Posted by kreynen on February 26, 2010 at 4:14am
If you click on the US Store, you can start to see everyone's favorite CMS peaking out from behind years of static html.
A couple new users have signed up for this group recently. There hasn't been much activity, but with IMBA moving to Drupal there should be plenty to talk about.
Comments
Everyone saw a little more
Everyone saw a little more Drupal on IMBA.com this week with the launch of their Legal Fund Map. A little Location, GMap, Taxonomy, CCK and Views.
We're already there :P
In Australia, www.IMBA-AU.com was built from the ground up on Drupal. OK, OK - so as this affiliation is only just starting out there aren't many features, but still... ;)
However, for an example of a great MTB site build in Drupal, check out Northern Beaches MTB:
http://nobmob.com/
Loads of great features such as ride calendar, race results, gallery, forum, etc, etc. but am most proud of the geographic features such as Ride area write ups:
http://nobmob.com/rides/manlydam
Trail status updates from the community:
http://nobmob.com/node/12/status
Individual tracks catalogued:
http://nobmob.com/node/12/tracks
Tracks shown on a map, with geocoded images:
http://nobmob.com/node/12/map
Etc, etc.
NoBMoB is part of the Global Riders network which has just started offering similar sites on the same platform to other groups and clubs:
http://global-riders.net/
Response has been good. All this on Drupal, very nice :)
Global Riders -- hosted vs OSS?
Wow Rob, awesome how you're making the work you put into NoBMoB available to other clubs.
What financial arrangement do you make with the clubs that adopt this? (Hosting fee, service fee, revenue share?)
I'm working with a club that wants some of the same features but also has other needs (membership support, temporary fundraising campaigns, etc.) and we're just getting started on a custom Drupal-based site. I know other clubs are heading in the same direction, and inevitably the question comes up whether we can share components, custom developed modules, etc. Is there any chance of making pieces of your setup available (as modules or features) to groups that want to continue to host their own site, and have the technical means to do so (i.e. Drupal savvy) but would like to adopt some features of what you've built?
Thanks for any further info!
I am also interested in the
I am also interested in the conversation above. At www.dorba2.com we have implemented CiviCRM to handle membership management, event registration, etc.
Top level post on Global-Riders
P.S. I think the availability of global-riders.net is worth a top level post in the group.
Nomob.com is very nice! I
Nomob.com is very nice!
I still want to learn how you did the trail conditions. I have that function but much clunkier than yours! I also want to learn all your geo and tabbing tricks.
I will investigate global-riders.
Cheers!
Mike
Just starting really
We're just starting out with Global Riders really and have been getting a few 'test' sites up and running. Given these have been small in nature and not required any work I've been happy to let them piggyback on existing hosting for free.
That said, in the long term I would hope that with enough sites (and it really wouldn't need many) we would band together and get a nice chunky dedicated server (probably somewhere in the US). I would hope that one could charge a nominal fee like 10ドル/month or something that would cover those costs. Basically - priced like a shared hosting package but actually supplying an application service.
You guys raise a couple of points that are worth noting, particularly CRM for membership and event rego. I previously asked why one would want a CRM so guess that question is answered.
I've used Ubercart for memberships in the past. Although Ubercart module development looks a little out of control, the underlying system is OK, but not sure it would work in the Global Riders context.
That said, I have also written my own custom cart modules for other clients and that isn't hard either. I would be happy to investigate a similar custom payment system for Global Riders to make it a one-stop shop. For paid events you'd simply remove the In/out voting and replace with an 'Entry form' link that would go to a cart. PayPal (cough) would be the obvious payment gateway as they have global coverage.
Most clubs here (in Australia) could probably use that sort of thing but I haven't devoted the time because most just take payments offline for events or are already setup with other 3rd party sites (eg: http://www.registernow.com.au/).
Anyhow - it's all an interesting concept. Whatever clubs do, I would urge them to band together and go multi-site. If the Global Riders stuff I'm working on can be a part of that, then all the better ;)
P.S. Thanks for you kind comments on NoBMoB. There is still more that could be done with this. It's been running for 4.5 years already! :)
For smaller orgs and sites
For smaller orgs and sites that are just getting started on membership, it seems that the basics can be put together quite easily with UberCart. But it gets tricky for anyone who has an existing membership routine (and an existing DB of member history!)--they'll need a fair bit of convincing to give that up.
This is why I asked about the possibility of open sourcing parts of the site--we certainly will want to do a custom job for some parts of the site (and need to control our hosting), but would love to integrate work done by others on volunteer tracking, trail status, etc. But I recognize that creating a shareable package is a non-trivial amount of work (especially since Drupal doesn't make bundling code+config so easy), to say nothing of supporting it once it's out in the wild.
@thinkling Drupal.org now
@thinkling Drupal.org now supports the packing install profiles the same way you package a module. You can simply define anything in Drupal's CVS and code the organization helped pay for will bundle that up into a single download like http://drupal.org/project/openmedia
It think there is room for both the downloadable profile and hosted approaches. I'm really interested in building a community of Drupal savvy "webmasters" working on MTB related sites who can help support each other.
This approach is working well for the public access television stations I work with http://groups.drupal.org/open-media-project
Creating the initial profile is actually the easy part. Coming up with some documentation and support structure is more difficult.
Site Cookbook?
OK, so here's what's in the modules directory on www.NoBMoB.com
activemenu cck fivestar imagecache_profiles memcache prepopulate transliterationad codefilter globalredirect image_filter messaging privatemsg views
addanother community_tags gmap image_fupload nobmob smileys views_attach
adminblock content_taxonomy googtube insert_view node_clone tabs votingapi
admin_menu date gotwo jstools notifications tagadelic
auto_nodetitle devel image kml og taxonomy_access
calendar drush imageapi link og_promote token
captcha exif imagecache location path_redirect trackfield
Inside the 'nobmob' directory there are 25 custom modules for various functions that help glue all the publicly available stuff together. Stuff like:
Maybe even start with some
Maybe even start with some MTB community "recipes" to help with site building.
One of the biggest holes I am trying to fill at the moment is some kind of mileage log.
Mileage log?
I thought about that too.
It can easily be done by adding an optional 'Distance' field to the blog content type. Of course you really want to include other details like the bike the user was riding (for maintenance records) and other stuff.
I also thought about creating a whole new content type just for this. If you upload GPS info to it then trackfield will graph it. Trackfield even knows about heartrate info in CRS files for this purpose.
In the end I decided yet another site like that was pointless - I just use Garmin Connect.
Recipes for bike sites
I'm really interested in documenting some "recipes" for those who want to roll their own. Maybe we can create a few wiki pages about common topics and collaborate on the content?
Obvious candidates would be:
Now, some of these might involve mostly pointers to material elsewhere; others might evolve into modules we set up as d.o projects, I'm all for that--but some how-to's & commentary on pitfalls would be a great start.