Update: Bumping this rather old post up and over to the Drupal Dojo in hope that it can spur some 'can drupal do this' learning and workshopping.
In the context of a music-arts community site, I'm looking to provide an easy way for registered users to create some of the following types of content:
- feature - story/blurb/spotlight on and artist, venue, tastemaker, etc.
- interview - interviews with artists and tastemakers.
- review - reviews of concerts, cds, dvds
- preview - upcoming concert/event
Most of these content types are available as microformats and/or structured blogging, can be easily created on Wordpress and Movable Type, but not Drupal (although Drupal site like GoingOn proves it is possible).
From what I've gathered and previous advice, it seems that CCK is a better, more flexible option, yet I haven't seen any templates (similar to Structured Blogging) in the wild. Is anyone aware of any related development and/or see any value in this sort of thing being available to the community?
Comments
So it's structured these days? Cool!
I'm not 100%, but I think the answer is no, there is no templating for this in Drupal. Beyond that, cool post, and thanks for hipping me to this -- everything else was familiar, but "structured blogging" was new. If you are going to go this route, I'd suggest looking at it as a question of how to use Drupal categories (it's native taxonomy system) to organize the structure's metadata where possible, since while CCK will make use of them when they're available, it's node design forms aren't integrated with category creation.
This is what I know....
Microformats
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging).
There is a large ongoing effort to produce a wide array of additional microformats.
Structured Blogging
Structured Blogging provides tools to create and syndicate structured information (aka Microformats).
So how does this all relate to Drupal?
To paraphrase both Richard and D'arcy - CCK + templates (either at the file level, such as node-content-widget.tpl.php or using Content template) can get you microformatted custom content types. Something like Structured Blogging, but implemented within the structure of the CMS, rather than as a bolted-on xml parsing/generating utility.
OK - Most of the structured content types I'm interested in, are already available (or in development) as a microformat. What we don't have are a lot of CCK templates or tools like Structured Blogging that would enable easy authoring of these microformats.
Would be nice to get some feedback from others who are more in the know. Are there any ongoing efforts to provide tools and templates to author microformats? Are there still people working directly with some of the folks behind Microformats and/or Structured Blogging? Possibly I'm missing it completely and we simply don't need a way to easily author microformats?
Although I'm probably not the one to take the lead on this, I would like to contribute any ongoing or future effort.
Gus Austin
There already is a Structured Blogging module
Ashish informed us that they actually created a custom Structured Blogging module for GoingOn. It seems like you could take that functionality and apply it to CCK?
Gus Austin
New microformats group
You can come discuss this further at Microformats in Drupal. I want to start a discussion on how we can integrate microformats into Drupal.
http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk
THAT was a quick answer!
~ ben melançon
member, Agaric Design Collective
http://AgaricDesign.com - "Open Source Web Development"
benjamin, agaric
Keep me up on this!
I'm immersed in other work now, but intend to do a lot with microformats, structured blogging, and Drupal soon (a guy in my town has a local civic groups, town government, and business portal based on said concepts at MyNatick.org, which is Joomla, but we may move it to Drupal).
Anyway, I'm very glad to see some activity with these ideas, and ask to be kept informed on this thread, or by e-mail-- I'd like to help out.
~ ben melançon
member, Agaric Design Collective
http://AgaricDesign.com - "Open Source Web Development"
benjamin, agaric
contemplate?
I will admit that I understand only partially the structured blogging ideas, but I think that the contemplate module might get you close to what you need.
http://drupal.org/project/contemplate
It allows for easy templating of CCK content types. If you do create some contemplate templates for structured content it would be great to add them to a contemplate "recipes" section in the handbook.
The other solution to get you to structured content is to use a node specific tpl file (assuming you use phptemplate theme) as detailed in the handbook here: http://drupal.org/node/17565 and covered in tutorial style here: http://drupal.org/node/62468
--
Knaddison Family | mmm Beta Burritos
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
The biggest hurdle is that
The biggest hurdle is that microformats need information from several fields rather than just one, and I'm not sure yet how you would identify which CCK fields need to be grouped together for a specific microformat. There has been an outstanding feature request on CCK for a long time for combo fields -- fields that are collections of other fields, like an address. It's outstanding because no one who knows how to do it has had the time or need to create it, not because no one is interested. I would think that is one way to approach microformats -- a combo CCK field that uses the CCK formatters to provide an option to output the results in the approriate format.
The other approach would be to create some content type templates with a collection of fields needed for a certain format, then create a theme for that content type that outputs the microformat. I just took a pass at creating import/export capability for CCK fields (see http://drupal.org/node/99446). You could use that to set up the right fields, create exports of a field collection for each microformat, then provide the exported code to others to import into their own databases. That sort of approach would work for things like hcards, but maybe not for other microformats.
On a couple of points on
On a couple of points on here I agree with you. I have been thinking that the idea of going with pre-formatted schema's for microformats may probably be the easiest and least costly way to go, they can be mapped to exposed fields from modules like CCK, event module and profile module (with some recent work thats been done).
The only issue is then down the user assigning the correct values to the correct fields. This can cause user generated errors, but there are microformat checkers out there that can check over the code generated and make sure it's ok - may be something that can be integrated into the editor (i.e. a button to check formatting using AJAX).
One thing I have found out is that the hAtom microformat is the easiest to do, and can be done right off the bat by just editing your node.tpl.php file. Of course, the only issue here is that all nodes are then marked up with hAtom - but in some ways that may be advantageous. Technorati and google both parse these formats and add the information to their own databases so your site will be indexed better in their search engines.
Tane Piper
Digital Spaghetti
http://digitalspaghetti.me.uk
Any developments over the past few months?
The general idea is to give users an easy/structured way to create and syndicate specific kinds of content. User want's to write a review, post an event, recommend a product, etc.: provide them with a specific content type for each task - some tools to syndicate the content (like this? http://structuredblogging.org/outputthis.php) - possibly some ways to integrate external sites and services (for example, for an event: pull in photos from flickr - videos from youtube - purchase/download options).
These posts are somewhat related:
A public shared content type repository? - http://groups.drupal.org/node/3094
Social networking: Allow users to personalize their theme - http://groups.drupal.org/node/4013
Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions
Gus Austin
This is a great idea and a
This is a great idea and a bit of structure would really help as long as the administrator of the site will be able to choose the exact options he wants. I can't work with templates because they are not flexible enough. Another thing would be to have a purchase option for tickets to concerts. I just bought Leeds Festival tickets and it took me three days to finally find a page where I can pay using paypal and get them delivered to my home.
Leeds Festival Tickets
I understand the way you
I understand the way you feel. Thanks it works for me.