Developing your own OpenScholar features?

Events happening in the community are now at Drupal community events on www.drupal.org.
Anonymous's picture

I'm wondering if anyone out there is developing custom features for OpenScholar? We'll be experimenting with developing a set of custom features in the coming weeks, but first wanted to see what others were up to. We're also curious if anyone has put together any docs on the process?

Our features will relate to a few foreign language classes we support as well as other course-related projects.

Thanks!

Comments

Good questions

milesw's picture

I've been wondering the same things myself. Eventually I think OpenScholar needs some sort of community development area - maybe something similar to Open Atrium. With so many institutions having similar needs and goals it would be a shame not to share efforts while developing for OpenScholar.

We're developing: A custom

SamRose's picture

We're developing:

  1. A custom set of features that are derived from http://socialmediaclassroom.com

  2. An install profile that will set up Socialmediaclassroom sites on OpenScholar

Getting started with OpenScholar Modules

dmcw's picture

We've just started moving features over from our collaborative sites platform.

As we go, we'll be putting them up on our feature server.

They are very basic, but it is a start. So far, we've got: Scholar Course Info (like an instructor blog), status (very simple fb style status updates), and eDiario (a wiki-like content type for our Italian classes). All very simple stuff. Note that we're not yet taking into account a student role with any of these features. This is something we'll likely need to build in.

And, if you're interested, here's the basic process we've been following to develop the features. There's likely a faster/better way to do this, so let me know if you've got a better workflow!

  1. Download and make a copy of the Scholar Annoucements feature (we use this one because it is a pretty basic foundation to work from
  2. Run multiple file search and replace for crucial info: (e.g,. replace: scholar_announcements with scholar_yourfeaturename, announcements with yourfeaturename, etc...)
  3. Turn on the feature at admin/features (You may need to review/revert elements of the feature)
  4. Review permissions
  5. Make any other necessary changes to views/contexts/content type/spaces (e.g., you may need to change the settings at admin/content/types, or edit the public/private/disabled spaces presets for new feature at admin/build/spaces/presets/edit/og/project - ie public, private, or off by default
  6. Re-export, if necessary
  7. Edit vocabularies to associate with new content type (not currently exportable)

Notes

  • for us, the menu did not appear, even after clearing the cache. We fixed this by changing weight of menu item at sitename/cp/settings

Congrats ! Drush will

ferdi's picture

Congrats ! Drush will simplify your workflow

drush features-clone scholar_announcements scholar_xx (see http://drupal.org/project/features_clone)

Make changes

drush features-update scholar_xx

Cool - Thanks Ferdi! Super

dmcw's picture

Cool - Thanks Ferdi! Super cool drush tips!

Adding custom features to the list of front page content types

dmcw's picture

We're starting to see how our custom features do and don't integrate with other elements w/i OpenScholar.

Recently, I've been looking at the very nice options in scholar for customizing the front page of a site. These are under the control panel, then Features, then customize Project Front.

If you choose "Posts from specific feature(s)" as the main content area for the front page, you get a list of OpenScholar features. I've been trying to figure out how to get our custom features into that list.

I've been looking at the scholar_front.pages.inc file in the scholar_front feature, but so far, haven't found what needs to be changed.

Has anyone tinkered with this? Is the answer in the UI somewhere? or ...?

Thanks!

Doug

Did you have any luck with

ferdi's picture

Did you have any luck with this ? Your feature should appear there automatically. It should be enabled and public though.

got it! Of course - that

dmcw's picture

got it! Of course - that makes total sense. Thanks Ferdi!

Because the homepage is locked in as "public" it can only take public content types as content. Because I was working from a student-facing course site perspective - I'd marked all the features as "private." Marking a feature as public made it appear in the list.

I'm wondering what the best approach is here. In the short term courses could use a simple page as their homepage, and students could reach content through the tabs.

Ultimately, though, I think I'd be interested in a homepage that could would show any public content to non-authenticated users, and a mix of public and private content to users authenticated to the group. The "Post from specific features" selector could then allow content types marked public or private. Not sure how feasible this is.

Anyone else out there working on course sites in scholar that has ideas on best approaches to course homepages?

Got a quick question: I see

SamRose's picture

Got a quick question: I see that Context for a feature will turn the feature on by default. Example, in scholar_blog feature, the file scholoar_blog.context.inc has the following lines:

<?php
/**
* Implementation of hook_context_default_contexts().
<em>/
function scholar_blog_context_default_contexts() {
  $export = array();
  $context = new stdClass;
  $context->disabled = FALSE; /</em> Edit this to true to make a default context disabled initially */

...
?>

However, when I create a personal site, the blog feature is disabled by default. So, what I am trying to figure out is how to enable a particular feature by default for vsites (I am using personal site as basis).

SamRose, This is handled with

MPetrovic's picture

SamRose,

This is handled with the spaces_features variable. It's an array that lists all the features available. You can change this variable in the preset, or you could make a new preset, change it there and use that.

-Matt

Ah yes! thank you MPretrovic!

SamRose's picture

Ah yes! thank you MPretrovic! I found it in os.spaces.inc now it all makes sense

OpenScholar

Group organizers

Group notifications

This group offers an RSS feed. Or subscribe to these personalized, sitewide feeds: