I've been talking about this for a while now, but I'd really like to get a new site to post information about our DUG. One of the main objectives here to to get around the permissions and configurability restrictions in place on GDO so we can add fields and functionality to some of the basic objects we generally post there. Certainly we'll want to replicate thing like events, polls, and discussions, and we'll likely want to add some fields to user profiles, but what other information do we want to keep track of? what should the data model look like for a site that represents a DUG?
Another issue is cross posting, we'd like to be able to use this site as the primary location to find information about our DUG, but we don't want to leave our GDO page empty and unused looking, rather we want to cross post our content to GDO with a link back to our site, so users that find us via GDO can see that we're active, and talking about things on our main site. I'm not totally sure about the best way to go about this, but it's one thing I'll be thinking about when working on this site, and if you have any ideas about the best way to do this, let me know.
I've spun up a vanilla Drupal 7 instance on one of my Aegir servers for this site build. If you want to collaborate, you can register at drupalsd.com and drop me a line asking me to mark you as an admin. I've also made a github repo out of the sites directory so we can add modules, librabries, theme related files, etc. If you want commit access to that repo, send me your ssh key and I'll add you as a collaborator.
Comments
An SD DUG website
Andy,
Yes! Bravo! Idea to consider: Follow best practices suggestions in DGD7, to help us all do Drupal with less effort.
For example, in "discovery phase" we actually compose and post:
- objectives: why are we doing this?
- audience(s)
- message
And in "information architecture and functional requirements phase" we post for the target site:
- functional requirements outline (different meaning for many of us; pls share your concept of func rqmts)
- content strategy (e.g., content types, categories, user roles, permissions, etc)
- wireframe? or your favorite site preliminary design representation
Conventional wisdom says Install and configure should follow, in a "Development implementation phase." Many of us don't do that. We already know it will be D7 + ctools + views + date + pathauto + securelogin + token + libraries + backup_migrate + include. Right? So we build and bootstrap toward final. In other words, move this discussion onto the target site beginning today. For example, Andy's already built a prototype site, and is setting roles & permissions to keep us sort of sane. Let's write functional requirements for the site in an article.
We can use this exercise to improve our own practices and workflow.
Just my two cents, to get the ball rolling. Feedback please?
Jonathan and I had started a
Jonathan and I had started a thread about this after one of the DUG meetings in Nov I think after you had mentioned having the same desire when I asked about it.
It's since been buried but I think a few people contributed some ideas to what they would like to see in the build out.
I would use Feeds and Feeds Tamper maybe to pull down the GDO content and populate forum nodes on the new site. Thoughts?
Asking Acquia for sponsorship
FWIW we did a similar project for DrupalHawaii.com and Acquia was happy to be a sponsor and give us their basic hosting. I think it would be a great idea to make it possible to post jobs -- so make it a resource not only to Drupal devs but those organizations and HR people looking to hire Drupal folk.
Interested in the intersection of justice, social entrepreneurship, and technology.
Any progress
Hey Andy,
Has there been any progress with this?
I agree with you that creating a customizable space to extend the value we get from posting on G.D.O. is something worth investing some time in.
I believe the Drupal community in San Diego should have a flagship website that represents their talented members. We build these awesome websites for our clients, yet we do very little on our sites.
If you need a hand with the planning, architecture or theming I would like to volunteer a couple of hours on weekends.
Let me know if you're still interested.
Best,
RM
Best regards,
Rob Montero
Zend Certified Senior Drupal Engineer
Achieve Internet
User profiles
Could we please capture in User Profiles the URLs of sites that we are working with? The objective is to be able to peruse each other's sites so we can learn from each other (i.e., ask each other how we did stuff.) Thanks...Debbie
Site Hosting
For what it's worth, progress is hung up on this until we find some better hosting. It runs fine on my server, but it's a huge pain to make it work in a collaborative fashion, particularly since I'm hosting the repo with github and I don't have it updating regularly with a CI server.
I've talked to some people at Acquia about getting some free dev cloud hosting, and it sounds like they're willing, but they've been very slow to get back to me about it. Once we have a better, more collaborative hosting setup, I think we'll be able to move forward with this much more easily.