Commons D7 MVP User stories

The document looks promising and exciting. Is there a tentative release date? We have a couple of projects lined up using Commons 7. To save time, would you recommend starting off of our websites with the Drupal 6 version and then upgrade to Commons on Drupal 7?

Hi Ezra and the rest of the Commons team.

It would be maybe good to write blog post about Commons Drupal 7 at Acquia web page (and tag it for Drupal Planet) that will direct interested parties here for additional discussion. Other places that cross my mind is Commons distro page and http://commons.acquia.com

I like all user stories and direction in which Commons is heading with new Drupal 7 release.

I’m site builder, wannabe developer, and also a community member / manager and group administrator at fresh Commons site I deployed for CSA groups in Croatia.

I like to build on top of the Commons, so your last broad goal is the most interesting to me:

As much as possible, have the technical components separate enough to be a flexible accelerator for site building.

For me this mean that you decouple features as much as possible, even on the site functionality level, for example:

1) In activity stream feature FBSS should be separate (dependent) feature - so if I don’t need statuses functionality I can easily turn it off.
2) Relationship types could be in separate feature, so if I would like to implement another user relationship as main / default I can do that easily.
3) Etc.

This could be configurable during the installation, but, with many features available, IMO it would be great to have powerful installation wizard e.g. in first step of the installation process you could choose several options:

1) I'm Feeling Lucky - Commons are installed based on default settings
2) Basic - only few basic questions / options
3) Advanced - full power and the ability to choose all available options

Of course, all above mentioned wizard options / scenarios could be broken into several steps if needed.

To be easily able to override Commons components through the UI and store them so that they are not overridden for me personally is killer feature, although it’s marked as Post MVP. There is also scenario where you are able to override things without UI, via modules - and this is point where some documentation / hints / best practices can be of much help for people interested in it - and not yet full fledged Drupal developers who already now they craft very good.

Although log into the site using existing Google / Facebook / Twitter account would be huge accessibility improvement, to be able to register also would be much appreciated.

I really like all the stuff at Community member sheet, especially in content usefulness functional area.
It would be awesome that flagging content as useful / spam / inappropriate / etc. is really available for all content presented at site - content types (entities?), comments, etc..

About personalization of user profiles from the site builder point of view - I would like that design and architecture of profile pages be also easily overridable / upgradeable with new blocks of content - for example block showing information about new kind of user relationship (e.g. Trust) that user is having. This is probably only related with context module / features, but also I mentioned it here because if one user relationship - e.g. Follow - is default, hardcoded and not easily overridable, then it’s making site builder work harder. :/

Also it will be good to include ability for users to set up privacy of their user profile (fields) based on groups and / or user relationship.

About Wiki and Discussion content types (I’m glad that you removed Blog and Document, if I didn't miss something..):

From my personal experience and some UX / UI thinking I concluded that for the vast of majority of the Commons users Wiki special features don’t mean much. For example I found Linkit module to be more user friendlier (especially if you replace CKeditor link buttons with it) then freelinking filter.

So, IMHO there should be one general content type with all WYSIWYG, upload / insert images / files, tagging, book outline features and with following clearly visible settings:

1) Audience (privacy / visibility option):
a) Groups selection (only visible to members of selected groups)
b) Public on the web (visible to everyone even Anonymous users)

2) Can edit (collaboration option):
a) Only me (default)
b) All members of the groups that content is part of

As for groups, it would be nice if you could set up privacy of posts (public / private which is now located @ admin/og/og_access page) per group, not per group content types globally.

I hope that eventually internationalization of Commons will be in focus, this kind of tool could be of much help for the Commons communitiy, that can than help themselves with translations, and contribute back to Drupal: http://groups.drupal.org/node/87084#comment-272244

And just one last note in this already lengthy post. Yes, it’s about usernames vs. full names issue. ;)
IMHO full names are must have on real-world community web sites and I would be really grateful that support for them would not only be at layout / display level, but also in autocomplete forms and that kind of user interfaces..
Real / full name issue wouldn’t exist if there were option somewhere in Drupal to switch off uniqueness of usernames. :/

Cheers and looking forward for next steps. :)

Thanks for the heads up! Features Override (and smilar solutions) is definitely what I had in mind :).

What about Commons internationalization?Would this function/modules be included in the core of Commons of the new D7 version?

Attended Drupal Drive DC last week - heard Dries and various folks & got very excited over Drupal site building ... Drupal 7 seems amazing - but I am sad to see Commons is a D6 distribution. Understand that D6 to D7 is no small matter. Very keen on finding D7 version or helping test as it evolves. I am not a heavy developer - site designer is probably more accurate. But - how can I help with this infectious project?

hi

great to hear from you - this is a great story and yes: i am pretty sure that your help is very very wellcome here.

i am brandnew to drupal - i do not consider myself a developer - but i am willing to help out whereever i can.

and i am very sure that many many of the folks here - help as good as they can.

the sustaiinable develpment is very very impressive.

greetings unleash