Working sites thread for OpenPUblish production sites.

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
domineaux's picture

It would be nice to view and read about some OpenPublish production sites.

I've built several OpenPublish sites, but eventually had to drop them and go back to conventional Drupal.

The OP is certainly an attractive concept. I have thought that it may be too complex an install to start. Possibly a more incremental approach would be better.

I'd sure like to try it by applying modules and such over time as I get things working.

This isn't that easy, because you don't really know where to start or stop.

Having everything fired up and working all at once, really drains you when you have some issues.

Troubleshooting is a pain, because so many things overlap.

I like to back into things, eliminate features and work backward, or work forward adding things incrementally.

This way I can solve issues as I go in an organized fashion.

I turned off all the Features OP modules and the install wouldn't run. --- Back to square one. LOL

I'm not knocking the OP. I keep coming back doing an install every week or so, hoping to get a grip on it.

Comments

I made the new site for our

resveld's picture

I made the new site for our local footballclub with op.

I removed some items like apture, mlt and added some custom modules to it.

You can find it @ www.altior.nl

It's basically OP2.1 with some additional modules as 404 blocks, workflow, webform, text resize, custom breadcrumbs, external, lightbox2, special menu items and superfish.

I subthemed it for colours.

-Ronald

www.blissfieldadvance.com The

Tran's picture

www.blissfieldadvance.com

There are issues ... but we're a tiny weekly, and this does much more than we even need.

I'll add my newspaper to the

ithacaindy's picture

I'll add my newspaper to the list: www.ithacaindy.com

We've been using OP since 1.7. The 2.1 version did wonders for the front-end.

Joomla?

civiletti's picture

This site is built with Joomla.

Just days after posting that

ithacaindy's picture

Just days after posting that note (along with one explaining how to use OP on a shared host), a fatal memory error creeped in and blew up my site. The Joomla site is a stop-gap while I research how to use OP on a shared host and not suffer the same fate.

Ouch

civiletti's picture

That's painful. Sorry to hear it. I am interested in how to use OP on a shared host, so please post your findings. Good luck!

OUCH

Tran's picture

I too am on a shared server. So that's scary news to me.

Man, you put way too much into the site for this to happen.

Irakli and company must try to make this more user friendly. Not many small businesses or bloggers I know can afford $100 a month for a server.

It was a painful decision. I

ithacaindy's picture

It was a painful decision. I was just about to back up the system when I was stopped dead by this memory error - and at 128M mem max too. OP is a great news site in a box, which makes it doubly attractive to small operations -- which usually have a shared host. My next step is to decide whether I want to rebuild my site using OP, or use the default Drupal installation (which is a memory hog as it is) or go to another platform. If I had one suggestion for the OP team would be to freeze the innovations while you work on a rock-solid installation for both dedicated and shared hosts. OP is suffering from its own success. Initially, it was a hit with larger publications which liked the power and had the dedicated resources. Now, as more people learn of OP, smaller organizations are investigating.

The other suggestion is more generic for the entire Drupal development team: be agnostic about your backup tools. The current leader, Backup and Migrate, only outputs files compatible with itself. This locks people into Drupal. Why not have an xml backup format, so people can decide for themselves?

Does the Hosting company

Gmal's picture

Does the Hosting company matter? It doesn't seem all hosting companies are created equal. I changed hosting companies because they couldn't support OP even though they supported Drupal. I've been on my current shared host for 5 months and have had no problems. My site's traffic has been consistently increasing each week and all is well. Not that I have tons of visitors (currently around 9,000) but my goal is to have about 30,000 unique visitors a month along with the corresponding page views which I estimate would be in the six figure range. The hosting company says that number would be no problem on their shared hosting environment. We'll see.

What kind of traffic does your site get and is there a correlation between the number of visitors and problems you are experiencing?

I don't know if it's proper etiquette to "name names" of the host's or if anyone would even be interested. But maybe some of the issues are hosting issues and not entirely an OP problem.

Just an aside: The current number of visitors I receive are all from ISP's within my geographical area. I only promote the site in my specific area and only get around 1,000 visitors or so from outside of the area, which are useless to my advertisers. As the site is hyperlocal my goal is to have local visitors to attract local advertisers.

