GHOP Task suggestions

GHOP TASK STATUS: Added: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

Task title: Theme the same CCK form in 3 distinct ways

Task description:

Utilizing at least a rudimentary understanding of PHP, good XHTML and CSS skills, take the same node form and add fields to it using the CCK module, then theme this form, making sure to document your work. This is a task that nearly all professional Drupal developers need to know how to do.

Using good coding practice to complete this task, you must:
1. Create a new content type.
2. Add at least 5 different types of fields to the content type.
3. Using the phptemplate theme engine, theme the content type you created in 3 visually distinct ways.
Note that this task is not about changing the display of the form after it is submitted, but while the user is entering his/her data.

When you have completed this task, you should create a documentation page in the appropriate location in the theming portion of the handbook which describes your changes and provides your code, as well as screen-shots of what the changes look like.

Some resources to help you with this task are:
1. The documentation on the PHPTemplate engine is available here: http://drupal.org/phptemplate
2. General information about creating theme overrides is available here: http://drupal.org/node/55126
3. Information specific to theming a form is available here: http://drupal.org/node/112358
4. If you need help, you can post a question in the Drupal.org forums or contact someone on the #drupal-support channel on irc.freenode.net.
5. When you need to create your screen-shot, read this page first: http://drupal.org/node/11637

I estimate that this task should take about 4-5 days to complete.

contact:dwees

GHOP TASK STATUS: Ineligible -- such a module already exists.

Create a Minifeed module (ala Facebook news feed).

Drupal already has excellent content management capabilities. Social networking, however, is more about just content, it's about relationships and member actions. A Minifeed module would create a facebook style of news feed or mini-feed, which feeds news on what is happening with your friends (buddies) and your groups etc.

Some examples of minifeed items:
* UserA became buddies with UserB
* UserB has RSVP'd to EventXYZ
* UserC left a comment on Node 77

It's not possible to anticipate all of the different types of minifeed items that module developers would want to create. Therefore, I would recommend that the primary deliverable for the Minifeed module be an API that other modules can use to manipulate the minifeed.

Deliverables:
- API to create minifeed items
- light documentation on API usage
- example contrib module making use of the API (ie: "UserC left a comment on Node 77")

Resources:
- The UserPoints module does a fine job of exposing an API for other modules to use
- http://drupal.org/project/userpoints

I estimate that this project should take 4-5 days to complete.

contact: rcourtna

GHOP TASK STATUS: Ineligible; already exists

Write a Drupal Handbook page about OpenID module

Create a page in the Drupal Handbook about the OpenID module. Be sure to explain what OpenID is, and its benefits for sites and users. This page should be a child of the core modules handbook page because as of Drupal 6, OpenID is in core.

GHOP TASK STATUS: Added: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

Choose at least four open source frameworks or cms, Drupal included, and compare them, technically their flexibility and easy to use. Its prefered that you choose software that you have not used before.

Points to take into consideration:

a) Requierements: s.o., language, web server, database.
b) Installation: problems that you find, technical level that its needed
c) Configuration: basic and advanced
d) First content creation: create your first pages of content

And then try to find out:

e) Flexibility (creation of themes)
f) Extension (can easily grow to be better/more adapted? can be integrated with other software?)
g) Capabilities (Produces standard content?, is accesible?)
...

As a conclusion explain the good and the bad of every framework and determine which would you choose to make your next project (explain the type of project).

FRAMEWORKS SUGGESTED (any other that you find is welcome): Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, Movable Type, Wordpress, Textpattern, Alfresco, Plone.

GHOP TASK STATUS: Added: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

The audio module is now using the 1pixelout flash player as the default player. The documentation on how to theme this player could needs to be added to the handbook.

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/audio
http://drupal.org/node/34043
http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/
http://www.innovatingtomorrow.net/2007/10/22/how-theme-1pixelout-flash-p...

Another task could be updating the documentation on the XSPF module. What is listed in the handbook (link above) is completely out of date.

A 3rd task, if someone wants to do a little coding, is to add the ability to the audio module to tie into outside audio file tracking systems like podtrac rather than use the built in tracking. This should be a fairly simple patch but would take a little time to learn that part of the audio module.

