Community

Paid user login only

adixit_mca81 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:36:44 +0000

Is there any module which provide the functionality of paid members login only into drupal system? i.e. in "create new account" page I want a option where user can select the membership type and pay for that membership through online payment gateway. Only those users should have access of login into drupal, who have pay for membership. I have used CiviCRM but I didn't find any feasible solution for this.

I will really appreciate any help on this.

Thanks in advance.

Community

FYI: og_forum D6 Version Available

attheshow — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:39:54 +0000

Just an FYI announcement. If anyone is using the og_forum(http://drupal.org/project/og_forum) module to automatically create forums to go along with user groups, and has been waiting for a D6 version, Paul Booker finally got a chance to port that this past week. I'm excited. It's still a "dev" release, but this new update looks very solid so far. Just thought I'd share.

Drupal in Education

What is your favorite kind of online communnity?

Laura — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:16:53 +0000

Community

Build a community ask/answer website | Individual

prophetsearcher — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:59:49 +0000

I'm looking for someone to build the code for a question and answer site for a small community. I'm currently leaning towards implementing Drupal, but open to persuasion for other base architectures.

Site should include functionality of the ask.metafilter site; developer should be familiar (or familiarize him/herself) with its uses and implementation.

Looking for swift turnaround, with attention to detail and someone with an easygoing nature.

Location does not matter.

Please provide a bid for the project, rather than an hourly rate.

I have already completed a detailed site map and description.

Note: This site is not intended to compete with ask.metafilter, but to service a specific community with narrow interests and expertise.

Social Networking Sites

Multimedia/Web Developer, PHP/Drupal Developer | Science Museum of Minnesota

bryan kennedy@drupal.org — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:52:42 +0000

This is a new job posting. We had previously posted a job for a similar position but were unable to hire the right candidate please consider this new posting.

The Science Museum of Minnesota is hiring a Drupal developer to work as part of the team that operates the award wining Science Buzz website and exhibit.
Application deadline: June 25, 2008.

Science Buzz is expanding in many ways. Your Drupal, PHP, and web coding skills will help us:

develop Mentor Buzz, an online community focusing on the needs of mentors and their students talking about science
create unique web features focusing on contemporary issues like the 35W bridge collapse, Hurricane Katrina, or even male pregnancy!
build web enabled exhibits that allow other museums around the country that allow their visitors to hook into the Science Buzz community
create new tools that help our visitors create content along with us...we like to share authority
and more...

You should be:

Comfortable exploring new ways to create web content and user interactions using the Drupal CMS

Writing custom theme code
Modifying and developing new modules
Learning new methods of development as a member of the Drupal community

Demonstrate experience and aptitude in:

Development and design of webpages using HTML and CSS
Programming dynamic web applications using PHP and MySQL
Manipulating files on remote webservers using FTP, SSH, and basic UNIX commands

Excited to work in an educational environment where quality code meats engaging learning experiences.

The Science Museum is a fun and exciting place to work with lots of passionate people who care about their jobs.

Read the full description at the Science Museum's jobs site.
Application deadline: June 25, 2008.

Learn more about the Science Museum, Science Buzz, and the museum's webteam.

Email me with any questions at: bkennedy [the at symbol] smm [that little dot] org

Twin Cities

Information-Sharing using FeedAPI and Buddylist

nickvidal — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:15:35 +0000

Edit 07 August 2008 Edit 07 August 2008 This proposal has been passed along to Knight Foundation for consideration. http://drupal.org/node/292587

Introduction

The Internet has empowered people to share information and ideas in unprecedented ways. It has enabled people to easily and at almost no cost to be both producers and consumers of information world-wide. Nowadays, people are able to have their own channel of information, broadcasting ideas, photos, videos, etc. This is very exciting and brings many opportunities for education, research, business and entertainment. However, it brings many challenges as well.

Problem

From the consumer’s point of view, with everyone having its own channel, how are people going to find what they want amidst all this avalanche of information? The Web as it is today, as complicated as it might be to publish something, seems already overcrowded with its billions of interconnected documents. How then are people ever going to find what they want when technology easies the publishing process even further and opens hundreds of millions of hidden worlds all filled with rich personal media?

From the producer’s point of view, how will he or she broadcast his or her channel so that it reaches those to whom it is relevant without interfering with those to whom it is not? How will his or her channel stand apart from the so many others that exist? How will he or she get his or her idea across and be heard in this open and democratic medium, where everyone has gained the right and the equal opportunity to have a voice?

Proposal

The idea is to connect people with news and information that matters to them the most by letting people themselves express what matters to them at an individual level. Each individual connects with their own personal social network to receive and disseminate information. This challenges the top-down model of information-sharing and gives place to a bottom-up model, where each person has a unique voice and opportunity to contribute and benefit. In this way, we hope to bring people closer together to discuss common interests and share information in a more open and democratic manner.

