Can we ever get a usable community site out of the box with Drupal? (Theorical question, opinions wanted)

First off, I don't consider Facebook to be a simple site. Facebook took millions of dollars to make.

You're not going to see profiles as nodes in core. It's actually going the other direction. With fields in core being able to be attached to users, D7 will very likely see the end of profiles as nodes.

As for combining the edit pages, I'm not really in favor of that. There is a fundamental difference between editing your account and editing your profile. While we do need to tie things together better for ease of use, I don't see those ever being in the same spot.

There's some long term plans for a new module based on panels to completely take over the entire user profile / account / homepage process but that's some months off and will likely not be usable until summer or later.

Michelle

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

how far have we arrived in order to manage profiles (and all basic social stuff) with Drupal and how to achieve each of these goals

It's still very much a hands on activity. Once APK is ready for D6, that will simplify it quite a bit.

what are the future goals, community agreement over the plans to achieve them and dates / modules / Drupal version estimated to have them ready

No such thing. This is open source. We have lots of people working on what they want to work on. There are no planning committes outside of small groups of people that get together to achieve someting. AFAIK, that hasn't happened in the SN area. The parts I'm working on I do mostly alone, very part time, most of it for free though I have gotten some sponsorship for APK this week. There's a lot of work to be done and it all takes time.

Michelle

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

The last time I attempted to make an install profile, about 3 months back, I failed miserably. I'm going to attempt it again for forums in January and hope to have better luck.

What's needed is a good question. I would say forums for sure but, from your comment, you wouldn't want forums. That's one of the big problems of OOB. The other is the question of support. If I can get install profiles to behave, I'd be willing to put together one for SN sites in general. But I don't want to have to support every module in it. I already get Panels & CCK support questions in APK because people don't know any better. They think anything that happens having to do with users or profiles is an APK problem. I get similar problems with forums. That's one of the reasons I am hesitant about OOB. People who just open a box and get a site tend often to not understand how things are working together. When something doesn't work, they cast about randomly for support. I prefer to give people the tools and teach them how to use them. Maybe I'm an oddball around here but I don't think Drupal for the masses is necessarily a good thing. I think people building websites should have a clue about what they're doing. Education, yes, handholding, if resources permit, handing on a silver platter, not so much.

Michelle

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

I understand your worries, Michelle. In any case there's a clear interest in the OOB compilation.

So, theoretically I can imagine some kind of package as those from IKEA furnitures or Meccano toys: every piece packed together and ready to be assembled by the user.

From this point we could combine both:

1. having the users the need to know every single piece
2. less tutorial and a well documented install profile

Benefits from #1

• users have to know all modules
• people without a minimum Drupal knowledge won't be ready to use it

Benefits from #2

• we have all (all what would be considered the basics) in one package
• we are sure all modules work fine together
• specially designed modules could be used in order to 'manage the box' (e.g. and 'update-status.module' taking control over new modules version compatibility)

If all these makes any sense I believe it could be an intermediate approach to what Michelle and Boris suggest. If all these makes no sense at all, please let me know and I'll try to rethink about it and take a few days holidays. :-)

hip

It´s amazing how interesting this discussion has became. I realize that my first post was a bit simplistic, comparing certain Drupal modules with facebook, or asking for OOB community installs.

Anyway, I didn´t mean as if you could get a facebook-like site right out-of-the-box, but what I really meant was that handling profiles (the core ingredient of a community site I think) it´s a difficult task that sometimes requires several hacks that only people with programming skills can do.

APK is a step towards an easier community site maker, because you can easily put together a lot of stuff and put it in a nice way, without programming skills.

But getting your profiles as you want them, is still one of the hardest parts of the "Drupal learning curve", and I think it shouldn´t be. That´s the point: Why can´t profiles be managed more easily? I don´t mean to transform profiles to be nodes, but to be managed as easy as nodes are.

I think I can safely compare Drupal with Elgg (yeah, there are lots of discussions out there about Drupal and Elgg, but I think they are similar in many ways), and I dream of a Drupal module that could get an elgg-like profile.

Not necesarily out of the box, but fairly easy to understand for non programmers, or at least for newbies.

Hasta luego ;)

Rosamunda

I guess an out of the box functionality is not much of a problem if all the building blocks were available in time and a best-practice approach documented. I really like the concept of the "site recipes" section in Drupal's documentation but unfortunately it does not cover many typical Drupal usages.

I am not a Drupal expert, I know my way around when it comes to installation and configuration of modules but I cannot code, that is why I rely on out of the box functionality (from modules not from the core). The problem is if I post a question (e.g. how to set up a very simple, but nicely presented one-page user profile and add some basic buddy-list functionality) in this forum, I will get multiple suggestions, most of which involve custom coding. Eventually someone will suggest a combination (e.g. APK+Panles) that is supposed to solve my problem, but then I discover that some of the modules are not ready yet. So even though D6 is released I cannot really use it ;-)

A bit off topic but another area that suffers from the same lack of best-practice approach and a combination of modules is the image gallery functionality. People ask about that almost every other day, multiple partial solutions exist but non covering the simplest user-managed-galleries approach that Picasa has for example.

@ Michelle : yes thats the problem - all or none !