My shared hosting company is

ithacaindy's picture

My shared hosting company is very well-known and quite responsive to questions - except this time. I get less than 1K hits per day and the site and host were handling it all in stride. What stung most was that once the memory error hit, there was no way for me to bail-out and do a quick back-up - other than a simple sql dump. I'm not sure whether it was because of the host (I'd been running without problems for months) or my actions. If the restore module had accepted plain mysql backups, I'd be golden, but as it is now, I have to start from square-one.

Wish Me Luck

ithacaindy's picture

I'm heading off to reinstall OP 2.2. (The siren song is just too great to ignore.) I want to institute a daily backup for the site using B&R. How are others doing this?

I'd love to know how this is

Tran's picture

I'd love to know how this is done.

News paper publish

Kmkamruzzaman's picture

I am also try too!
Kiendly help to add our news paper in op galary.
'sangbaddiganta'
open publish online news paper.
'http://www.sangbaddiganta.com/...,'

Kmkamruzzaman/engineerkhanmohammodkamruzzaman

That would be great and very

irakli's picture

That would be great and very helpful for everybody involved.

Let me pin this discussion.

.............................................
http://twitter.com/inadarei

Long Outlook

jacobson's picture

I've created a site that combines blogging with researched articles and resources related to the economy, politics and policy, and law. The site is www.longoutlook.com. Hope everyone will take a look.

HAJ

I am on a shared hosting

resveld's picture

I am on a shared hosting service as well and have max memory set to 384M without any problem.
I make weekly backups of the database and monthly of the site itself.

I've backed up the DB, but

Tran's picture

I've backed up the DB, but how do you back up the entire site?

@midek, Depending on what you

resveld's picture

@midek,

Depending on what you changed or not.

1st always backup /sites/default/*
Then if you have more changed files, back that up as well via ftp.

For instance I have a script which grabs:

/sites/default/*
/sites/all/themes/mytheme/*
/sites/all/modules//*

I changed jquery_ui to have my own custom accordion look so i have that backed up.

Hope this helps!

-Ronald

I want to refer back to my

domineaux's picture

I want to refer back to my beginning post.
I get emails for every issue posted on this group.
Constant postings about things that shouldn't be issues.

I strongly suggest OP developers... you should release OP in increments for people to learn as they go.
When you release a large package of Drupal and OP modules anyone that is thinking to save some time.
It takes alot of experience and familiarity just dealing with the Drupal modules and how they relate.
Then you pile on a bunch of new OP stuff with a new admin interface,etc. That is a forumla for confusion.

You need to have several versions of OP starting with few modules and helping users develop better understanding.
Then you need a seamless update to further vesions of OP with additional modules applied.

IMO, you really need to think about how you go at this.
It has taken me over 3 years to learn Drupal well enough to build competent sites.

I think one thing that should be a standard:

Users should be able to remove OP modules and still have a viable competent Drupal site.
That should be basic criteria.
OP should also be applied to standard Drupal site with modules and grow thereupon.

Sorry, I've gone back to building sites with standard Drupal.
I have patterned some content types from OP types, but overall everything else is Drupal sites.

It would be nice to view and

Adam S's picture

It would be nice to view and read about some OpenPublish production sites. I've built several OpenPublish sites, but eventually had to drop them and go back to conventional Drupal.

Here is the site I built on OP 1.5. http://thetriton.com Last month we were getting upwards of 51,000 pages views in a day. Sweet. I have some things to say about not being able to use OP 1.6 which I will write in another thread.

Marine job board with Drupal 7 at http://windwardjobs.com

Adam, what are you using

Tran's picture

What are you using for the dynamic display?

The Dynamic Display Block

Adam S's picture

The Dynamic Display Block

Marine job board with Drupal 7 at http://windwardjobs.com

Slideshow

leob's picture

How did you setup that slideshow. I tried to do it following all the instructions and it didn't work properly. Could you explain me what are the steps that I have to follow?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Leo

I used the AdvanceNewspaper

ithacaindy's picture

I used the AdvanceNewspaper design for WordPress from Gabfirethemes.

Uses OP for my personal site

togbonna's picture

Am using OP for my personal site www.tonyogbonna.com. About 3 months down the line, no issues yet.

I have another OP news paper site project about to go live.

citizenranger.com

kenyan's picture

I used panels to change my frontpage as I do not really like the OP frontpage layout at citizenranger.com
The articles were imported from wordpress and of course worpress_import did a number on the formating. Working on adding paragraphs. Slooooowly.
That second blog roll is just a place holder for content i need to add in a few days.. weeks..

www.active.com.my

gomeh's picture

I am using OP for www.active.com.my. At the moment, still running 2.2.