Overview

Each individual will have their own broadcasting channels (represented in form of tag clouds). These channels are connected through a trusted network of people (represented in form of tag links). The following figure is a prototype created in jCarousel representing an individual's personal social network and their corresponding broadcasting channels:

Much like Instant Messaging, users manage their contacts list by adding people they trust and with whom they share a common interest. However, instead of just displaying the contact’s name and avatar, a tag cloud of channels for each contact is displayed as well. This promotes the awareness of news and information being created and broadcasted within the social network. If a user becomes interested in a particular channel, he or she may subscribe to this channel and add it to his/her own personalized channel.

Creating news and information is as easy as writing an instant message and in a way it resembles blogging very much. However, instead of sending this information to someone in particular or to no one at all, the information is broadcasted to a particular channel. Everyone within the personal social network that is subscribed to this channel receives this information. The advantage of this approach is that it’s non-obtrusive and yet a target public still exists. The information travels within the social network as long as it remains relevant. Who decides the relevance of the information are the people themselves.

Development

We are currently building UFRGSWeb, UFRGS' rich-media social network. UFRGS is one of largest universities in Brazil, with over 30.000 people. Being so large, it's difficult to be aware of all the interesting research being developed at the university. Our goal is to provide students and professors with tools that will help them discover and share information with colleagues and society.

To achieve this goal, we are creating a symbioses of Orkut and YouTube from an academic perspective. We are adopting the Instant Syndicating Standards, a set of open standards for both Instant Messaging and Web-based applications to facilitate the discovery, aggregation and syndication of information.

The system is being built on top of Drupal, and makes extensive use of both the FeedAPI and BuddyList modules. The FeedAPI allows each individual to aggregate and syndicate information, while the BuddyList allows each individual to manage their personal social network for easy discovery of information.

A very early prototype of UFRGSWeb was created and may be accessed now (only in Portuguese, but it gives out a general idea of the project). The next version, to be launched by the end of this year, shall incorporate at least some of the functionalities mentioned in this proposal.

Video

Drupal Developer | SERRC

ryness — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:58:06 +0000

[Edit by site maintainer: Jobs can only be posted to a maximum of 4 groups. If you add this to more than 4 groups again I'll just delete it and block your account.]

We provide after-school services using a Drupal website. Our service is custom, as are our data needs. Attendance is not tradition in the sense of "present" or "absent", but instead we track student time per-task.

Current Attendance Problem
Currently attendance is submitted using a Webform. Using the Webform module for attendance is clunky because it does not allow teachers to submit a batch of student attendance information all at once. The attendance webform also does not recognized a logged-in teacher and pre-populate fields (school, student IDs, etc).

Attendance Solution Requirements

-- Custom-built Drupal “attendance” module that submits data into table(s).

-- Attendance form should use one webpage for all students (per-teacher).

-- Fields should be pre-populated with any information already in the database (school code, student ID, teacher ID). Some fields won’t be editable by the teacher.

-- Submitted attendance should calculate and increment student’s points in the User Points module.

-- The attendance form should be very quick and easy to submit, using tab key and “smart” form fields.

-- Submitted attendance edited through a simple/powerful web-based front end. Ideally using AJAX. Teachers/admins should be able to view any given student's past attendance records.

-- Error checking should take place to make sure duplicate records don’t exist.

Anyone interested in working on this custom module should email ryans [at] serrc [dot] org.

Community

Local Publishing Platform and Regional Aggregation Hub

billfitzgerald — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:40:23 +0000

Edit, July 10 This proposal has been passed along to the Knight Foundation for consideration: http://drupal.org/node/281048 End Edit

This project will create two complementary sites: a Local Publishing Platform paired with a Regional Aggregation Hub.

The Publishing Platform will support a range of activities, from a K12 school magazine, a community paper, a writing project (something like the National Writing Project or Youth Radio), a college paper, etc.

The Aggregation Hub will provide a way for these different organizations to work together without losing any editorial control, or diluting the mission of the participating organizations.

Some use cases

Within a school district: individual school newspapers publish using the local publishing platform; selected articles are republished into a district-wide aggregation hub

Between colleges: college papers put out their local editions using the local publishing platform; selected articles get republished into a Best of the College Press site aggregation hub

Between writing projects: local writing projects publish and support student journalism using the local publishing platform; these projects can then work together to highlight student writing republished using the aggregation hub

Between related non-profits/socially conscious organizations: each individual non-profit maintains its own web presence and community using the local publishing platform; the voice of these individual organizations can be united within the aggregation hub. For example, you could have organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Portland, New Orleans, and Miami all creating separate web sites to publish news stories, essays, and fiction written by homeless youth. Then, a national organization could aggregate selected stories from each site.

Using these related sites, each local organization retains the freedom to work as they deem necessary, and still collaborate with other organizations with a regional, national, or international focus.

The Aggregation Hub will also work with non-Drupal sites, as it can republish any content exposed via an RSS feed.

