Commons on D7 : Define a Minimally Viable Product (MVP)

Getting through a development phase should be a high priority. If Commons could be brought up with Dev Desktop and worked well (with templates) with NetBeans that would be a plus.

It would also be useful to have a Commons distro that would work on a shared server. That might mean a reduced set of modules that addressed a minimal set of user features.

To my mind almost any minimum functionality will do. Cause for now if one wants to build a community site he'll need to start it from scratch and it'll be harder to switch/integrate with Commons later.

So being a Drupal developer and having a wish to port my own community to Drupal (I'll do it in my spare time) I'm thinking hard whether I should wait until first release of Commons or should I develop it from 0. The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that D6 version won't work for me.

So in my personal usecase I'd be glad to see almost any release for D7 with a clear roadmap of what is supposed to be done later. So I'd develop only my-site specific features or something I'll need to have from the first minute the site is deployed.

But anyway, thanks for the work you do. And I do realize that you have much more users with their own needs.
Thanks again.

Hi guys,

Got a community website here in Holland to build & would love to start with a Drupal 7 copy of Commons, of particular interest to me would be doing documentation for setting up & installing, as I think that is where my skills could be of most use to the community. So is there a dev copy anywhere I could start playing with? Offering feedback, etc? The sooner I get my grubby little mits on a copy, the sooner I can start :)

Cheers,
hx

Hi, I'm also very very new to Drupal.

i second the statement! My take is D7 is much more accessible, than all the previous versions.

I really really am looking forward to getting started on a commons based website. I eagerly wait to get the first site up and running! With D6 or D7!
If we talk about the feature-set: Well i am very very interested in a D7 version of Commons with basic OG functionality that is also extendable. This is somewhat the base install would include Groups, Blogs, Wikis, Documents, Discussions, Polls, Events and Notices.
Above all: I also can only echo great statements above by saying and arguing the same way. Please pleaese give me something, anything, so I can get started. Thanks for all you do - keep up the great project it rocks!!! youve got friends allover the planet! Hundreds and Hundreds...

greetings
unleash

My request would be for a D7 version of Commons with basic OG functionality that is also extendable.

The base install would include Groups, Blogs, Wikis, Documents, Discussions, Polls, Events and Notices. In addition to this I would add a Chat module wherein different groups could open a group-specific chat room embedded into the website and then share that chat room with other groups if so desired. If we can do video-conferencing (embedded in the website) somewhere down the road, that would be most awesome. The setup required for video-conferencing is a little daunting so don't put this on the must-have list just yet.

I need the ability to install new themes and modules without breaking the existing Commons setup. Perhaps a list of "approved & compatible" modules & themes would be good.
A very big wish on the list is the ability to upgrade using Drush, or a Commons-specific port of Drush. Right now, Commons + Drush = Disaster.

Essentially, I need a base Commons which I can build, extend, & customize without messing up the basic Commons core. And the ability to manage the upgrades with Drush would be fantastic.

Hi Marc!

Thanks for the oportunity to participate in the making of the new version of Commons distro. :)

Althoug it may be offtopic, I'll feel free to draw bigger picture and present what IMHO is important for Commons:

1) Excellent out of the box UX

One of the points of the distributions is to speed up development / site building proccess - with out of the box (via themes and extra modules) excellent UX experience you can start using site right away with no trouble at all. Example issue: As a Commons user, it seems unnecessary to confirm when I want to join a group.
Commons 6.x-2.5 made great (and big) step to address UX issues and that is really great! ;)

2) Flexibility to build upon Commons distribution

AFAIK this is really crucial to all Drupal distributions - to be able to make changes without losing upgrade path.
This task would be probably easier with having:

• Features override module in Commons core (i.e. officially supported)
• Better balance between hard (via features) and soft (via installation profile) configuration of the settings
• Apps - OAS @ g.d.o
• Kit-compliant features and themes

3) MVP

Content types:

• Discussion (feature request: merge it with Facebook-style Statuses to avoid confusion what to use for communication)
• Wiki
• Event management (feature request: add any kind of sing-up functionality
• Q&A
• Poll

Features:

• OG
• Subscription options and mail messaging of notifications
• RealName option by default
• Better login / registration mechanism:

1. Locally (e.g. via Realname registration and LoginToboggan module combo - to avoid using usernames at all when using also RealName module)
2. Remotely (e.g. via FB Connect, Twitter or Google account)

Profiles (via Profile 2 module maybe?)

User points

There are probably some more stuff, but it's too late and I can't think any of.

