http://druplr.ywamnation.com and used the name Druplr. I saw in one of the Group discussions and figured it was good to keep building/testing with that name.

The idea is to create a Twitter clone, but it could mimic any other micro-blogging flavor. The theme is kept inline with Garland, using the Minelli fixed width theme. Basic css is used to modify things a bit. Since this was created as a test site, it does not intent to work on all browser platforms, expect display flaws - especially when using IE. It was developed on a MAC, so I've never even seen it in IE. So, if you test, please test with a Mozilla browser.

NOTE: I've only created a few connections / updates for the first few characters. Feel free to extend testing this showcase and leave some feedback here.