@gomeh: how did you change

ithacaindy's picture

@gomeh: how did you change the navbar (and subnav) background color? Can you point to the lines in the css?

@ithacaindy, my css for the

gomeh's picture

@ithacaindy,

my css for the navbar:

/* Navigation -v2 /
/
Navigation */

div#nav
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #015791;
/* width: 975px; */
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
color: #ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight:bold;
}

div#nav li.first-level {
white-space: nowrap;
}

div.first-level
{
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
text-align:center;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li a
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #015791;
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
color: #ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight:bold;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li a:link, div#nav ul.primary-links li a:visited
{
padding:12px 11px;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li a.active
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #015791;
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
color:#ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li a.active:visited
{
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
color:#ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li.first-level a:hover
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #56A0D1;
font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
color: #ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links ul.second-level li a:hover
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #0066AA;
color:#ffffff;
font-size: 12px;
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li.first-level:hover a.first-level, div#nav ul.primary-links li.first-level:hover a.first-level.active, div#nav ul.primary-links li.over a.first-level, div#nav ul.primary-links li.over a.active
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #56A0D1;
color: #000000;
}

/* Main Page - Background of under secondary link background /
div#nav ul.primary-links li:hover ul, div#nav ul.primary-links li.over ul
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #56A0D1;
/
width:975px; */
}

div#nav ul.primary-links li.on ul a, div#nav ul.primary-links li.off ul a
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #56A0D1;
}

/* Inner Page - Background of under secondary link background /
div#nav li.off ul, div#nav li.on ul
{
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #56A0D1;
/
width:975px; */
height:39px;
}

div .nice-menu{
z-index: 3;
}

Thanks. A couple questions,

ithacaindy's picture

Thanks. A couple questions, though. How do I get the new background color to fill the full length of the menubar? (Currently, it stops after the "Topic Hubs" item.) Also, the same with the second level menu - the original background color remains after the last item?

Our OP

HFT's picture

Our OP site;

http://www.highfrequencytraders.com/

Features; news, blogs, events, forum, job board and videos.

Not finished yet, but functional.

Frontpage Carousel

schwabing's picture

Hi all,

how are the Frontpage Carousels at http://www.ithacaindy.com/ and http://thetriton.com/ done? Are there any out of the box solutions available for OP?
Thanks!

The Indy's frontpage carousel

ithacaindy's picture

The Indy's frontpage carousel is courtesy WordPress.

Bilingual site using OP

riverrat's picture

After much pain I have created and now operate a user driven site in central France serving about 8000 people.
It is bilingual but where a translation does not exist then the content is presented in the original language.
It is a mix of OP and Drupal modules and includes a search facility.
It is hosted on a shared server in France which is OK but has to operated without the Drupal Update Status module ( inadequate resources).
Major difficulty is not with the technology but getting involvement from people who are used to web sites being developed and maintained by others.
Any comments welcome
http://calijournal.info

Fantastique!

taxonomy's picture

I'd be particularly interested if you could detail how you managed to achieve the bilingual element, what modules you used and what problems you came across?

Merci!

Bilingual stuff

riverrat's picture

Glad that you liked it
Extra modules

  • i18n
  • Block translation
  • CCK translation
  • Content type translation
  • Internationalization
  • Language icons
  • Language Switcher Dropdown
  • Locale updater
  • Menu translation
  • Profile translation
  • String translation
  • Synchronize translations
  • Taxonomy translation
  • tContact
  • Translation helpers
  • Translation table
  • Internationalisation testing for i18n
  • Superfish replaces the OP menus

The main problem was the need to create two taxonomies one English and the other French then relate them together to get the translations

Menus

To get these translations I modified the translations files with the appropriate modules

Figuring it all out took many hours over a couple of months

Regards
http://calijournal.info

Multisite Shared Userbase - Open Publish -ed

nevosa's picture

Hi Guys,
I'd like to introduce our local news and community website of the Kootenay Region, BC, Canada.
Take a look at: The Eastshore Mainstreet Online

We started with 2.2, and upgraded to 2.3. I'm very pleased with OP, and looking forward to my next OP project in an RTL language.

Nevos
Aurora Webworks

Very nice - I really like the

Downes's picture

Very nice - I really like the classifieds section & the shouts - what did you use to create those?