For any of these I'd be willing to be the POC.

Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.mattfarina.com

Title: Add "available update" indicator to installed module

Task description: The module install page received some attention do to the communities effort to improve usability there. A recent GHOP task was to add information to the installed modules such as help and configuration links and cosmetic changes to make it easier to see the installed modules in the list. The applicant to this task would enhance this feature by adding an extra notification to the module's row when an update is available, optionally offering a link to the upgrade package.

This would bring the update mechanism one click closer for the site admin and reducing redundancy in administration interfaces.

Information for updates can be extracted from update_status module.

Resources:

• improve the module install page issue: http://drupal.org/node/192962

GHOP TASK STATUS Task is ready; pending to see what other things we have available.

Task Title: Integrate userpoints with actions

Task description Consists of:

The userpoints module allows users to gain points for participating on the site; posting nodes, commenting, inviting users, etc. Unfortunately points can only be granted for actions that are defined by contributed modules. Integrating userpoints with actions would allows users to gain points for almost everything that can be done on the site.

Task detail:

Research the actions module and other modules the make use of actions (for example the workflow module)
*Write a custom module that provides a "Grant points" action.
*The "Grant points" action should have a configurable option to hold a postive/negative number which is the points to "grant"
*When the action is fired it should call the userpoints_userpointsapi with the appropriate number of points
*Test that the action fired by using a module (or creating a custom module) to fire the action (example the workflow module can fire an action)
*Module should properly test for the actions module and the userpoints module as dependencies (.info file)

Deliverables
*A module the provides an action to the Actions module

Resources
*README.txt in the userpoints modules (for how to use the API)
*http://drupal.org/project/actions
*http://drupal.org/project/workflow
*http://drupal.org/project/userpoints

Estimated time
3-5 Days

Primary contact
Me (Jacob Redding)

GHOP TASK STATUS: Task ready; pending to see what options we have

Task Title: Retroactive points

Task Description:
The userpoints module allows users to gain points for participating on the site; posting nodes, commenting, inviting users, etc. Unfortunately it you start using the userpoints module after your site is setup users miss out on points from actions (posting nodes, etc.) that they had done in the past. Currently the retroactive modules fixes this by granting a lumpsum point total for items that occurred in the past. Lumpsum total lose all of the details though.

The task is to fix this module by having the retroactive module recalculate all points on an item by item basis. For example if a user posted 10 nodes they would receive 10 point entries. These points would be directly tied to the nodes that granted them the points.

Task detail:
*Modify the retroactive.module in the userpoints module package to add points in for each individual node/comment posted.

Deliverables
*A modified retroactive module

Resources
*README.txt in the userpoints modules (for how to use the API)
*http://drupal.org/project/userpoints

Estimated time
1-3 Days

Primary contact
Me (Jacob Redding)

GHOP TASK STATUS:: Added: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

Task Title: Demonstrate ease of using Userpoints

Task description Consists of:
The userpoints module allows users to gain points for participating on the site; posting nodes, commenting, inviting users, etc. Granting points for various can sometimes be as simple as writing 5 to 10 lines of code. Unfortunately the documentation and demonstrations of this ease of use are often missed by Drupal users.

Task detail:
Do this in 2 phases
Phase 1)
* Research the userpoints API and how to grant points to a user
* Create a node and using the PHP filter grant 10 points to the currently logged in user
* Write up a page describing how you completed this phase.

Phase 2)
* Create a module that grants points to nodes that contain an attachment.
*** use hook_nodeapi and on the "insert" op check to see if the node has any attachments
*** If the node has attachments grant the author of the node 10 points.
* Write up a page describing how you completed this phase.

Deliverables
*One or two pages of documentation explaining how you start with a simple page that grants 10 point to the currently logged in user and how you extended that into a custom module that grant points to Authors of nodes that contained attachments.
*BONUS deliverable: A screencast demonstrating this!

