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I'm still not sure wether drupal brings us a lot of advantages at this point. It surely would be the better thing to use in the future though.

Right now, I'm also trying templating for drupal for the trampen.cc website:

http://www.trampen.cc

As you may notice, colors are quite similar to BW but this is due to the fact that Alex ( bw: adia ) preferred orange over any other color. Anyway, just to let you know, I'm working on it and learning drupal templating meanwhile.

By no means the test setup is considered as a working clone. It's more a playground and maybe a proof of concept. Due to recent updates and bleeding edge dev-versions of some modules some problems appeared, but I won't do that on a live site anyway.

The deeper I dig into it, the more it looks possible. I. e. following a tutorial I found (links at the bw-clone "wiki"), I was able to setup a simple eventlist, where every member could post a link. Even filtering the events would be easy to realise.

Still there's a lot to test/check/play around - feel invited. Maybe in some time it could be useful to setup some must-have-tasks.

@sitarane: thanks for all the links, I'll check them later, time for bed now.

good night,
midsch

Saw this article a few days ago 'Top 40 Free Downloadable Open Source SNS' (Feb 28th). Of course, Rox gets a mention

http://www.wujianrong.com/archives/2009/02/top-40-free-downloadable-open-source-sns.html

About the "orange": I don't like it (personal taste), but much more important it's a nightmare for usability/accessibility as there is nearly no chance to get an acceptable contrast.

I changed the color at the test setup, but this should be a matter of someone into graphics. Drupal provides tons of themes, lots of them highly configurable, and the option for different user schemes out of the box.

When this is not the time for Drupal, what are the major blockers? I. e. geostuff needs evaluation, wikifunction is sucking and some points more. Still: Are these no-no's forever? Do we sit on our asses and just wait? What for? The idea is floating around for quite a while and I try to find out if this is a serious option or not. If so it's probably a waste of time to work on bw.rox, if not drupal testing is a waste of time (here).

From my experience using drupal it's less coding and more configuration.

midsch

So, what are the good reasons NOT to go Drupal?

Do we lose independance? Will the site be more vulnerable as pirates are more likely to look for a flaw in Drupal than in Rox? Is it heavier on the server side? 

I don't yet see the benefit of Drupal.

 May be the first thing to explain is what can be done which Drupal which cannot be done with Rox ?

I also think that it will cost a lot of energy, and they is already a lot of to do with BW.

 But in other hand, if they are motivated people (and with Drupal experience), may be it is possible to connect Drupa things beside ROx to show the benefit of it.

It is however needed to keep several thing in mind :

- there is an existing system

- it includes things like languages dimension, geography, rtechnical links between users, technical links between many features Forum-Groups-Members-Events(this is under cooking) Blogs-Trips (this is to improve).

- There is also a message system with things which are already starting to be a bit complex (massmail, local messages, group messages, notifications ...)

 I don't doubt that on the paper, Drupal can address all these features, but it is to fully embrace in a new Drupal design, I am not sure this the most important thing that members are expected for now from BW

At least a discussion is starting now, great!

Drupal isn't an alternative out of the box. Also the test setup isn't working as an alternative but it's a playground. From my experience so far I'd say: it's possible, but some major topics have to be solved.

The platform drupal is attractive for hundreds if not thousands of coders, bw.rox wasn't able to attract a lot so far (in fact it scared away some). Even if coders not directly work for BW, BW benefits from their work through all the modules. And this is something that will never happen with bw.rox: tons of working modules to choose from, stuff we need anyway, stuff we could use and stuff we never thought about. I don't see how our handful of coders (in the moment: 2-3) will realize this features; and why reinventing the wheel anyway? (As there are more network pages made with drupal synergetic effects may happen also.)

"There is an existing system", sure Jean-Yves, but there are a lot of buggy, weird and incomplete things. Noones fault, but maybe (!) the energy/ressources are better used for replacing the software instead of fixing/developing it. Again: this is not a decision, it's a proposal, and my role right now is the drupal's advocat ...

Other advantages:

• "nodes" (=pages, lists, events, ...) can be created by non-coders as well by using provided modules like cck, views etc. - configuring instead of coding
• advanced forum
• user designs
• open id login
• ... hundreds of modules ...