Project Deliverables

Edit: The code deliverables in this proposal target Drupal 6. End edit

An install profile for the Local Publishing Platform, hosted and available on drupal.org
A theme, designed to support the functionality of the Local Publishing Platform, hosted and available on drupal.org
End-user and administrative documentation/screencasts on using and extending the Local Publishing Platform. This documentation will include both how to publish content and (for example) how to set up publishing workflows, user ratings, and extended user profiles. This documentation will be freely available as part of the Drupal handbooks.
Documentation/screencasts on setting up the Aggregation Hub. Like the documentation for the Local Publishing Platform, this documentation will be added to the Drupal handbooks.
Present the Local Publishing Platform and Aggregation Hub at two national/international conferences; ideally, one conference would be focused on education, and the second would be focused on citizen journalism

In addition to these specific deliverables, the project will produce some new code, both in the form of patches to existing contributed modules, or in the form of new modules. Whenever possible, we will work with existing modules, and module maintainers, to leverage the existing codebase in order to eliminate unnecessary duplication.

An overview of the Local Publishing Platform

The Local Publishing Platform will allow site members to post text, audio, video, and images to the site. Additionally, content can also be posted via mobile phone.

The site will be configured to support editions (ie, Volume 1, or April, 2008) and sections (Sports, Real Estate, Fair Housing, etc). Additionally, the site will come pre-configured with publication workflows.

Editors will be able to structure/organize content, and, if workflows are enabled, editors will be able to move content through the publishing workflows.

We will look to handle publication from mobile phones by extending the Mailhandler and Mailsave modules to integrate cleanly with Embedded Media fields.

Whenever necessary, we will work with existing module maintainers to port modules to Drupal 6. Also, as part of the goal of this project is to document the steps involved to create and use the site, any new development will be accompanied by screencasts and/or text documentation.

The publishing and display of data will be managed using CCK, various CCK fields (imagefield, embedded media field, link field), Views, and Taxonomy. Workflow and Triggers will be used to set up publishing workflows; these workflows will be configured with the default profile, and (unless we hear strongly otherwise) will be turned off by default.

The Local Publishing Platform will be available and maintained as an install profile on drupal.org. The default configuration will contain all the tools needed to power a community writing/news site. Accompanying documentation and screencasts will explain how to use, extend and customize the site.

An overview of the Aggregation Hub

The Aggregation Hub provides a way for an organization to centralize, highlight, or re-publish posts from affiliated groups. As described above in the "Use Cases" section, the Aggregation Hub allows for different organizations to collaborate/connect as needed without losing any editorial control, or diluting their organizational mission.

Additionally, the Aggregation Hub will work with any site that has an rss feed. While the Aggregation Hub will be designed to take advantage of some specific design choices in the Local Publishing Platform (most specifically around media handling), the hub can republish articles from any site that generates an rss feed.

The Aggregation Hub will be powered by the FeedAPI, the Feed Element Mappers, CCK (and related fields), Views, and core Taxonomy.

The Development Process

As we develop this project, we will be guided by these general guidelines:

Transparency: we will keep a development blog tracking our progress. Ideally, we would create a group on g.d.o for these posts.
Collaboration/Avoid Duplication: one of the goals of the initial research is to identify ongoing work that could relate to this project, and the project goals. Then, we would be able to contact those module maintainers and, wherever possible, develop a plan that meets all of our needs as we move forward.
Timely Releases: as we develop code during this project, we will release it as soon as possible. This will allow people to work with what we have created, and will (hopefully) broaden the number of people actively testing the code.
Document Everything: at the risk of stating the obvious, this applies to comments in the code and the theme, as well as end user and site admin documentation.

RSS & Aggregation

Groups vs. Multiple Drupal installations

Rosamunda — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:24:42 +0000

Hello there!
If you want to give a user total control over a site (his/her site, area, or whatever you want to call it), what should be better? Creating a group for each user, as in drupal Groups, or creating a multisite installation?

When I say "total control" I mean everything: Blogs, polls, newsletters, have a fan´s group (not buudies, I mean actual users that are created just to enter his/her personal site).

Would multiple sites installations become a huge monster, that no server could manage?

What are your thoughts?

Rosamunda

Social Networking Sites

PHP Drupal 5 Developer / Drupal Theming Ninja | Drummer Connection

drumfreak — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:47:46 +0000

PHP Drupal 5 Developer / Drupal Theming Ninja

** We are accepting applications for work that will start immediately **

We are building an online community for musicians to share their media and build profiles to tie the community in with a Social Network feel.

Project Features:

The website will have the following:

* Member Profiles - themed using drupal + views - already setup, just needs themed.
* Member Videos - uploaded and converted using flashvideo modules from drupal
* Member Youtube - using the CCK modules and Google/YouTube Video
* Member Audio - using the Drupal Audio module, we would like to have users upload their audio
* Featured Video / Audio / Youtube - this section is a collaboration of the videos flagged by the moderation staff to be displayed on a featured page. This functionality is 90% complete and needs to be themed.
* SMF Forum Integration - already setup, just needs themed.
* Gallery2 Image Gallery Integration - already setup, functioning and needs themed.
* And more features here and there.

