[Imc-drupal-dev] Status of the Cbusimc.org site reposted from the forum.

[Robbt]

Hi. I'm sharing this because I could use some
helpful suggestions, and just to share with
other IMCs out there using Drupal. There are
other issues I didn't address in this e-mail but
things will probably improve once Drupal 4.7 is
out of beta and the modules have time to
stabilize.

Hello people who check out the IMC site on
regular basis.This is the resident tech Robbt
and I want to share a little bit about the plans
and obstacles I've experienced developing this
site and look for some feedback, much of it may
be too technical without some understanding of
Drupal.org and CSS but I'm sharing it
regardless.

Let me just break down this issues we are
currently experiencing as a site that need to be
addressed, I attempted to install the project
module but it failed to initialize properly.

The basic SITE.

We are running Drupal 4.7beta6, this is
development code. It isn't bugfree and in fact
some of the problems people have experienced in
the site are due to this, such as the
dissapearing links on the right and top. Where
did subscribe go ? I could update to the latest
CVS version and resolve some of this but I've
decided to wait for the next release although
updating is an option to be considered.

The way Drupal works is you have your CORE
drupal code, which makes up the basis for much
of the site. And then you have modules, which
add features to the site.

Drupal core does such things as providing
categories for content, and setting up the login
and user roles, and provide the framework for
theming/laying out the site.

Aspects of the site like the events calendar,
images, video etc are all handled by modules
which are contributed seperate from the CORE by
individuals and are thus not as quality.

For some reason our database crashed last night
and I've restarted it. When I restarted it
anonymous people were no longer able to view the
content on the main page so I changed it to
point to the calendar. The reason for this is
our main page or the "node" page layout is
messed up. There are two problems. One is we
never really decided to utilize this layout
style, it just happens by default in Drupal and
also there is a bug in the flexinode module
which breaks off the teaser for all flexinode
content after 100 characters.

I was using Flexinode for the modules although
the story module would of worked out just as
well. We are planning on adapting a layout that
utilizes the shortened titles of newswires based
upon the regions category so that
local/state/national would all have their own
newswires. I was utilizing the views module for
this but then it turned out to be in too active
of development and unable to work as I hoped it
might.

We also need to figure out how we are going to
regulate content. Do we have everything show up
in a open newswire by default and then let
editors for the site classify and categorize it
in the appropriate taxonomy, this seems to be
the way that Indymedia.be handles it. It seems
that many time users posting content especially
without logging in just leave the drop-downs in
their default position and then post the
content. I'm not sure how nodes could be given a
default term from a category and then have it
changed by someone with the appropriate access
control/role but this would be something to look
into.

Also the multimedia aspects of the site are
pretty mangled by the utilization of various
modules which don't interoperate. The image
module is useful but currently lacks the ability
to mass import or upload files so there maybe
some benefit towards switching modules to
something like Acidfree which allows the
importation of whole directories. This is a
problem within drupal that needs to be resolved
and discussed within various avenues to arrive
upon a possible solution. The image module seems
to offer flexibility with the Shazam Gallery
being held up as a potential saviour but without
the ability of users to create their own folders
and the lack of integration of images into nodes
the whole process is suffering.

Then we have the video module which is useful
but not perfected yet. Its configuration is
somewhat complex for newbies because it requires
that the video be posted somewhere other than
the site due to our bandwidth limitations, and
the best option for us for videos is to host
them on ourmedia.org/archive.org and then link
to them from the video module. I need to provide
an explanation of this. Also the video module
lacks the ability to handle a variety of formats
and it might be better to just use straight
upload and handle videos as attachments to a
video type. There is also the video
functionality within Acidfree which I haven't
tested.

This maybe confusing but that's because it is.
Currently there are a lot of different ways to
do the same thing within Drupal and our site is
a perfect example of how clogged a site can
become when various tactics are utilized without
a cohesive vision holding them together, another
big part of it is simply layout and theming and
that's what I'll discuss next.

Theming our site is currently a mangled version
of indymedia.be I was planning on duplicating
their site layout using a cut-up version of
their theme/front-page and incorporating it into
a template based upon a highly edited
phptemplate form. I was trying to use all CSS
for the layouts of the 3 columns and I ended up
running into a problem whereas the footer would
be tossed into the middle of the site after the
left column ended. I researched this for a few
days and well I ended up running into a couple
of sites that discussed this as a problem with
CSS layouts but the one solution I found was
about utilizing javascript and that didn't work
out well with PHP & Drupal so I commented it
out.

Now we have a broken half complete layout which
is based upon someone elses CSS. I expanded the
middle and played around with the side columns
but overall it is an incomplete theme. It also
is still dependent upon the 3 columns with large
center and due to the way I set-up it up in CSS
the center column is limited in width which
means that you have to scroll to the right to
see some things like the calendar, which is the
current default view. This is obviously bad
design and should be fixed but I currently don't
know what steps can be done without
redesigning/scrapping the template due to my
hacking/experimenting in the process of
developing it. Basically I've been using the
site as something of a sandbox which is pretty
apparent.

Another possible avenue of development is the
Radio station. There appears to be a station
module developed which automatically captures
streams and then posts them on the site but I
didn't play around with it enough to actually
get it up and running properly. But it would be
an awesome way to integrate Icecast. Another
question that has been asked is if there is way
of finding out the currently playing tracks off
of the radio stream and making a scrollbar at
the top.

The integration of Other Press and how to do it
on the site.
Much of the content that people post on the IMC
site are simply repostings of articles written
elsewhere they figure others might want to read.
For one this isn't independent journalism, other
there are probably legal issues, but that's the
way the web works.

One idea was how to integrate other media
sources and kind of aggregate and also allow
people to post headlines from other sites but
not have it overwhelm the original content
people are contributing. This seems like it'd be
kind of difficult but I already created a
taxonomy for original and other press, which
allows people posting to categorize. What would
be more desirable is for people to post little
snippets and then a link to the article much in
the way that Slashdot does it and then have a
comment and allow others to comment so we can
digest and share the news as a local community.
I think this could be done by creating a custom
view of certain newswires and then changing the
font color to designate otherpress. Another idea
was to integrate the news aggregator aspect of
the site into this, and give the articles from
other indymedias the favicon.ico as an icon next
to it and say other independent press such as
the freepress but this is a module to be
developed in and of its self.

So this is the current status of the site. I
might crosspost this on the Drupal site because
people there would have suggestions as to how to
accomplish some of these things as well as the
Imc-drupal-dev list.