Development Summary: Modules with Issues that Need to be Resolve for a Stable Easy Starter Kit

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kreynen's picture

The Creative Commons, Show - Printable Contract, Slideshow, Header, and Examples modules ALL have issues that need to be resolved.

Creative Commons - $5000 in funding to improve this module came from the Google Summer of Code program. Those improvements were made to the D6 version and included; use of the CC API to update licenses, RDFa support, integration with Drupal's search, and better Views support. While exciting improvements, the additional features have made upgrading this module more difficult. I did the initial D6 -> D7 upgrade work in April of 2011. I made major changes a year later to support licensing Media entities directly so that a license on a Show node could be applied to the VOD and displayed anywhere the VOD is used. I made additional improvements in July of 2012 before the Community Media Camp in Urbana, but the module is still at an alpha and has major issues including:

Show - Printable Contract - This feature was added to make it easier for stations to convert from paper to an online form. Unfortunately, unlike the Reservation Printable Contract which combines data from the reservation node with boilerplate legalese configured in the module's admin settings, cm_show no longer includes standard fields. The current implementation requires customizing a .tpl file which is a skill most easy users lack. There are a number of ways this could be fixed, but without a co-maintainer/product owner it hasn't been a priority.

Community Media Theme - While this theme and the related sub-modules like Slideshow and Header made it easier to acheive a look and feel similar to http://www.mnn.org/, working w/ Omega proved too complicated to support. A new branch of cm_theme was started that includes the original Omega based work as well as a new Zen based theme. Both channelAustin and OKV are moving to Zen.

Slideshow and Header - in addition to resolving the minor issues that trip people up on new installs, both of these modules depend on the Styles module. Styles was a requirement for Media, but that's been dropped. Again, there are several ways this could be resolved, but we remove the Styles dependency.

Checklist - As the co-maintainer/product owner Craig has made several suggestions for improving the module to work with the Easy/Moderate/Difficult kits. We're also still discussing Adding non-EULAy EULA wiki to GDO for users to sign as part of Checklist.

Example The Easy Kit would benefit greatly from a Feature exports of Show forms from different stations. I've sent several people screenshots of the forms from different stations always asking them to add it to the Show documentation. It never happens.

Comments

Show examples

jdcreativity's picture

Been slacking here but can help pick it up.

My understanding is that the

emilyf's picture

My understanding is that the workflow for many stations that enter into the CM Drupal world is to begin with a setup similar to (or that is) the easy starter kit and ultimately end up with additional modules that are part of the moderate/difficult kits. This is good -- it shows growth and is a process that builds confidence within the Drupal framework, and it's always good to start small and then expand as needed. But this expansion is something we should keep in mind for what code is considered necessary for a stable Easy Kit.

It seems to me that OG 2.x-compatible versions of both cm_project and cm_show (and the modules bundled with them) are important to this point. These should work on an initial install, and ideally there is a smooth upgrade included for stations on earlier versions of cm_project and cm_show, although this needs to be clarified with kreynen if this can be generic across stations (stations would need to do their own OG 1.x -> 2.x upgrade).

The OG 2.x-compatible versions of show and project should include core code, views, and the core content types. Specific scope of this development would need to be outlined by kreynen, as well as anticipated development cost. With many stations using or looking to use reservations api, and with the 2.x version of that being used with OG 2.x, I think it's important to get these pieces to the same level.

What would not be included in this work:

Individual customizations by CMCs to their own versions of cm_show and cm_project will be the responsibility of that CMC to undertake on their own with a developer. It would be important to scope out exactly what falls within a 'generic' show and project release at this point and what doesn't.

I think it would be great to get an idea of what this would cost and then who of the participating stations are interested in contributing to those costs. My impression from talking with jdcreativity, stefanwray, and dfrazier is that their stations might be interested in pooling resources for this.