LM_paypal for the paid

nevosa's picture

LM_paypal for the paid classified section, and shoutbox 6.x-2.3.
Glad you liked it.. . :)

This site uses WordPress.

mikebrooks's picture

This site uses WordPress. What gives? Did you drop Drupal OP?

Michael Brooks
Director Project Management & Development
SNP Technologies, Inc.
http://www.snp.com

Yes, the site is no longer

ithacaindy's picture

Yes, the site is no longer Drupal/OP-based. Why? I don't want to get into this platform versus that platform, but I was unhappy with Drupal in a production site that had neither a large IT staff nor support budget.

Academic Journal

mlapl1's picture

Hello,

Has anyone published an academic journal using openpublish???

If so, where can I find it as I want to start one.

Many thanks
Andrew

Moncton Free Press

Downes's picture

We're just setting up our community newspaper, a community media coop that's badly needed in this smallish Canadian city.

http://monctonfreepress.ca

Comments and suggestions welcome - we're still setting up - trying to figure out how to do the category sections for the home page, a proper calendar with imports, email newsletter, etc. But I think we're off to a good start.

Good luck with the paper. Is

stattler's picture

Good luck with the paper.

Is it based on OP under D7?

No, D6.2 -- from everything I

Downes's picture

No, D6.2 -- from everything I can see, D7 isn't quite ready for prime time yet... it means a migration is probably in my future

Oh my! If you are comfortable

stattler's picture

Oh my! If you are comfortable moving D6 to D7 of OP, then I have no comment. Otherwise, you might want to wait till D7 matures.

Well obviously I'm not going

Downes's picture

Well obviously I'm not going to be comfortable migrating. I'm sure it's a bear.

But my experience in working with complex systems like Drupal is that there's always a future version that's just beyond reach, and would be available if I just waited a bit. By the time 7 is mature, the alpha version of 8 will have begun surfacing, and people implementing 7 will be looking to a migration to 8 sometime in their future.

What I need, though, is a functioning newspaper site now. I can't wait - the local newspaper has just gone behind a paywall so there's a limited window of opportunity. Once people pay the fees they're be locked in, unwilling to abandon their investment. So Drupal 6 it is.

You are right. Also, you will

stattler's picture

You are right.

Also, you will probably find professionals who can help migrating, if you wish.

Yes, that's exactly what I

Downes's picture

Yes, that's exactly what I would do. I hired someone to do my primary install - what he can do in an hour would take me a week. I'd do the same for any major upgrade, like a migration.

jornaldamadeira.pt

luisfreitas's picture

Lauched 3 weeks ago January 1 2012. http://www.jornaldamadeira.pt

Heavy modded and with dedicated apachesolr server and memcache server. Still correcting bugs. But working fairly well.
Almost haven't touched theme. That's for the next months.

Blagoevgrad Info

temelkoff's picture

OP in Bulgarian language

http://blagoevgrad.info

Good Job!

didtmaster's picture

Good Job Temelkoff, OP looks great.

I just want to ask you how do you get your Slider Show working in your frontpage?

Regards

I use Views Slideshow:

temelkoff's picture

I use Views Slideshow: Dynamic Display Block

http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow_ddblock

Tutorials are here:
http://ddblock.myalbums.biz

OpenPublish 6.20 based site

Num85's picture

www.NUMNews.co.uk - launched about a month ago, running OpenPublish 6.20 and OP theme. Site is a user generated news website which shares adsense revenues 50% with the author (had to disable caching to get this to work)
Check it out - let me know what you think.

botsplanet.com - Interesting Tech site based on OP

didtmaster's picture

Looking around the web I just found an interesting site based on OP for drupal 6.
http://www.botsplanet.com

As you can see, good job was made with theming it, as they say, that work was made by Bots! :D

algocoders.com : books on c++11, Boost and Beyond

algocoders's picture

http://www.algocoders.com/ - We launched this site last week for publishing our series of books/booklets on C++11, Boost and Beyond using openpublish-7.x-1.0 on shared linux host on godaddy.

www.thesalinepost.com local news

Tran's picture

www.thesalinepost.com
Local community news site.
Using OP3 every day.

Advice/Tips welcome.

www.perureporte.com Peruvian News

didtmaster's picture

Interesting site found in Peru: www.perureporte.com

OP/D6

OpenPublish

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