During the past several Maryland Drupal meetups, I've mentioned building a simple Drupal site during an event in order to go into detail regarding building a site as well as troubleshooting issues that come up during development. Sean Powell (esdott) brought this up during this meetup and sparked interest regarding this. It then occurred to me that instead of building a simple useless site, we should take our energy and build for a worthwhile cause and learn.
During the next month the MD Drupal group will plan and execute said plans with the final result providing a Drupal website to a non-profit who otherwise can not afford any development costs. We will keep track of the progress within this discussion, accept suggestions, and create documentation to be contributed back to Drupal.org. Please let us know if you'd like to help or just keep up to date on the progress.
Comments
Sign me up. Let me know where
Sign me up. Let me know where you need me at, I can step in at just about any phase. Looks like a fun project.
Great Idea
Who are we going to build the site for? I'd love to participate.
This sounds like a great idea.
I'm happy to help out. Keep me in the loop.
Choosing the NPO
The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators was floated as a contender. Their plans are fairly ambitious, which makes the project potentially really interesting. Also, they have lots of pretty pictures.
That would be rad. I'm in for
That would be rad. I'm in for a GNSI site. The more ambitious the project, the better Drupal shines.
Requirements
I believe the GNSI guy had a basic requirements doc (or documentation from which such requirements can be derived) already set up and researched. Just having that puts this project right up front imo.
Available for review?
I don't suppose someone has an electronic copy of said requirements?
req
Britt Griswold would? I don't remember - I'm the new guy and terrible with names, but I think that's it. http://drupal.org/user/656834 Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
Building a Non-profit Site
Yes it is me. I am humbled by everyones enthusiasm. I am looking forward to really learning some Drupal with all your help, if the group does settle on the GNSI as worthy. I spent a few days working on an outline of the site, and it is ambitious. It represents an ideal based on the organizations mission, projects and management needs. We will se how far we can get! I will wait for the Basecamp link to load an outline. It will be interesting to see how experienced developers re-outline it into Drupal module needs.
Britt
Interested
Definitely interested in this.
Interstedx2
If it's the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, I am at a minimum interested in being kept in the loop, and may, depending on how my schedule shapes up, be able to contribute. It would be great to learn from the more seasoned Drupalers out there.
Update
Hey all
I am working on a basic plan of action and getting an electronic requirements from Britt @GNSI. I will have a quick wiki page up to jump start what we are doing. From there, I will create a plan in basecamp where I will give everyone who wants it, access.
The wiki page will be up today. We will use it to iron out the details of the plan. More to come.
Sean
Sean, let's not use a wiki
Sean, let's not use a wiki page and just go directly into Basecamp. Using a wiki page and basecamp at the same time will get way too confusing and result in some information getting lost. Once we finish the site we can go ahead and create the wiki page which will detail the process.
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Ron Williams
temporary
Ron - I agree. It is more for the beginning and not permanent. It will help bridge the gap from the group to basecamp. It will be very temporary.
Fun Project
It sounds like a fun project. I wish I had time to work on it, but am over my head right now with...well, just about everything in my life. :-) Anyway, I wouldn't mind being in the loop so I can check in anytime I do get a free moment.
Basecamp access
Hey guys
For those who want to contribute to the project please send an email to sean [at] pmgdirect dot net with your first, last name, and email address.
Don't forget about the documentation
I would love to participate, but due to time constraints, I am unable. However, I just wanted to mention that since the maintenance on this project will be up to the non-profit of choice, keep in mind that documentation both technical(readme.txt and comments in code) and user-related (how to...) should keep this project in production mode as opposed to a proof of concept/pilot mode.
That's my two cents.
Follow Me : www.twitter.com/akilah
We're doing something similar here in Houston
How did this go? Any tips?
The project is still in
The project is still in progress, but due to the site now processing transactions I've taken over development of the site. I will be presenting the overall how-to back to the group at the next meetup or the following one. We had very good progress on the theme portion of work and that definitely saved the organization a bit of money. We were also lucky that the group we selected was a artist group and could create there own designs.
Send me a message if you have any questions and we may be able to chat via phone.
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Ron Williams