More issues brought up here:

• Translation: drupal is translated in many languages by volunteers, the tools are different, but working and the results will help all drupal users. The existing translated content could be copied from here, on page translation/multilanguage for content seems possible. The forum is for multilanguages, but not for translating single posts (my guessing, someone who sees this as a usefull feature could dig into this ...)
• Migration/connection the database: needs some sql-gurus, but should work
• Geography: no idea (found a geodatabase module, but don't know anything about it)
• technical links between users, technical links between many features Forum-Groups-Members-Events -> drupal modules are doing this out-of-the-box, wouldn't made sense to create a modul without linking it to the userbase;) (again: some of it is possible by configuring, no coding needed)
• Blogs-Trips (this is to improve) -> blogmodule needs testing, more important - because it makes more sense - rss-integration from your regular blog-feed is possible
• There is also a message system with things which are already starting to be a bit complex (massmail, local messages, group messages, notifications ...) -> the notification, token, prvmessage modules look promising and much more configurable than bw.rox. The inbox works with tags instead of folders and is much better than BW (or cs). And I guess it's able to send proper textmails (unlike bw.rox).
• Design one: as said before drupal and yaml work, but even some of the free available themes - a lot with gui-configuration for color schemes - are looking good.
• Design two: blocks, menues and stuff are configured by the modules/administration

Other stuff

• Change in general is a hard work, as people may have to change their habits, loose some of the work and so on.
• Texteditor: no idea, but i could only be better than this piece of sh*t ruining so many forum posts and the feeds
• Groups: module available, some testing is made
• Wiki: sucks at drupal, but not so much as it suck in bw.rox, so by using the parallel mediawiki we don't loose anything, but could connect the usertables
• Events: easy to make
• Roles: the configuration of user rights is great, basically for every field/task it's possible to define it.
• Performance: no idea, right now bw isn't very big, but when we reach worlddominations this is an issue ...

You're welcome to play around at "my" testsetup, if you need (admin)rights, modules, themes, updates, whatever let me know and I'll try my best. Some more links/info is collected within the testpage under "wiki" (no account needed for reading).

midsch

I agree that Drupal can be a solution to motivate more people (at least it seems that many people like to speak about "doing something with Drupal")

The first step is probably to propose something concrete, considering what we already have and what can be added using Drupal.

I am ready to explain what I know about the current structure, I also have wrote several docs in the wiki.

We really need something concrete, if we are only to talk and talk about the wonderful possibilities offered by Drupal, this will only  spoil energy.

I will follow the changes of the Drupal wiki page

 

About Rox. It is a fact that rox works. It is also a fact that nobody never produced real documentation about it. 

About Bugs in current BW Rox system, they are many of them, but my feeling is that solving them in Rox is an easier path than moving everything to Drupal.

And one thing, I think they is a naive belief still present among many BeWelcome actors which is that to build a WebSite dedicated to Hospex it is just needed to gather some open sources codes and modules and it will become the "best" hospex website.

Look to couchsurfing, it is 99% specific code, and for now, I think that CS is the best (in terms of features) system, of course CS has a lot of means (paid progs, experience, hierarchical structure, etc ...).

There is an hospex system built with opensources tools and module and with probably not a lot of specific, it is ComitasIntergentes, I don't feel that this really look to an efficient system (on website practical use point of view).

 

At some point it is needed to be concrete, this means designers, testers, programmers,  translators, support team

There is also less technical computer things  : communication, local activities, legal etc

I remember that 18 month ago everybody was believing that the Rox MVC will solve all problems. I remember that I was saying that the solution was not in tools, but in doing concrete tasks.

This as not change.

May be Drupal can attract people and manpower , but it is not the tool wich will really change things

 And after all remember this is the Ox year ;-)

 

 

 

 

I think our language tools and the geo-implementation are the biggest problems if we want to switch.

Also regarding the data we have already I wonder wether we would have to throw it all away or move it somehow over to drupal...

I think I'm gonna try to build a drupal-clone for the template we use in the bw-layout-branch right now.

I guess sustainability is the key. So far the programming for BW is not sustainable as no documentation exists for future volunteers to easily step in and take over. We can't afford and even less expect volunteers to waste their time and energy in a system when they could use the same time and energy to improve the features and implement new ideas (and there s no shortage of those!).

Now, I m not at all a technician so I can t comment about the feasibility of a switch - but sure a tech volunteers meeting would be great for that :-)

 

Ok, easter weekend (at least at my place) is definetely cancelled. I host some people for http://eh2009.hamburg.ccc.de/ instead;) midsch

I just worked with drupal once again over the weekend and all I can say its pretty easy to in design point of view...

