Overview: An automatic invitation module is very important for websites looking to expand their user base. This project will help develop the right interface to achieve such a goal.
Description: To develop a powerful front end and back end panel comprising of the following main features :
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The users can import their entire address books from famous mail providers like GMail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. forming the initial part of the module.
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They can invite their friends to the website by sending them a custom or a user generated message.
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The invited friends' contacts will be stored in a seperate database which can be monitored by the administrator like viewing it, editing it, deleting it and customizing it depending upon whether the same contact is added, etc.
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The administator has the rights to control the number of mails sent per unit of time thus ensuring the delivery of every invitation and decreasing the load on the server.
Additional features such as giving away gifts to users when they touch a particular invitation limit, etc. can also be incorporated.
Timeline :
Week 1-2 : I am already familiar with the basic framework of Drupal but need to get an advanced know how of how to implement the more complex details and modules in Drupal. I plan to do the same during the first 2 weeks.
Week 3-4 : I would start working on the administration side of development of the module, develop the features and incorporate them.
Week 5-6 : The front end visibility at the user side and the ease in using it would be implemented during this period.
Week 7 : Testing of the entire project, finding bugs, removing them.
Week 8-9 : This duration would be spent on finding additional features which can make the module more efficient and easily usable and beneficial for the end users. I would try to implement these features.
Academic Experience: A 3/4 Bachelor of Technology student, a Gold Medalist and 3 times consecutive scholarship award winner at NIT,Warangal,India. I started my 'Open Source' journey starting with Mozilla, and then migrating to Joomla and Drupal, which gave me an insight into the power of such Open Source projects. As the Web Team Head for Technozion '08 (a national level techfest), I developed the website using Drupal, hence increasing my familiarity with it.
Professional Experience: During my internship, I worked on the development of an eCommerce platform using the basic PHP and MySQL script. I successfully completed the development of Order Management with a basic framework of Product and Customer Management.
I think my exposure with Drupal and a strong technical background provides me the right candidature for grabbing such an opportunity. I would surely validate my dedication if given a chance to work towards such a cause.
Any suggestions for making this project more efficient and better are invited.
Comments
A Clarification
I believe that many readers are getting a wrong impression about the purpose of this module. The concept with which I look at this module is it can be a great Viral Marketing tool and not a simple Invitor module, which would be very beneficial for the site administrators looking to expand their user base. I believe that by incorporating the feature of giving away incentive to a user for inviting friends can act as a very powerful tool for attracting more users to the website.
http://drupal.org/project/inv
http://drupal.org/project/invite
http://drupal.org/project/dcl_importer
These two together are lightweight and allows one to invite directly or import emails from yahoo, msn etc and invite.
Have you seen these modules?
What will be the added benefits of the new module you propose?
Do you plan to release it for both D 6 and D 7?
The Difference
Yes. I have had a look at both of these modules and I found some loopholes with them which I am listing down below :
dcl_importer is based on a copyrighted PHP library, apparently in violation of the library author's wishes which can be found at http://drupal.org/node/315674
The Invite module isn't very powerful as this module can be which is apparent from its coverage of the different email providers and contact importing from social networking websites. Moreover, as I have mentioned, this module would act as a Viral Marketing tool with users being attracted to recommend the website to others due to the incentives involved. The Invite module also doesnt look at the load on the server if there are a lot of mails to be sent at the same time. This feature would be touched upon in the Administrator section. Moreover, repeated emails to the same user and handling the invitations in a manner such that they arent spammed by the email services would also be looked upon by this module.
Thus, this is altogether an improvised version of the already developed modules with all the loopholes being wiped out and additional features being added.
And I would start developing the module for D 6 and if time permits, extend it to making it compatible for D 7 as well. But,it can be worked out.
A question : Why are all these questions asked because I suppose the selections for SoC 2009 have already been over?
Clarification
To the best of my knowledge, minesota@drupal.org is not a GSoC mentor and didn't participate in our internal discussions but is just interested in your project as is (maybe not even knowing the outcome of the selection). Personally, I regret that you were not in the final list, especially since you're genuinely interested in getting involved. (I guess it doesn't help, but you were a close contender and not far from being selected.) It's hard to dismiss nice proposals by motivated students because of a lack of slots... sorry for that.
Side note
Oh, and we did cover those topics in the internal discussion too, and considered your replies during the selection process.
Re : Clarification
I genuinely respect the decision of all people involved with deciding upon the selection of the projects for GSoC and do not question them too. When minesota@drupal.org asked such a question, I thought that a slot might have opened up at GSoC and so I might as well take a chance. That was the primary reason for the reply.
Thanks
Thanks for your answers. I have no idea about SoC 2009 - I am only an "end-user" who use or intend to use modules for our small or medium sites, and will want to use that is the best option.
Hope that explains things. Best regards to you.
PS - And I think if it is an useful module anyone can contribute to drupal :)
Re : Thanks
Yes. That can be done. But I dont have the perfect skill set to develop such a module without any kind of assistance / mentoring. I am trying to find one and I hope this module does become a success..