The point is that I think that it would be great to be able to use Commons for building community sites in the same way as Acquia is using Drupal (core and contrib) to build Commons.

My use case is web site for CSA groups in my country. Idea is to make Apps / features that can transform Commons in CSA specific site in no time..

I suppose I could open some issues / feature request @ Commons d.o issue queue based on above text, but I would definitively appreciate some feedback from your side..

Cheers!

good evening hello dear mariomaric -

dear buddy - wholeheartedly agreed - you point out what s wanted and needed! especially the OG-things are important.

besides OG I agree with almost all your points!

I look forward to the next steps of the sustainable development of Commons and D7

greetings unleash

I personally would like to have some more contributed modules, although I understand that it'd be difficult to have on shared hosting, but as John_B wrote, a solution might be to warn people about that (his point about having Commons update easier is also worth noting).

1. SEO and RDF

I think Commons could use some good SEO and RDF modules.

Drupal SEO Tools does a good work on SEO and analyzing content on Drupal.

Schema.org is a nice way to enhance RDF with modules that extend it like Microdata and RDF Extensions (along with SPARQL). OpenCalais might also be considered.

2. Features

Some features that I'd like to have are written down by mariomaric.

• Profile 2 with Organic groups profiles for OG, Profile2 Registration Path for profile registrations and Profile Privacy for private profile settings.

• The above stated solution by mariomaric for logging in and registering locally with RealName, Realname registration and LoginToboggan, and additionally Ajax Login/Register for a better user interaction.
Remotely could also be possible with Google Authenticator login, Twitter and Drupal for Facebook.

• Other Facebook integrations like Facebook Events and Facebook Photo Sync could be nice.

• Mailing and messaging could be enhanced with Mail Comment, Privatemsg (along with Private Message Growl) and possibly User Notifications which is still in the development phase for Drupal 6 and of which the maintainer is welcoming patches.

• Other features such as Advanced Forum (and Advanced Forum More Styles), Blog API and Radioactivity would be embraced well. The BeautyTips would also be a helpful module for users.

• Open Atrium has some nice collaboration features. Maybe some of them could be used in Commons.

• I'm not really a big fan of the User Points module but I'm sure a lot of people use it.

3. Search & Media

Last but not least it'd be nice to have more search capabilities with Custom Search that enables a lot of integrations like Apache Solr. Apache Solr Media would do well for websites which work with media. It works with the Media module.

Other modules that extent the Media module are FileField Sources, which is helpful to reuse already uploaded files instead of uploading them again, Media Mover to store media elsewhere and Remote stream wrapper, which uses external files without saving them to your local files directory. There are much more modules which extend the Media module, and that is why it's the best in handling media for the moment.

These are just some suggestions that I'd like to have on a Commons profile. The main features I'd be looking for would be to be able to collaborate on projects like music and photography and to be able to showcase all those projects so that the community could be able to see and give feedback, talk about them and so on.

hello ebieymjunior, hello Andrea C hello all!!

It's great to see this out. Congratulations to all the people who made this happen!

Well - it is a great pleasure to see commons on D7 comming to the community. Fantastic job to everyone that contributed to the release. You guys are amazing. This is going to be a great boon to the Commons-community, and it really goes to show how far we've come. I can't wait to see what else 2012 holds for Commons on Drupal.

You guys are what makes working in this community great. Thank you.

greetings unleash

overwehlming feedback so far. i see that this is

on a sidenote: Drupal is a synonym for a globalwork: Bridging Distance, Culture & Time! The spirit of the drupal-community is one of the most impressive things i ever experienced! The Drupal group is stronger than ever before: .
It is very impressive to see how many developers and users come here and communicate & share your questions, knowledge on every Drupal-commons-matter:

as MarioMaric stated above - the OG-Features are pretty important. I regard them also as very important - at least to my use-case.

see what Mario has written:
OG
Subscription options and mail messaging of notifications
RealName option by default
Better login / registration mechanism:
Locally (e.g. via Realname registration and LoginToboggan module combo - to avoid using usernames at all when using also RealName module)
Remotely (e.g. via FB Connect, Twitter or Google account)
Profiles (via Profile 2 module maybe?)
User points

It would be also a good idea if D7 Commons ,as it is a community platform,to include on its core the semantic FOAF vocabulary or People from the Schema.org modules.This would do D7 Commons a first class community platform.
Thanks

I subscribe to this feature. It would great if Commons could take advantage of Drupal 7's semantic capabilities.