Resources
*README.txt in the userpoints modules (for how to use the API)
*http://drupal.org/project/userpoints
*http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/userpoints

Estimated time
1-2 Day

Primary contact
Me (Jacob Redding)

GHOP TASK STATUS: Added: http://groups.google.com/group/drupal-ghop-2007/browse_thread/thread/a8d...

Task title: Patch user titles to allow basing titles on points

Task description:
User titles is a great module for social networking / forum sites. Unfortunately, it only counts posts when determining the title. It would be awesome to have an option to use the points from the user points module to base the title on. There is an open issue (see resources) with some clues on how to do it. It just needs someone to take the time to implement it.

This task would entail writing the patch to user titles which checks if user points is installed and, if so, adds an option to the settings page to use points to determine title rather than posts. I'm envisioning a radio button at the top with "Posts" and "Points" and the rest of the UI staying the same. Since changing the radio button would change all the titles, a warning to that effect woudl be helpful. The code that determines the title would need to check which option is selected and act accordingly.

Resources:
http://drupal.org/node/159923 (Issue)
http://drupal.org/project/user_titles
http://drupal.org/project/userpoints

Estimated time: 2-3 days.

Primary contact: Me (Michelle) [Unless either jredding or the user titles maintainer is interested]

Michelle

See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.

GHOP TASK STATUS: Ineligible; not a task. See below.

How about having some module which is capable of giving 'hierarchical pointing system' - something like the concept of (MIM) or amway!

User A registers - inturn makes about x members to register under his inv for which he will be getting some points & reached to some level... inturn whenever each person under him makes other to register this A also getting his points increased etc etc ....

GHOP TASK STATUS: Ineligible; no community consensus around this being a good, useful contribution to the community, and can be done with existing contributed modules.

Task title: MLM system (or) Hierarchical pointing system

Task description:

When a user A makes few others - say X(eg 5) other to join our site, A reaches to some new level as say bronze from registered user level. Now if in turn each person from this X(Here 5) makes X(5) others to join under each of them then these 5 reaches bronze level making the person A reach silver level & so on ....

Hope I am clear?

expected deliverable:
Module providing some functionality like amway.

Resources: A bit of tweening to user points modules may achieve this!

Estimated time: Approximately 3 days

GHOP TASK STATUS: Added: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

Task title
Benchmark the "Improve table indices for common queries" patch at #164532

Task description:
This release critical issue has been through several iterations and now has a committable patch. However, since it deals with performance, the Drupal 6 maintainer, Gabor Hojtsy, has requested benchmarks to see how much difference it'll make.

To benchmark successfully, you must select pages and configurations which will be affected by the patch (i.e. by enabling certain modules, generating content etc.) and then compare a patched and unpatched Drupal 6 install.

To complete the task, a response must be posted to the issue, with a summary of your results and a .txt file with the full results.

Resources:
http://drupal.org/node/164532#comment-646510
http://drupal.org/patch
HOWTO benchmark drupal code
Setting up a development environment

Estimated time:
2-3 days.

Primary contact:

Potential Task #1: Provide Handbook page for file permission problems

• Propose and offer for review a documentation page providing help for
  common file permission errors encountered during installation.
  -- See http://drupal.org/node/197690
  -- See http://drupal.org/node/191310 (especially comment #47)

  This help page should provide common methods for modifying file and
  directory permissions both through a command line, OS (GUI), and a common
  FTP client. Information should be provided for Linux, Mac, and Windows clients.

  As part of this task, create and offer for review a patch to Drupal core
  that:

  • modifies the link shown in the installer error messages (below)
    to link to this new Drupal.org handbook page.

    "The directory files is not writable. To proceed with the
    installation, please ensure that the files directory exists and
    is writable by the installer. If you are unsure how to create this
    directory and modify its permissions, please consult the on-line
    handbook or INSTALL.txt."

    and

    "The Drupal installer requires write permissions to
    ./sites/default during the installation process. If you are unsure
    how to grant file permissions, please consult the on-line handbook."

  • modifies the appropriate section of the file UPGRADE.txt
    to add a link to this new Drupal.org handbook page.