We have a functional drupal website and a large section of this code has been completed. We have a test server and we have everything ready to go with Subversion, Trac, and etc. We just need an experienced Drupal developer that can focus full attention to this project and work as much as possible to get it done as soon as possible without any delays. No exceptions.

Subversion / Trac Experience Required:

We already have our own Subversion / Trac setup with milestones and tickets. All work and progress will be tracked through this system.

You will be tracked through our Subversion system using Trac's timeline. If work is not being produced on a regular and active schedule, we will find another developer. We cannot experience any more delays than we already have. This site must launch as soon as possible.

Additional Requirements / Skills Needed:

* Troubleshooting skills is a must - You must have a strong background in PHP 5
* Strong familiarization with Drupal 5 and its core development
* Strong familiarization with the Drupal website, manual and other documentation
* Strong familiarization with Drupal Flash modules, CCK, Audio, FlashVideo and etc.
* Very strong drupal theming abilities
* The ability to design, layout and implement Drupal pages utilizing views and other modules.
* The ability to design custom Drupal modules to enhance our functionality.
* You must be good with CSS, JavaScript and etc. You must be able to develop Web 2.0 style websites and layouts
* If you have a graphics toolkit (such as small icons for various parts of the site) or the ability to make your own, then you are a strong candidate

Ongoing Project:

This website is an ongoing project and we have many more to do after this. If you prove yourself as a valuable developer and prove that you can realistically produce code in a timely manner, you will be eligable for additional projects.

Musical Background:

If you have a musical background, or play a musical instrument such as Drums, Guitar or Bass guitar and understand the fundamentals behind basic music, then you are a very eligable candidate if you posess the other skills listed here. Your selection chances will be greatly improved.

Important Notice:

You'll also be working for an experienced PHP Developer who has authored books on PHP Development and owns / operates website communities such as phpfreaks.com. We are very aware of how the development process works and how much time it realistically takes to develop PHP based websites. This is not a blind client who can be taken advantage of, so if that is your work ethic, please do not apply.

Payments:

Payments can be escrowed into an account, handled through PayPal, or 1099 for contracting.

Please contact jobs@drummerconnection.com

Consulting and Business

Drupal Developer | LevelTen Design

LevelTen Design — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:13:39 +0000

LevelTen is looking for a sharp Drupal developer to work as part of a small team developing community music portals. LevelTen is a professional Internet consulting and Web development company based in Dallas, Texas. We specialize in best-in-class website design and online marketing. This is a three-month, contract-to-hire position.

As our resident Drupal expert you will:

install and configure new sites using Drupal CMS
test and recommend new modules for addition to approved modules list
integrate online applications with various client back-end systems
integrate template designs with CMS code
understand issues related to cross-browser compatibilities
integrate standard and customized Drupal components
develop and update CSS
populate content (text, graphics, photos, video, audio) to Drupal CMS
integrate Drupal features and modules
develop new components as needed

Requirements

Expert level knowledge of Drupal CMS & HTML/CSS
Experience installing, configuring, modifying, and testing existing Drupal modules
Experience developing custom Drupal modules
Experience resolving Drupal configuration issues
Knowledge of web 2.0 technologies and tools
Knowledge of webcasting and podcasting
Experience integrating eCommerce with Drupal

Skills

Attention to detail and ability to accurately read specifications
Self motivated with the ability to work independently
Solid debugging and problem-solving skills.
Ability to communicate effectively in written and verbal form
Self-starter with a positive attitude
Demonstrated ability to plan complex development tasks and bring such tasks to successful completion

We thank all applicants, but only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Social Networking Sites

Drupal Developer | Public Allies North Carolina

rumbley — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:46:04 +0000

Project Summary

Public Allies North Carolina is seeking proposals for a social networking site using Drupal. We anticipate that most of our functional requirements can be met using existing Drupal modules and the Drupal 5x core, but we seek an experienced CMS developer to select and configure those modules.

Preference will be given to developers in the Triangle area, with whom our organization can form a local working relationship.

About Public Allies North Carolina

Public Allies North Carolina is a non-profit organization that provides community leadership training to young adults and fosters non-profit job experiences through a network of hundreds of partner organizations to whom we commit significant resources. Allies are matched with appropriate organizations and, through their working relationships, Public Allies works to understand and empower the assets of each organization.

A core goal of this project is to increase visibility
and collaboration among Public Allies North Carolina
and our network of partner organizations and other
engaged citizens.

In the past 14 years, Public Allies has developed 185 diverse and passionate young leaders, many of whom continue a career in the local non-profit and public sectors. The strength and integrity of the program benefit greatly when alum continue to stay involved by leading training sessions, contributing to newsletters, developing mentoring relationships with current Allies and many more ways.

Another core goal of this project is to increase
knowledge transfer and exchange among Allies
and Alum.

