Posted by jeffchi on December 23, 2007 at 7:23am
We are beginning the development of a green building news portal and we are wondering if there have been any further advancements towards creating an install profile that covers many of the aspects of a good newspaper site. We are game to work with other end-users and a development team to arrive at this solution. What about someone who has a decent newspaper site that can have a generic version created to accommodate practically any type of focus topic? Am I over simplifying the task?
Thank you,
Jeff
www.Skysiteproperty.com
Comments
Well, it'd be easy to create
Well, it'd be easy to create some sort of install profile that would bundle the basics (views, cck, pathauto, something for advertisement management, panels, ...) but pretty hard to create something that would really get a site going. One of the reasons for this is that an install profile makes everything easy to setup but doesn't show how to work with the installed modules and thus may give a false impression of simplicity.
I'd be more than happy to share some of my ideas about an install profile, but as far as implementation is concerned, I'm afraid my day job is soaking up most of my time, as is the case with so many in this group.
Strategic implementation of install profile
Thank you for your reply, although I need more insights to realize the true implications of what you just said. Having a collection of interconnecting module ripe for a typical newspaper, seems like a logical approach. Having a few main “master themes” to choose from would be awesome. But, the devil in the detail seems to be: knowing how they work together. Would that not be somewhat of a problem using any module at any time, why under these circumstances would having a set of modules create such an issue? And is so, then any elaborate install program is prone for the same consideration, yes?
Why can not one take a great news site reporting on General News and create a site that is reporting on any focused subject, just replacing the content and navigational tags? I am sure i am oversimplifying the task, but seems so attainable.
Well, what you're describing
What you're describing is definitely attainable and would help the community a lot - and hopefully I'll be able to devote some time to this come summer, but a few remarks nonetheless:
- Making a good theme for a news-publication equals tons of work. There's so much information that you want to display, and so little space to do it in. Different publications can also differ significantly in type of content. That said, I'd love a basic "newspaper" theme that could serve as a skeleton for different sites.
- Perhaps my first comment wasn't entirely clear. What I meant was that an install profile can potentially disrupt the learning curve of someone who is new to Drupal, suddenly confronting them with a whole bunch of modules which the installation might preconfigure but that will most definitely need some finetuning. That means that good documentation is a requisite for this installation profile.
- A bundle of modules <> a good install profile
- I'm guessing many of the newssites that run on Drupal work in wildly different ways.
- Don't underestimate the time it takes to "package" a working product for general use. Most people here have developed custom modules that work great, but distributing them means testing them on different platforms, making them less workflow-dependent / usable in more situations, and providing documentation. And that can take as much time as the development took in the first place.
Short term fix- repurpose existing site
Thank you for your continuing replies. I understand your point that in order to make a more universal, flexible and resourceful install profile, then there needs to be series consideration for documentation, testing and adaptation for the many possible applications.
For our immediate needs to expedite the development of our green building portal, I would be most interested in locating an existing news site that may lend itself for repurposing content. This may act as an interim step towards creating a more universal install profile in the more distant future. Any suggestions are welcomed!
Profiles are limited
The deeper I dig into Drupal, the more I'm aware of two things. One is that the set of existing capabilities is broader and deeper than most people understand, including most of the developers building news sites on this platform. The other is that configuring and tailoring the platform to the needs of a news site is a huge creative challenge that involves fairly little in the way of heavy technology (i.e., developing new modules) but a lot of what I regard as "configuration" work, including interface design and theming.
Drupal profiles are a good idea and may cut many hours off the configuration/setup work, but they're limited in what they can do. As you note, you're left with a system that begs for documentation. And you still have to manually chase down, download, unzip/untar and upload every contributed module that the profile requires.
There's a lot of work that needs doing and not a lot of spare hands to do it. I am aware of several applications for Knight Foundation challenge grants that may fill some of the known holes relating to Drupal as a news platform, but it will be a couple of months before the outcomes of those applications are made public.