Drupal
From BeVolunteer Wiki
This page is outdated or irrelevant and will be archived soon.
Drupal is a versatile free software content management system. It has quite a bit of social network functionality in the form of modules.
There have been some calls to explore the possibilities to let BeWelcome run on an installation of Drupal.
Mostly technical tasks (mostly from the point of view of the test setup here - feel free to change it to something more general!). So far it's just playing around with given modules and know real hacking of code involved. In order to see how to proceed we need to analyze what needs to be implemented.
Contents |
Basic functions
Login/Register
- Status: works
- Test setup restrictions:
Users need to be confirmed by an Admin to protect the page a bit. In real life registration should be free and without approvement (it's just a click to change it). - Mandatory: username, mailadress (could be expanded, maybe also a city)
- Test setup restrictions:
- Tasks:
- define/do a setup for the real page (midsch is not helping with mandatory fake data collections)
- Additional features
- Login with OpenID (works out of the box)
- Groups can be offered at registration as well (useful for Security News, A Newbie Group? - based on geodate this would be a hit!)
Profiles
- Status: Basic functions work
- Tasks:
- seriously rebuilding Bw-Profiles
- Check http://drupal.org/node/357898 - using nodes instead of build-in profiles?
- How to realize comments?
- Additional features:
- OpenID
- ...
Geodata
For BW it's basic, isn't it?
- Status: unknown
- Tasks:
- Checking out the modules for geodata
- Checking out connection to http://www.openstreetmap.org
Search
- Status: only standard search (includes user search), but the views-modules opens search/sort options for users as well
- Task:
Navigation
- Status: Quite confusing
- Tasks:
- bw-like navigation (plus additional features)
- define navigation by roles?
- Additional Features:
Notifications / Mails
- Status: unkown
- Tasks
- digging deeper into it, there are tons of plugins
- Additional features
- Individual configuration by users
Translations
Here we may loose something, but while digging into it, my guessing is, it's all replaced. There is a difference between multilangual drupal and translated content!
- Status: Tools enabled
- Tasks:
- drupal is already multilangual (missing stuff could be transfered back to drupal)
- content (or some of it) can already be translated, must be checked
- Additional Features
- Interaction with an international translation crowd at drupal
Features
Forum
- Status: Works fine, the "Advanced Forum Module" is also enabled. Looks like a nice standard forum with all you need.
- Tasks
- Roles/Accessrights need to be exam* Import of BW-Data
- Status: missing
- Tasks:
- Checking out a scenarios
- user data
- mails
- forum
- content (like faq etc)
- wikiined.
- Checking functions
- Translations: this is probably lost, but I can't really see use for it (important stuff could be posted in different languages anyway)
- Additional features:
- there must be some ...
Groups
- Status: Construction area
- Tasks:
- Organize/build group pages
- Group functions
- Additional features
- Open, public, closed and other different types of groups out of the box
Wiki
- Status: missing
- Tasks:
- Checkout: http://drupal.org/project/wikitools
- Find a solution (fast and best with a mediawiki synthax!)
Advanced Features
Chat
- Status missing
- Tasks:
- Check out the different available modules
Blog
- Status: missing
- Tasks:
- Do we need the blogmodule? It exists.
- Checkout syndicating existing blogs from elsewhere
Galleries
At BW the galleries are quite confusing and not very usable. At the testpage it's only possible to use one pic for the profile. Would be nice to have some additonal pics on the profiles and grouppages.
Relations / Friendlinks
If comments on profiles are possible, the relations are additional themselves!
- Status: unknown
- Tasks:
- Additional features:
- Different types of relations are possible (and could be created at anytime)
Map integration
- Status: missing
globetrotter_tt and midsch talked to someone from OpenStreetMap at the Free Software Meeting in Hamburg. It was interesting, and it should be possible to replace the google stuff.
Layout
- Status: It's just a theme called "Pixture Reloaded" set to an orange color set. Feel free to change it. With "views" and "panes" layout it's possible to change the position of blocks.
- Tasks
- ???
- Validating HTML/CSS
- Additional features:
- Different layouts possible (user's choice, by role etc.)
Administration
Roles
A lot of roles and permissions can be defined. Due to the fact that "real" Admins can literally do everything, it's probably more safe to have not much admins (and maybe no associated real profile). Someone who is doing maintenance doesn't have to have the right to delete members/read other people's mail (this isn't needed for anyone anyway). But the roles/permissions are nice and it's possible to create tons of them for every task. Everyone can have different roles and will get everything he/she needs, but also unnecessary rights will be avoided.
- Status works
- Tasks:
- developing a general concept
Performance
Some serious performance tests? The application as such and also pageload etc.
- Status: missing
Bugtracker
- Status: missing
- Tasks:
- Discussion: Replace Trac by a more integrated solution?
- Check plugins for integration with bugzilla, mantis, ...
- How is drupal.org organizing it: http://drupal.org/project/issues/
Migration
Import of BW-Data
- Status: missing
- Tasks:
- Checking out a scenarios
- user data
- mails
- forum
- content (like faq etc)
- wiki
- Cleanup data in existing BW data possible and wanted?
Links
- This article is a stub (Ébauche, esbozo, beginnetje, ..). You can help by expanding it.
Release Management?
Right now release management in BW is based on SVN. Most changes live in the code, so it's easy to track things via SVN, and a release is mostly code.
DB changes are done via dbupdate.php - which is not the nicest way to do it, but it keeps things more or less transparent by only looking at SVN.
Drupal works quite differently, as a lot of things happen in the DB, and will thus not show up on SVN. Releasing a new version will mean both changes to the code (CSS files, theme templates, modules), and changes in the DB via the admin backend. This makes things a bit more difficult and less transparent for developers who want to keep track of things via SVN.
And quite often you get heavy dependencies of DB and code - for instance, if template files refer to content type names that only exist in the DB.
It is possible to define a lot of stuff in Drupal in the code, instead of the DB, via custom modules. I would very much vote for this option, but it requires some expertise.
Who can do it?
I think we can not expect that core developers will quickly jump on the Drupal wagon. Most of the intial work has to be done by Drupal-savvy people, not necessarily by core BW devs.
If we don't want that, we have to be happy with the technology that the BW core devs feel comfortable with. If they decide to use Drupal, ok. If not, really, there is no way to push them.