Current Web Presence

Public Allies North Carolina's current Web site is built within a Kintera site managed by Public Allies National but allows local program directors to edit some content specific to their program. Visit www.publicallies.org.

The new social networking site will have no functional relationship to the current Public Allies site, except that they will link to one another.

Look and Feel

We anticipate that most of our visual/creative design requirements can be met with existing themes and some customization.

Textual Content

The site's textual content will be largely generated in-house and by users.

Functional Requirements

aggregated blog posts / news from across the community

a local map of partner organizations

advanced customizable profiles (for individuals and organizations)

member directory with search and browse capabilities

buddy list

blog for each profile

media upload capabilities (photo, video, audio)

ability to form groups (work groups, discussion groups)

site-wide search

site-wide social tags / tag cloud

rss syndication capabilities for blogs and media

event organizing / calendar sharing
event creation
event notification capabilities (e-invitations)
ability to add a friend's event to personal calendar

other features to be considered:
idea bank
social bookmarks
chat
online donations
google apps integration
civicrm

References

Be The Change (http://www.bethechange.org.nz )
Rural Innovations Network (http://ruralnetwork.ning.com)
Duke Engage (http://dukeengage.duke.edu)

*each has elements we like but lacks others.
*listed first is a Drupal site.

Project Timeline

Proposal review May 1
Site development begins May 15
Site development ends June 15

*some flexibility on dates for the right developer.

Submission Instructions / Contact Info

Email proposals to Christopher Rumbley at rumbley@gmail.com. For more information, also email (rumbley@gmail.com) or call (919-636-2926).

Social Networking Sites

Drupal Developer | Science Museum of Minnesota - Science Buzz

bryan kennedy@drupal.org — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:31:09 +0000

The Science Museum of Minnesota is hiring a Drupal developer to work as part of the team that operates the award wining Science Buzz website and exhibit.
Application deadline: April 9, 2008.

Science Buzz is expanding in many ways. Your expert Drupal, PHP, and web coding skills will help us:

develop Mentor Buzz, an online community focusing on the needs of mentors and their students talking about science

create unique web features focusing on contemporary issues like the 35W bridge collapse, Hurricane Katrina, or even male pregnancy!

build web enabled exhibits that allow other museums around the country that allow their visitors to hook into the Science Buzz community

create new tools that help our visitors create content along with us...we like to share authority

and more...

You should be:

Comfortable exploring new ways to create web content and user interactions using the Drupal CMS

Writing custom theme code

Modifying and developing new modules

Learning new methods of development as a member of the Drupal community

Demonstrate experience and aptitude in:

Development and design of webpages using HTML and CSS

Programming dynamic web applications using PHP and MySQL

Manipulating files on remote webservers using FTP, SSH, and basic UNIX commands

Excited to work in an educational environment where quality code meats engaging learning experiences.

Read the full description at the Science Museum's jobs site.
Application deadline: April 9, 2008.

Learn more about the Science Museum, Science Buzz, and the museum's webteam.

Please post any questions about the job in the comments here.

Twin Cities

Drupalcon Boston 2008 Video Encoding Project

jlmeredith — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:45:45 +0000

UPDATE

If you would like to be involved in the encoding of DV content, please post the following information and we will contact you with login information for the content.

I am hoping that we will be getting started on video transfer this week. If that is the case, encoding should be ready to begin sometime end of next week. Please post the following information in this thread:

Your machine(s) specs - processor/memory/OS

Your internet connection specs - up and down

How many hours per week you can devote to encoding

Do you have the ability to edit DV content prior to encoding - this is primarily to trim beginning and end of video along with boosting gain if needed.

ORIGINAL POST

First I would like to say thank you to all of the volunteers that made recording audio and video at Drupalcon Boston possible. Without you we would not have captured the 150+ hours of audio video that we did. Thank you!

This post will outline the game plan for getting all of the raw audio and video footage moved from computers and tapes to the Drupal community. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me. I am not a professional A/V person, so I am very interested in suggestions and comments about how we can do things better or different.

TO ALL OF THOSE WHO RECORDED AUDIO and VIDEO BUT DID NOT LEAVE IT WITH THE CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

There were several people at Drupalcon who were recording audio and video from the soundboards and various A/V drops. Please post in this thread, what sessions you recorded, the approximate length and if you have posted the raw files to a site somewhere where can the files be found. We would like to arrange for a copy of the RAW files to remain with the Drupal community for future use if possible.

PLANS FOR RECORDED VIDEO FOOTAGE
Below is the step-by-step plan that has been put in place to deal with the video shot during Drupalcon Boston.

1) All of the raw video footage (90+ Hours) is currently on MiniDV tapes and will be transfered over the next couple of weeks to several SATA drives.

2) Once that footage is transfered to the drives, those drives will be made available to the internet.

3) Individual volunteers will be solicited to edit and encode the video to a standardized format for republishing to Archive.org.

The following are issues that need to be addressed and ideas from the community would be appreciated.

