To my Drupal Brothers and Sisters,
I'm considering writing a Drupal Mobile Development guide for Beginners, but I'm a little stuck. My problem is that I've been developing sites for four years now and I've lost touch with what it's like to be a beginner. I'm afraid that the content of my book will be unfocused. Rather than make this mistake, I thought I'd post to the mobile group to get some honest feedback about the topics that I should be covering. I've always believed that the cornerstone of anything great is a great plan. Please help me to include/exclude the right topics, so that my guide can reach and help seed the widest possible beginning Drupal development audience.
The Goal: To give new Drupal developers everything they need to design Mobile Web Sites in one reference guide.
How to do it: Give the reader a start to finish example of a mobile Drupal site, centered around expanding micro-finance programs to include housing in Kenya.
Here's what I have so far:
1) Why Drupal for your mobile development CMS platform (the beauty of the Open Source model, Critical mass within the development community, vested interest within the economy of it's success through mission critical production sites...)?
2) Installing everything you need the fast and reliable way (using Drupal Developer profiles)
3) Development Environments for one developer or many, remote or local
4) The Plan: Planning your site success from the start: value-add beyond your web mind-share/market-share competition
5) Project management, Business Analysis, Costing crash course A page out Getting Real by 37 Signals
6) Stripping down the Drupal UI (Taking the complexity out of content creation)
7) The Look and feel of your site centered around google conversions, and information architecture (Blocks, views, mobile compliant themes, mobile modules with longevity, and menus that work together)
8) Formatting content to suit the mobile world
9) Site promotion, Search Engine Optimization. Social Networking interdependence.
10) Testing everything
11) Building in constant evolution through learning, testing, implementation, making friends, and giving back.
Appendix A Reference Material and Suggested Reading
Like Dries said at his 2010 Toronto Drupalcon address: "mobile is our new frontier", or something to that effect. Solid, well-thought-out, easy-to-use documentation is what will pave the way for that new frontier, along with the pre-existing great code base that is Drupal. While there are some great mobile development reference guides already available: Maximiliano Firtman's Mobile Web, Brian Fling's Mobile Design and Development, Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp's Introducing HTML5 (Voices That Matter), there is nothing Mobile Drupal specific. There should be. That's where we come in: if we build it, they will continue to come, or something to that effect.
Please weigh in on this subject, to help me do my little part.
Thanks,
Robbie Jackson
Comments
New to mobile, relatively new to Drupal
Well, I'm currently researching what it would take to create a mobile version of the Drupal-based website I designed and built earlier this year for the local newspaper.
Venturing into the mobile world will be completely new for me; Drupal is still relatively new to me. When I began researching open-source CMSs late last year to find a new alternative for the local newspaper's website, I'd never heard of Drupal; this year has been a self-taught crash course in Drupal ... but well worth it. I have come to like Drupal very much for what it can do; it's now my first choice for building new websites.
But I've never before tried my hand at creating a mobile site. If the local newspaper decides to go forward with creating a mobile version of their site, it's going to be another huge learning curve for me again. Any resources I can find to ease that learning curve will be greatly appreciated.
I'm not a programmer, coder, or developer; I'm a graphic designer, writer, and trainer/instructor.
I'm pretty good at bridging the divide between technology and human beings. For the last five-and-a-half years, I've freelanced as an instructor of computer workshops for three national computer training companies. I've traveled across the Southeast -- and trained clients around the world through WebEx-based trainings -- conducting workshops in Excel, PowerPoint, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, HTML/CSS, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress.
I have developed the ability to break down complex, technological topics into basic, human language -- without being condescending or patronizing. I meet people where they are, from beginner to advanced user, and help them to bridge the gap between what they know and what they don't know (yet).
If any of that would be useful in your process, I'd be happy to help as I can. I stay pretty busy with the newspaper website ... but I can eke out a little time for other projects now and then.
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
How we did it
This is a tangent from the original poster's topic, but here's how we did it:
Complete existing site using the usual recipe of CCK, Views, Panels.
Create a simple, mobile-friendly template set (theme).
Install the Domain Access module and use it to override the theme and any other required system settings for m.example.com. Create simplified section fronts using Panels as necessary.
Detect mobile browsers and redirect example.com/some/path to m.example.com/some/path. In our case, this was implemented at the external cache layer (Squid). Others might do this with Varnish.
The result is:
TODO Fix: If a mobile user shares a link, the desktop user may get a mobile page (we don't detect and reverse-redirect at this time).
All of this falls into the category of remediation -- fixing what was broken. It doesn't serve as a proper mobile strategy, which would focus on the creation of mobile-specific services taking advantage of such tools as HTML5 geolocation, etc., and would focus on needs that are specific to mobile contexts.
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this approach. How long would you say it took and can we get a URL to try the mobile site out?
Igor
Not long
I'm not sure how long it took in terms of person-hours -- it's something we did in parallel with dozens of other projects.
