Using Commons for Collaborative Blogging Platform

After nearly a year of research into collaboration tools, the release of Drupal Commons for D7 brought all the pieces together for our project in a an unexpected way. The project is entered in the Knight News Challenge. Please head over to http://kng.ht/15XiUJN to add your feedback or applaud the project so we can get BLDG20 made and contributed back to the Drupal Community.

Give some feedback at the Knight News Challenge on BLDG20

We work with bloggers all over the world supporting their work and culminating every year in Blog Action Day -- a day where bloggers everywhere post about one issue. We have interviewed bloggers working in Syria, monitoring elections in Africa, reporting the Arab Spring, and many more with the single goal of developing new methodologies and tools to support their incredible work.

We tested all kinds of tools trying to find ways to support collaboration and keep bloggers, who often work independently, in communication with each other. The lightning strike moment was the "Follow" and "Contributors" terminology and setup of Drupal Commons 3.0.

We've worked from this framework with some key changes that showcase the flexibility that makes Drupal and Commons such a great starting point.

Groups are not longer called "Groups" in BLDG20. Instead, they are "Stories." The Stories are first drafts, not public content. Bloggers more naturally form relationships and collaborate around creating a finished product -- in this case, long form blog posts. There is never a moment where they say, "Do I want to join a group about this topic." Instead they either follow a Story, because they are curious. Or contribute a "Note" (posts) or ask a Question. The users join and form groups seamlessly without ever being asked to "Become a member."

We have left Following on for Topics and Users so that community members still get a custom stream of Stories that interest them.

To breakdown the changes in language:
Users -> Creators
Groups -> Stories
Posts -> Notes
Questions -> Questions
Wiki -> Disabled for now

Commons 3 had most of what we needed out of the box. There was some digging to find out where to make changes, but the flexibility is incredibly powerful. The only modules we've added are for rich links in the Notes and Questions, and are currently integrating Joyride Jquery to give new users tours.

Our hope is that with funding from Knight we can do this right and make contributions back to the community. Let me know any thoughts or questions. And please take a look and provide feedback on New Challenge site

We are in testing phase right now, but will have alpha preview to share very soon.