1) What would be the best way to distribute the raw DV footage? Due to the large size of the files, it has been suggested that a torrent system might be a viable solution because of the ease in resuming broken connections. Or a download manager of some kind could be used along with just raw single person downloads. What do you all think?

2) Once each volunteer has downloaded their session for encoding, what would be the best standard format for encoding the video. Keep in mind that all video will be uploaded to Archive.org, so their workflow and systems should be taken into account.

Thanks again to everyone who helped!

Jamie

(tmg-studio)

Nashville, Tennessee

Drupal Module Score Definitions

ebrittwebb — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:28:20 +0000

Following up on John's post on his New Community-Powered Drupal Module Review Site, I suggested that we create definitions for the scores associated with each rating attribute.

Below is my initial draft of what those scores might be. Feel free to edit these directly or comment with suggestions/questions.

Score Features Reliability Ease of Use Documentation

5 Big time UI functionality Rock Solid Even a monkey can use Full & up-to-date

4 Moderate UI functionality Works most of the time, some open issues User-friendly for general population Decent amount, in progress

3 Backend API hooks, but no UI Production, but buggy Good for power Drupal user Decent amount but out of date

2 Significant changes to site configuration Dev only; not Production Requires serious Drupal admin expertise Little or poor

1 Very basic changes to site configuration Broken; don't use Requires expertise in LAMP technologies None

Social Networking Sites

New Community-Powered Drupal Module Review Site

johnforsythe@drupal.org — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:28:41 +0000

Drupal Modules is a community-powered Drupal module review system I've been working on for about a year now. I'm happy to announce the site is finally open to the public!

Here's a brief list of what you can do on the site:

Rate and review any module

Compare modules to see which has the best features, documentation, etc

Check how many downloads a module is getting

Easily search modules and reviews for keywords

Get automatic recommendations for similar modules

And more!

This site is the result of approximately 1,000 hours of design and programming work over the last year, and I'm glad to finally launch it! Now I'm looking for your thoughts and opinions on how to make this the best resource it can be. I'm open to ideas about integrating with Drupal.org, but I also believe this site can flourish outside of the official infrastructure, much like the Theme Garden does.

I'd also like to extend a personal invitation to every Drupal user to sign in and review some modules! If you ever wanted to say thanks to a module developer, now's your chance to give them a glowing review. Maybe you found a hidden gem, and you want to tell the world! Perhaps you tried a module that didn't quite work, and you want to suggest a good alternative. The more reviews we compile, the more useful this site becomes for everyone. :)

If you'd like to learn more about what's powering the site, check out the about page.

One more thing: Thanks to Walt for creating the excellent Contributed Module Status list, it's a wonderful resource, and I've added a link to it on the site.

--
John Forsythe
http://DrupalModules.com/

Social Networking Sites

US patent reform and open source: Who is the best candidate for the OS community?

Todd Nienkerk — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:07:24 +0000

My friend whurley has launched an online poll to bring open source to the attention of politicians -- specifically, the presidential candidates. He, like many of us, is troubled by the recent calls for patent reform put forth by larger companies that may wind up blocking innovation and threatening open source-oriented companies and contractors.

You can view the poll here and vote for which candidate you believe is best for the open source community. (Don't worry: "None of them" is an option!)

Assume for a moment that a knowledge of open source is prerequisite (or integral) in solving issues like patent reform. Who would you vote for? In other words, who would be the best candidate for the open source community?

The more people who vote, the more of an impact this question can make.

SXSW Interactive 2009

Political Sites?

peashooter — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:33:43 +0000

Hello all,

I'm currently developing a site for a group of political activists who want to be able to debate and vote on issues through the site. Everything about the Drupal project makes it the ideal tool for such a task.

I've checked out the various voting modules and with a little tweaking I'm pretty sure I can design what we need.

However, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows of any Drupal-based sites that have plenty of debate and democratic decision-making going on. Any ideas?

It would be great to get some inspiration.

Cheers,

James

Community

Sessions on Community Function Wanted For Drupalcon 2008

mpare — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:42:10 +0000

My name is Matthew Pare and I'm a Co-Chair for the "Community and Core" track for Drupalcon Boston 2008. Over the last couple of weeks we have been planning and brainstorming to make Drupalcon Boston 2008 the best Drupalcon to date! One of our recommended track session topics is "Community Functions" and since your viewing this post on the Community group I thought you would be excellent candidates for submitting sessions on the topic.

How To Submit Your Session

We have several recommended topics for Community and Core sessions but now its your turn to submit your session.

Visit boston2008.drupalcon.org to learn more about Drupalcon Boston 2008, register to attend, view already submitted sessions, and even submit your own session.

Save the Date

Drupalcon Boston 2008 takes place from March 3, 2008 to March 6, 2008 in Boston Convention and Expo Center. In addition, there will also be a Drupal Code Sprint on March 7.