Potential Task @2: Modify help text to reflect drag-and-drop ordering

• Review the recent addition of drag-and-drop ordering to pages in Drupal core
  (such as the blocks configuration and menu pages, among others). Propose and
  offer for review a core patch in the Drupal core issue queue that modifies
  the help text for affected modules to reflect drag-and-drop ordering.

  Both the on-screen help (the help text shown above each of these
  drag-and-drop enabled pages) and the module's main help page (the help text
  shown by selecting Administration -> Help -> (module name) should be
  modified, as necessary.

Would be a good task... See http://drupal.org/node/194962

One of Drupal's most powerful enterprise-level features is its "multisite" capability, which allows running numerous Drupal websites off of a single code base. This makes managing code-level changes extremely easy, although there is still some manual work needed to migrate database changes and create new sub-sites.

This task is to create a report that contrasts and compares various tools and modules out there for managing multisite installations. Choose at least three tools, and compare them on their features, flexibility, and ease of use.

// TODO: Enter specific feature suggestions to compare on here

As a conclusion, explain the pros and cons of each tool, and
determine which would you choose to make your next project (explain the
type of project).

Estimated time: 4 to 5 days

Similar to webchick's multisite module comparison idea above, there are several other module comparisons I'd like to see. Posts such as Image and Image Exact Sizes vs. Imagefield and ImageCache and Ubercart vs. E-commerce Comparison help to speed up the task of evaluating possible modules for a project.

Some possible comparisons I've come up with include aggregator modules, event vs. date/calendar, wysiwyg editor modules, modules for integrating cck & taxonomy. I'll be glad to write any or all of these up in the GHOP format, if I can get some feedback on which ones are worthy. I'm sure there are other similar possibilities, so I'm open to suggestions.

Google just announced its charting API, how about writing a small library to use it from within Drupal? It wouldn't take too long to code and a googlechart.module could provide the necessary encoding functions so developers wouldn't need to implement them in each and every module.

The Google Chart module would provide functions to:

• encode your dataset
• allow coder-friendly ways to define your chart type, and translate it to google's own definition

This is what I could think of at this moment, any suggestion, thought is welcome!

More info: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Write an "Execute arbitrary PHP-Code" action and condition for worklfow-ng

Issue: http://drupal.org/node/179917
Goal: Create a patch, which adds this functionality to workflow-ng. It should be possible to make use of all available arguments in the PHP Code. Also add token integration, which is no big deal with workflow-ng's token helpers. Provide an action that allows executing arbitrary code as well as a PHP enabled condition (returns TRUE/FALSE).

1. Read more about workflow-ng: http://drupal.org/node/156282
2. Read more about how to write actions and conditions: http://drupal.org/node/156754
3. Study the code of workflow-ng's token helpers, which you can find here
   This is interesting for you, because the token integration makes use of all available arguments, like it should be possible for the written php code.
4. Solve it like the token integration. Scan the code for all used arguments and make these arguments available to the PHP code on action execution time. This is necessary to ensure that only needed arguments get loaded. Be sure that tokens are replaced before the PHP code is evaluated.
5. Add the condition and action as provided by the module "workflow-ng" itself, so add the code in the existing file modules/workflow_ng_workflow_ng.inc. Use eval() for executing the code. First start with the action. Once the action is in place, the condition is done easily.

Of course I'm available if any questions occur.

Disclaimer: i am not familiar with filters, i just thought this is would be a cool thing to have.

Write an input filter, that allows the user to use citations easily in their posts the following way (example):

"Drupal is announcing GHOP [ref:google-ghop] projects to be completed by 13-18 year old students from all over the world [ref:world].

[google-ghop:http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/2007-8/]
[world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World]

And the rendered version would look the following way:

"Drupal is announcing GHOP [1] projects to be completed by 13-18 year old students from all over the world [2].