@ Boris : Not facebook clone. But minimum common features that all standard social sites has.
For example, e107 or joomla or xyz does pretty same thing so far as the core features goes, for example all emails have an inbox, saved mails, draft, compose. Are all these clones of each other ? Probably Yes and probably no.

If you compare sites like Orkut, facebook, bebo etc or php scripts like socialengine and just scrap out the themes and layouts : they offer pretty much the same features for end users. One of the most important common denominator being control of privacy very granularly by the end user/site member.
The other is very easy Profile Commenting and formation of Groups.

I did not mean clone and am sorry if it sounded like that. I meant the common features ( just like the common features of an email service ) that should be there for a social net. Of course the whole debate is about what the "common" features will be.

By Apps or Gadgets, I specifically mean NO integration with Google or Facebook Apps. Google, Bebo, Facebook, Xyz all provide Apps. But google does not provide facebook Apps, and facebook does not provide google apps. I mean this - Drupal should have its own system of Apps just like it has its own system of blogs or forums. Are Apps a common feature ? Do they need to be there if we call ours a social site ? That is a debate now. That is why we need a COMMON list if possible

However, at one time when webmail was not there and MS purchased Hotmail from Bhatia there was debate how much is the need of webmail. Similarly I think what we debate today down the years are going to be standard features. The beginners will have advantage in the game.

Sorry for posting again.

@Michelle : I do not find any wiki page in the link you gave. And I mean, if others are interested in such a list we can proceed.

@Boris : If you go through the very short and very incomplete list I gave above and also see the actual orkut and facebook sites ( you need to have two memberships or an interacting friend ) you will find the way of Profile commenting I described is actually Orkut way, and not Facebook. The Group icons or mini logos on Profile page is also what Orkut started and does very nicely.

So far as "Block this user" is concerned it appears in most social site php scripts also : its a button or link below the profile photo, instead of links cluttering below every content as in content blocker and once you block from this single button, all contents, pms, requests etc are blocked from that person - single place, single click and confirm. Since I am seeing this feature in all social scripts like phpfox, socialengine etc from the very beginning I do not know who is cloning whom.

Some other features, which I wrote here/ elsewhere like OGs capability to have its own banner and or video are very much unique to Drupal. Drupal's userpoint is also excellent except one or two situations. Thus all these features together can make Social Drupal unique and not just yet another clone :)

Ummm ... I now see the opening topic was "community" site.
All the while I was thinking to myself : social networking and the features that social networking sites or social networking php scripts ( like elgg, buddypress, dolphin, alycia in the free zone, and phpfox, dzoic, socialengine in the paid zone provides )

Featurewise ( except gadgets/apps) Fbook or Orkut are nothing very complicated that Drupal cannot do - their success lies in their load balanced costly servers, nifty marketing strategies, advertisement in appropriate niches etc etc

I have no definite idea what a "community" site should provide but those who are downloading free things like buddypress or purchasing things like sengine are looking for the so called 'tall-order' features ( and getting too ) - it is actually not a very tall order, most of the things are there already in drupal, just a few small things missing ... small but important by "snw" standards.

If communities are or were traditionally built around forums, the forum giants vbulletin and invision have started adding social networking flavour and in a great way : both now supports excellent user profile, profile ajax comments, ability to form groups, granular privacy options .....

"Though I just noticed this post is in both groups. Missed that before."

hehe, yeap, I didn´t realised that there were two different groups for the same thing until I posted this node. Well, at least I thought it was the same thing. But I think you´re right Michelle,... there are differences between the two concepts of community and SN. The thing is that I think the difference is very subtle, and in terms of features, it doesn´t matter. But it should matter in terms of the site´s goal. Maybe.

Anyway, and talking about forums, I think they are interesting for a "support" area, for asking questions that need an answer.
They doesn´t matter anymore for a community, because the commenting system is far better creating the sense of conversation. In fact, creating an article and letting people comment and discuss it, isn´t very different of a forum anyway :) The difference maybe, is the freedom that you have when you´re going to create a new discussion in a group (just like here at groups.drupal).

But having good, solid profiles is very important for a community or a social networking site. A robust profile that shows your personal information, your friends, coworkers, let you decide who sees what part of your profile and communitcate with them. Lets you write posts, initiate discussions, create events and meetings, moderate comments, upload pictures, show your friends what have you been doing lately, and how are you... in other words, let you have your little personal space.

Yes, I think that you can do all that with Drupal, but is not out of the box, as, let´s say, creating a blog or a publishing site. And that´s because they haven´t worked on profile module as much as in any other core module. People that are new to Drupal (and I recall thinking this when I was new to drupal some years ago), doesn´t easily understand why there are modules that try to emulate or complement profiles (ie. Bio, NodeProfile, etc... in D6 at least you don´t have to choose between several options).

But that´s, of course, just my opinion, and I don´t want to minimize all those excellents improvements that have been commited to drupal core since 4.7 that make Drupal so exiting. Please don´t get me wrong, I love Drupal.
In spanish we´ve a saying "lo perfecto es enemigo de lo bueno" ("perfection is an enemy of the good" -as in stuff well done-)

Rosamunda

I didn´t read that node! (How could I missed it? A wishlist? yay!)
I´m reading it right now and see if what I want/think is or isn´t already there. Thanks for the link!

Rosamunda

hehe that´s great! Finally a community book!