Useful Links

Submit a Session

View already registered sessions

Logistics and Accommodations

Conference Program, Tracks, and Sessions

Business and marketing track

Design and user experience track

Site building track

Community and core

Please submit your session proposals as soon as possible and I hope to see you all in Boston real soon.

Cheers,

-mpare

DON'T MISS EARTH'S LARGEST GATHERING OF DRUPAL PROFESSIONALS!
Drupalcon Boston 2008 - March 3-6, 2008
Learn more at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org

Community

Install profile for Community sites – any good solutions that can be used for environmental site?

jeffchi@drupal.org — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:59:17 +0000

We are beginning the development of a green building community site and we are wondering if there are any good general install profiles that cover many of the aspects of a good community site. We are eager to explore how by using a possible install profile or adapting an existing community site can expedite the launch of our site. We are open to work with other end-users in order to accommodate any development that may be needed.

Thank you,
Jeff
www.Skysiteproperty.com

Community

Toward an Open Social Network Powered by Free Software

Benjamin Melançon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:35:55 +0000

Breaking Open Facebook with Open Source Software (Part 2)

it’s important for socially aware software developers to begin thinking about how to provide alternative services to proprietary social networks. While I acknowledge this is a very high level description scarce on implementation details, I hope that it spurs some spirited discussions and future innovation.

http://www.idealog.us/2007/10/breaking-open-f.html

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The core module provides services that link these new open source networks together and offer [people] the ability to choose one service to host their profile, while still interacting and connecting with friends on other services. Whereas today, [people] are locked in to using proprietary social networks where most of their friends gather, this architecture would allow [people] to choose their own profile service while still interacting with friends on other services.

Social Networking Sites

Using MySite with external applications and data

agentrickard@drupal.org — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:39:32 +0000

A few technical notes for developers concerning how MySite interacts with non-Drupal data and application sources.

First, a little history. The core goal of the MySite module is to abstract content published to a Drupal site. So the MySie distribution supports content types native to Drupal. The reason for this is scope: I don't have time to solve every problem, so I focus on those.

That said, the internal MySite API is written with extensibility in mind. What this means is that the MySite API hooks that define content are not Drupal-dependent. Only the core implementations are.

The prime example is Google Gadgets. MySite can use Google Gadgets through a mechanism called 'Droplets'. A Droplet is similar to a Drupal Block. It can accept HTML, PHP, or JS code. A site admin can create whatever droplets they wish.

For very simple implementations, you might simply paste the PHP or JS for calling an external application straight into a Droplet. No programming required.

In the case of Google Gadgets -- and WidgetBox -- that's what Droplets do: The admin creates a droplet and pastes in the appropriate JS. We do not automatically fetch these mini-apps, but we could.

We don't auto-fetch the data for two reasons: the Google EULA and potential security issues with using untested 3rd-party JavaScript. (See http://drupal.org/node/127661 for the full history). Because of these concerns, I decided to make admins select which Google Gadgets they wanted to use rather than fetching them programatically.

That said, let's look at two functions that form the core of the MySite content API, and examine how they could be used to make calls external to Drupal.

mysite_type_hook_options()

This function defines the content that is available for a certain type plugin. For the blog plugin, for instance, it pulls back a list of all site users who have posted a node of type 'blog.'

But let's look at the code logic:

<?php function mysite_type_hook_options() { $options = array(); $sql = "SELECT m.id, m.title, g.group FROM {mytable} m INNER JOIN {group} g ON m.id = g.id"; $result = db_query($sql); $items = array(); while ($item = db_fetch_object($result)) {     $items[] =$item; } foreach ($items as $key => $value) {     $options['group'][] = $value->group;     $options['name'][] = mysite_type_hook_title($value->id, $value->title);     $options['type_id'][] = $value->id;     $options['type'][] = 'hook';     $options['icon'][] = mysite_get_icon('hook', $value->id); } return $options; } ?>

Now, suppose we changed the data request from a SQL query to an HTTP request:

<?php function mysite_type_example_options() { $options = array(); // Use an http request to pull back XML $data = drupal_http_request('http://example.com/REST'); // Process the XML into a format we can read. $items = mysite_type_hook_custom_function($data); foreach ($items as $key => $value) {     $options['group'][] = $value->group;     $options['name'][] = mysite_type_hook_title($value->id, $value->title);     $options['type_id'][] = $value->id;     $options['type'][] = 'hook';     $options['icon'][] = mysite_get_icon('hook', $value->id); } return $options; } ?>

Bingo, we now have an externally-defined list of options.

To interface with applications that require external authentication, you would probably add an authentication step here, since the options will not be shown to a user if the $options array returns blank.