References:
[1] The Google Highly Open Participation Contest - Google Code
[2] World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Task title: Create presentation slide masters

Task description: Drupal currently doesn't have a default presentation style. This file could be used as a blueprint for presentations. Create a presentation with the following master slides:

• a big title (front slide)
• a title with bullets
• a title with text
• a slide containing a large druplicon logo on the left with text on the right

Resources:Marketing resources

Estimated time: 2 days

Task title: Identify and present Drupal show case sites in Africa. The Drupal project would like to show that Drupal is well used around the world. We need a student to research, review, categorized sites in Africa.

Task description Consists of: The student must review community members who are in Africa, identify local groups in Africa, and create a network to identify quality Drupal sites in Africa. Once the research has been completed, the student must select a set of show case Drupal sites and write a paragraph about what is uniquely african about this site, and what capabilities of Drupal are well used. The student will add tasks to this wiki page in the marketing group. http://groups.drupal.org/node/6878

Several sentences/bullets that provide more detail into the task:

• Identify know members of the community living in Africa.
• Identify consulting shops in Africa that create Drupal sites
• Identify local groups on groups.drupal.org that are in Africa.
• Create a short list of Drupal showcase sites and seek a review from members of the Drupal community to ensure that these are infact show case worthy sites.
• Create a brief write-up of the site, it's purpose, how it makes use of Drupal.
• Take a screen shot of the site and modify the image to be used on this issue: http://drupal.org/node/190701

Resources Bulleted list of resources specific to the task. This includes handbook pages, off-site resources, IRC channels, related groups on groups.drupal.org, etc.
http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Fu...

Estimated time: Three days. 1.5 days researching sites, 1 day writing a paragraph about the showcase sites. Half a day manipulating the image.

Primary contact: Kieran Lal, aka Amazon

Drupal issue In a label, with the format: DrupalIssue-http://drupal.org/node/190701

Task title: Identify common patterns in Drupal security issues in 2007 and make suggestions for core improvements

Task description Consists of: The Drupal security team has identified 33 security improvements so far in 2007. These improvements have been applied to some of 2400 Drupal projects including 4 fixes to Drupal core. The student should review the 33 security issues to date and write a one page report making recommendations for how Drupal core should be improved to avoid these issues.

Several sentences/bullets that provide more detail into the task:

* Read each of the 33 security issues for Drupal in 2007
* Create a security taxonomy to help classify issues
* Identify the most common vulnerabilities in Drupal core.
* Identify the most common vulnerabilities in Drupal contributed projects.
* Create a one page report for review by the 30 members of the Drupal security team.
* Once the report has been reviewed by the Drupal security team the report should be posted to the Drupal development list
* The student should post their report to report the security education section of Drupal handbooks.
* The student should post their report to the front page of Drupal.org

Resources Bulleted list of resources specific to the task. This includes handbook pages, off-site resources, IRC channels, related groups on groups.drupal.org, etc.
http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Fu...

Estimated time: Four days. One day reading 33 security reports. One day researching a security taxonomy. One day writing the brief report to the security team. One day publish and educating the Drupal community about Drupal security issues.

Primary contact: Kieran Lal, aka Amazon, and the Drupal security team.

Drupal issue In a label, with the format: DrupalIssue-http://drupal.org/node/198857

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield

New Drupal career! Drupal profile builders.
Try pre-configured and updatable profiles on CivicSpaceOnDemand

Task title: Optimize the slowest queries on Drupal.org

Task description Consists of: The Drupal.org website is currently approaching 18 million page views per month. It has a heavy load on the database server. One of the biggest improvements to performance can come from optimizing queries on Drupal.org.

Several sentences/bullets that provide more detail into the task:

• Subscribe to the Drupal infrastructure list
• Review the pre-processed slowest queries on Drupal.org
• Request a MySQL Explain for those queries from the OSUOSL team
• Research issues on the infrastructure issue queue and the Drupal project issue queue to see if these are known problems.
• Respond to issues indicating what the current load in time that these queries are taking.
• If the issues do not exist for these slow queries, file a new issue
• Post a story to the High performance group requesting help to resolve this performance issue on Drupal.org
• Subscribe to the developers list. Post an email to the developers list requesting help in optimizing this query.
• Summarize the recommendations from the High performance groups, infrastructure list, developers list into a two paragraph statement about how to improve the slowest queries on Drupal.org

Resources Bulleted list of resources specific to the task. This includes handbook pages, off-site resources, IRC channels, related groups on groups.drupal.org, etc.
http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Fu...