 

www.berlinbeachcamp.org

 

ok this isn't so stylish ;) but we were in hurry to get content and site running....

because its just a vavicon and has not priority "high" ;)

 

but I changed it :)

I will just write here some experiences with drupal on the bbc site....

Today I tried openID:

 first: core module openID in drupal 6.x

I couldn't get my blogspot, flickr or yahoo account running. always errors or "this is not a vaild open ID"

 than I tried the google friendconnect stuff:

http://code.google.com/p/google-friend-connect-plugins/wiki/DrupalPlugin

in the comment section there was just a "loading ...." what was the end of investigating further for this module

then I tried the friendsconnect gadgets which comes with the google open ID function: which offer a way to add a profile picture to your drupal site.... well that not what I thought about the whole openID thingy. You can't use the BBCdrupal tools like blogs, forum, profiles etc...after you login into your google account....

After 2 hours I realize that the basics are there but it's still not working out of the box.

 
just my few cents....

I also think that Drupal would be a great way to redefine the site, and hopefully get more development involved. I would gladly help with the translation into catalan and spanish.

Yep, i know. I don't know where, i read that i had to join BeVolunteer forum. I registered, never got the activation email. Contacted the admin. No luck.

Found an interesting thread,
http://drupal.org/node/33425 - Can Drupal do this?

This is what the guy wants to get done:

The website should be able to:

• Store user information in over 10 different languages.(MySQL)
• Have search capabilities for that user information.
• Associate members’ records geographically.
• Ability for administrators to send emails by geographical areas and areas of interest. (I guess a query for all emails where "option == true" could do the job)
• have multi-lingual bulletin boards, or if possible (I believe it's not possible) one that translates to each particular language set on users profile.
• Allow members their own blogs or web-pages and to sign up their own members.

Julien said:

Now, all the drupal based sites I visit have pretty much the same taste. I definitely can tell when they are made that way.

It really depends how you approach it. If you start with a Drupal install, and then begin thinking about the layout, then it's no wonder that it will look like a Drupal site.

What we usually do at my work place is to start with a photoshop design and then reproduce this design with our home-grown CMS or, most recently, with Drupal.

In my experience almost every desired look can be achieved using Drupal 6 theming. Though, it can be a tedious job to identify the variables available in a specific template file.

One thing I have not yet fully figured out is how to properly theme forms, or even create my own forms for content creation and editing. I guess I need to learn module writing, this will do the trick.

A lot of those links have been on a "wiki"-page in my testsetup;). It's offline as I don't want to care about (security) updates for a useless site. The used dev-versions of some modules have updates on a nearly daily basis. If there is need, I can still put it back.

> Now, all the drupal based sites I visit have pretty much the same taste. I definitely can tell when they are made that way.

Right now I'm working on a project to convert an existing ASP site into Drupal.  The look will be exactly the same and all incoming links (such as Statistics/Index.asp) will remain working :D

One of the main questions here probably is: Is the the lack of programmers caused (or strongly influenced) by the actual code base? If so, we need to change sooner or later, simply to survive. If not, the question is more theoretically, a search for the best option. (Drupal is a bit different from changing the framework as there is not so much coding involved as a lot of stuff could be done with configuring the existing software modules. Nevertheless: a lot of work and noone in sight to do it.) And of course: A switch of the system won't be easy in any case, JeanYves is right about this. But it won't become more easy if there's already a crowd of members using the stuff. Also it will be harder to leave stuff behind, drop features etc., even if there may be good reasons to do so you'll always have some hardcore fans of the old.

Is it possible that Drupal, in it's current state of development, is not mature enough to sustain a project of the size of BeWelcome? If that was the case, it would be good to produce a list of "required Drupal improvement" that will eventually happen and that, when the whole list is green, we will have the optimal window to switch.

The main questions to answer are: 1) how easy will it be for us to move our code-base and 2) how easy will it be for us to make exactly the things we want. Going by Lemon-heads points and experiences of friends, I think drupal are equal measures liberation and prison.

Personally, I really don't want to get bound up by another framework that it's going to be hard to modify. We don't need it, we've been there (... we're still there, as it happens). I don't really care for all the modules and all the sharing of drupal - chances are we'll either a) have to accept things that are not exactly as we want them (using modules done by others) or b) have to code our own modules in just another framework. I don't think we need either.

Personally, I'd be happy to see us move to Zend or perhaps CakePHP (which seems like it could provide the same kind of freedom as Zend) but I don't care for drupal.

Regards

Peter - Fake