<?php function mysite_type_example_options() { global $user; // Authenticate the user against the external service. If it fails, stop this routine. $check = mysite_type_example_custom_check($user); if (!$check) {     return array(); } $options = array(); // Use an http request to pull back XML $data = drupal_http_request('http://example.com/REST'); // Process the XML into a format we can read. $items = mysite_type_example_custom_function($data); foreach ($items as $key => $value) {     $options['group'][] = $value->group;     $options['name'][] = mysite_type_hook_title($value->id, $value->title);     $options['type_id'][] = $value->id;     $options['type'][] = 'hook';     $options['icon'][] = mysite_get_icon('hook', $value->id); } return $options; } ?>

Very likely you'd also need to cache the $options returned to reduce network latency.

So this takes care of the options that users are presented for content that can be added to their personal collection.

mysite_type_hook_data()

This function takes a content element and prepares the data needed to present that element on a user's MySite page.

Again, the core implementations assume Drupal data, but that is not required.

<?php function mysite_type_hook_data($type_id = NULL, $settings = NULL) { if (!empty($type_id)) {     $sql = db_rewrite_sql("SELECT n.nid, n.changed FROM {node} n INNER JOIN {term_node} t ON n.nid = t.nid WHERE t.nid = %d AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY n.changed DESC");     $result = db_query_range($sql, $type_id, 0, variable_get('mysite_elements', 5));     $data = array(       'base' => '',       'xml' => ''       'image' => ''       );     $items = array();     $i = 0;     while ($nid = db_fetch_object($result)) {       $node = node_load($nid->nid);       $items[$i]['type'] = $node->type;       $items[$i]['link'] = l($node->title, 'node/'. $nid->nid);       $items[$i]['title'] = check_plain($node->title);       $items[$i]['subtitle'] = NULL;       $items[$i]['date'] = $node->changed;       $items[$i]['uid'] = $node->uid;       $items[$i]['author'] = check_plain($node->name);       $items[$i]['teaser'] = mysite_teaser($node);       $items[$i]['content'] = NULL;       $items[$i]['nid'] = $node->nid;       $i++;     }     $data['items'] = $items;     return $data; } drupal_set_message(t('Could not find type data'), 'error'); return; } ?>

You could implement this function to grab external data. The only trick will be to translate that data into an HTML format that can be printed and rendered by Drupal. The key here is the 'content' element of the $items array.

The MySite rule is this: If 'content' is not empty, render it, ignoring the other elements. This rule is what allows MySite to use Google Gadgets and other HTML droplets. See theme_mysite_hook_item() for the code.

The mysite_type_droplet_data() function should be instructive:

<?php function mysite_type_droplet_data($type_id = NULL, $settings = NULL) { if (!empty($type_id)) {     // get the stored data for the droplet     $droplet = mysite_get_custom('droplet', $type_id);     // pass $droplet by reference in order to parse the subtype and key       $content = mysite_type_droplet_get_content($droplet);     $data = array(       'base' => $droplet->base,       'xml' => $droplet->xml       );     $items = array();     $i = 0;     $items[$i]['type'] = 'droplet';     $items[$i]['link'] = NULL;     $items[$i]['title'] = check_plain($droplet->title);     $items[$i]['content'] = $content;      $data['items'] = $items;     return $data; } drupal_set_message(t('Could not find droplet data'), 'error'); return; } ?>

Not let's do something similar with an external data call:

<?php function mysite_type_example_data($type_id = NULL, $settings = NULL) { if (!empty($type_id)) {     // Fetch the data from the app server     $app = drupal_http_request('http://example.com/REST/appid='. $type_id);     // Transform the data into a format we understand     $element = mysite_type_example_process($app);     $data = array(       'base' => $element->base,       'xml' => $element->xml       );     $items = array();     $i = 0;     $items[$i]['type'] = 'example';     $items[$i]['link'] = NULL;     $items[$i]['title'] = check_plain($element->title);     $items[$i]['content'] = $element->content;     $data['items'] = $items;     return $data; } drupal_set_message(t('Could not find example data'), 'error'); return; } ?>

In this case, the data printed to the MySite user page would be piped in from the external source.

Note: You can access this data externally by using mysite_render(); and you can receive HTML-formatted data using mysite_display().

Again, to be clear: This is all supported by the existing MySite API.

MySite

Facebook and MySite

agentrickard@drupal.org — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:07:30 +0000

I've been mucking around on FaceBook for the last week. It's cool, and the apps are nice.

And the dirty little secret is that MySite supports this type of "app" functionality through its plugin API -- it might even be made to read Facebook apps.

So where's the developer love?

/me stops whining

[UPDATE: I have stopped reading this thread.] 23-OCT-2007.

MySite

Score	Features	Reliability	Ease of Use	Documentation
5	Big time UI functionality	Rock Solid	Even a monkey can use	Full & up-to-date
4	Moderate UI functionality	Works most of the time, some open issues	User-friendly for general population	Decent amount, in progress
3	Backend API hooks, but no UI	Production, but buggy	Good for power Drupal user	Decent amount but out of date
2	Significant changes to site configuration	Dev only; not Production	Requires serious Drupal admin expertise	Little or poor
1	Very basic changes to site configuration	Broken; don't use	Requires expertise in LAMP technologies	None