Examples:
http://m.savannahnow.com/
http://m.jacksonville.com/
http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/
Just delete the 'm' to see the corresponding primary site.
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2010-12-28/story/woman-struggles-unde...
http://m.jacksonville.com/news/crime/2010-12-28/story/woman-struggles-un...
Two domain??
Hi yelvington,
What if my CMS setup as www.abc.com/1/cms, how can i setup for mobile site? Do define mobile domain? I define as m.abc.com/1/cms. Does not seem to be work. Appreciate if can detail me more instruction.
Thanks!
Re: How we did it
Steve/yelvington,
This is a great summary of what needs to be done to make a site mobile ready from the point of view of an experienced Drupaler. Using CCK, Views, and Panels are straightforward for those of us who've been around it for years. What I'm trying to achieve is to giving all the details, from the point of view of a new admin/webmaster. I'd love to learn some more details about your approach so that I can add them to the book.
I've taken a slightly different approach to accomplish the same results as you describe in steps 2 through 4. I use the mobile plug-in http://drupal.org/project/mobileplugin I find using it and it's associated modules work well for creating great mobile sites. It also allows me to keep the same url. Having different approaches such as this is exactly what I'm trying to flush out.
I'd like to go with the most simple solution to address the main objective: a professional mobile ready a site that can be made by a beginner by following the examples laid out in the book. This way the reader will be able to use the book as an authoritative resource when designing a Mobile Drupal site, with little if any outside material required.
I'd also like to choose the solution that will evolve with the Drupal community as well as web protocols. This way the solution will have long term positive spin-off effects for those who follow the readers. Even if the majority of the book is focused on prep work, such as installing Drupal, editing httpd.conf files, creating mysql users....on and on and on, I'll be very happy with the outcome.
My amateur woodworker father-in-law once told me a story about a master carpenter who he admired that pertains to the overall objective I'd like to accomplish for the Drupal book. He said the thing that separated the great craftsman from him was the amount of detail he put into caring for his tools and preparing and squaring, and measuring his materials. The actual building process happened almost by itself he said, once all the right prep was done. This is the effect I'd like to convey to the new Drupalers through the text. Follow the right setup, use the right tools and foundation, and you'll be good with Drupal long into the future, whether it's a mobile site or otherwise.
I took a look at your Jacksonville site. Looks great.
Also took a look at your profile, which looks like you've got plenty of experience.
I'm hoping I can get your help designing the outline.
Sincerely,
Robbie Jackson
Robbie Jackson
www.drupalcreations.com
robbiejackson@drupalcreations.com
Book
Hi,
Why don't you take a look at http://authors.packtpub.com. They are specialized in open source books and have a lot Drupal related published. I'm relatively sure they can help you get organized.
Kind Regards,
Willy
Never do today what you can let somebody else do tomorrow.
Thanks
Bockereyer,
Thanks for that suggestion. As a start into the world of technical authoring, I'm going to start out as a technical reviewer on a Pact book. Looking forward to it. It'll be a great way to learn.
Thanks everyone for commenting,
Robbie Jackson
www.drupalcreations.com
robbiejackson@drupalcreations.com
Love to have your help
Katrina,
I'd love to have your help on the project. The more input the better. Once I've narrowed down the final outline, I'll let you know. This way you can make some suggestions about what you know works with your students: experienced and otherwise.
Ideally, you might be able to add to your teaching material.
Sincerely,
Robbie Jackson
Robbie Jackson
www.drupalcreations.com
robbiejackson@drupalcreations.com
Happy to help
I'm happy to help in any way I can. I'm pretty good at looking at technological projects from the technical side and from the "average user" side ... and I can be very nitpicky about making certain that directions are clear and specific and that the directions don't assume too much. (For example, "Go to the settings page" -- without telling me how to find the settings page!)
I also try to come up with as many possible scenarios as possible. "What if ... ? What about ... ? What happens when ... ?"
By the way, I agree with your father-in-law about the value of preparation. My personal theory is that every five minutes I spend in preparation (for any project, computer-oriented or not) saves me at least twenty minutes later in the process. I would much rather spend hours or days or weeks in preparation -- and have the rest of the process be a relatively smooth downhill slide -- instead of spending time fixing problems that could have been avoided with a little forethought, research, and preparation.
I'm in the research stage myself at the moment; here are a couple of articles I have found thus far:
http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/rachel/drupal-support-mobile-devices
http://www.digett.com/2010/05/21/mobilize-your-drupal-site-mobile-tools
Katrina
Site builder, writer, trainer, graphic designer
I'm also new to mobile, relatively new to Drupal
I would love to get some help making my site http://www.tinemuller.dk/test_drupal/ to a mobile browser version but not sure it can be done because I use Google Maps API? Maybe this kind of site is better made with applications for Android and Iphone but this will be a lot more work and expensive to hire people for this.
I'm not a php programmer but have been struggling hard and made this site without any map modules but now I have hired a pro drupal developer and we are at the moment making this testsite http://beta.findtoilet.dk/ "more Drupal-y way".