Estimated time: Four days. One day signing up for mailing list and getting the latest slow query report. One day posting about the slowest queries. One day getting the Explain statement from the MySQL admins. One day writing up the recommendations.

Primary contact: Kieran Lal, aka Amazon

Drupal issue In a label, with the format: DrupalIssue-

To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield

New Drupal career! Drupal profile builders.
Try pre-configured and updatable profiles on CivicSpaceOnDemand

I did some reading over the task queues in the other projects, to help generate some ideas. Here's a list of a few possibilities with some links back to the issues that inspired them:

1. research Google Gears integration for offline publishing and site maintenance
2. check core themes for Firefox 3 beta compatability
3. write some unit tests

I also did some brainstorming on my own. I'm willing to write some of these up in more detail, if there's interest, but I wanted to get some feedback first. Some are more fully baked than others:

1. Research Drupal 4.7 modules that have not been upgraded to Drupal 5. Based on activity in the issue queues, identify those that are still in active use and are thus ripe for upgrading, since they will otherwise "fall off the map" with the release of Drupal 6.
2. Upgrade the highest profile modules found above to Drupal 5.
3. Write documentation detailing step-by-step how to add an example jquery script to a Drupal form and/or node.
4. Write documentation detailing step-by-step how to add an example jquery script to a Drupal theme.
5. Create a Drupal theme using the Blueprint CSS framework.
6. Record a screencast overview of the internationalization features in Drupal 6. (I have seen some coverage of the improvements, but nothing that has given me an overall understanding of the functionality.)
7. Record a screencast on how to "Drastically customize a Drupal front page." In a recent round up of screencasts covering Dries' Drupal learning curve, this and the one above were topics I couldn't find good screencast coverage of.
8. Write or adapt an appropriately licensed Creative Commons guide to CSS basics for beginning Drupal themers. Maybe I've missed this in the handbooks, but I see quite a few posts in the forums related to customizing themes that can be answered with just a little of the right CSS knowledge.
9. Compile a list of templates (HTML/CSS, other CMS themes, etc.) that are licensed under the GPL but not yet ported to Drupal.
10. Convert the best of the templates found above to Drupal themes.
11. Fill in the missing icons in blanks of morten.dk's Drupal icon set.
12. Compile a list of existing documentation sections appropriate for a Drupal administrator's handbook, as opposed to documentation tailored to developers. See recent discussion on Drupal documentation list.
13. Write documentation explaining the implications of Drupal's GPL license in layman's terms. What does it mean to me if I'm a module developer, a themer, a Drupal business, etc.? There's been some discussion and probably additional clarification elsewhere.
14. Browse the Drupal forums and compile a list of true Drupal 5 FAQs.
15. Work with the Drupal Dojo to identify, recruit, and schedule trainers/presenters for some of the Dojo lesson ideas.
16. Record a screencast explaining the basics of the Panels module.
17. In addition to the videos section of the handbook, integrate the individual video links into the appropriate sections of the handbooks.
18. Research and summarize recommendations on what makes a good product tagline (or maybe an elevator pitch would be better). Use the summary to start a thread to allow the community to brainstorm ideas and then organize a poll with a deadline to vote on the top contenders.

Task: Prepare a "cheat sheet" of the various ways to link to resources, from PHP code, in Drupal.

The resources are:

• Style sheets (can be linked from two places: from either a module or a theme)
• Javascript files (again, linked from two places)
• Images (linked from themes, but can reside in several places (files/, misc/, theme/...).
• External PHP scripts (?)

In addition, the student should study the following three global variables:

• $base_url
• $base_path
• $base_root

and prepare a diagram listing several example absolute URLs. The three components of every URL should be colored --each in a different color. (This too will be included in the cheat sheet.)

I created my first task: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...
At creation I didn't have the option to select an owner or a type, and I'm not able to edit it after creation. How do I do this?