Building a community website using Drupal

Ronald Huizer, CEO Jobcircle B.V. <ronald.huizer@jobcircle.nl>Niels van Mourik, Software Developer Madcap B.V. <n.vmourik@madcap.nl>

Building a community websiteusing Drupal: www.jobcircle.nl

FOSDEM - 8 February 2009

Building a community website using Drupal - www.jobcircle.nl

Before it all started

FOSDEM - 8 February 2009 Building a community website using Drupal - www.jobcircle.nl

Why Jobcircle?

FNV Bondgenoten is the largest trade union in the Netherlands.The amount of members has been shrinking and FNV Bondgenoten wants to attract younger people (18-35).The existing union proposition is not suited for the next generation.A 'stand alone' organisation can develop more flexibly and adapt faster to changes.

The Goal

Targetgroup, younger employees (18-35). To obtain a relevant position by providing services

on work and career development. Sharing information, tips & tricks and experiences.

Our stakeholder, FNV Bondgenoten. To build contacts and relationships within the above

mentioned targetgroup. Keep a strong position in the Dutch society.

Start of a newtrade community

Why Drupal?

Bad experiences with proprietary products like MS Axapta.OSS has proven rapid development and flexibility, vendor independence.We want to show off OSS and increase the userbase.Headstart in social networking features out of the box, like groups, buddylists, profiles and blogs.

July 2007

Organisation and funding initiated.Comparing different vendors using different technologies.Some good proposals, using PHP and .NET based applications.The .NET proposal seemed promising.But, a proprietary path didn't ”feel good”.

August 2007

The 'first vendor, then technology' path seemed wrong. We had to start over again.Our consulting partner created a proof of concept setup comparing Drupal, Typo3 and Joomla.Based on capacity, experience and overall feeling the current vendor got selected.

The techies gotinvolved

The Big Rush

First commit on November 16th 2007.Deadline of March 6th 2008.6 people involved.Focus on quantity and initial release.

5th of May

The Cool Down, Chimera

Officially branched on 29th of July 2008.No hard deadline, November 1st 2008.Number of people reduced.

Two to three developers. Different graphical designer.

Focus on performance, modularity and maintainability.

November 2008

Technical Architecture

Facts and Figures

Over 2000 code changesets and counting.Number of nodes: 1004 (719 wiki items).Modules from contributions/: 144In-house developed modules: 40Handed out 39 different SVN accounts.Created 4 different Drupal themes.Number of crashes on deployment: 1

For the sake of impressive graphs

DBOLObject based persistent

Database Layer

Drupal 5.15Node Taxonomy Menu Search Poll Forum ThemeXMLRPC

Drupal Contrib

ViewsPrivatemsg

Buddylist

ECInvite Liquid

AUTHRegistration andauth. extensions

VISAPISimple API that handles 'visibility' of everything

JCCore helpers andmaintenance code

User File Uploads

Weblog Extentions

Resume Builder

Search Extensions

PROFILEForms, Hooks, Architecture

Opleiding Dienstverband Training

TaalAccountProfiel

Vaardigheid Vereniging Werkplek

Hobbie Instant Mess. Interesses

VisibilityVisibility on node level

Backend ToolsRate Your Company

Jobcircle Webshop

End User Interfaces

Framework level Code

Upstream Drupal Code

Database Object Layer (DBOL)

Simple persistent database layer, works like Drupal's node system but lightweight.

Modular design. Register data types:

hook_jc_dbol_objtypes() Hook into all operations with data objects:

hook_jc_dbol_api($objtype, $op, &$object)

$pie = jc_dbol_load('pie', 35);// Pie-id 35.$pie->topping = FALSE;jc_dbol_save($pie);

Visibility API

Handling the 'visibility' and access checks of nearly every entity.Uses a fallbacking meganism with customizable defaults.Works for Drupal nodes and all Jobcircle Profile data.

Profile Modules

One core module which handles the user/% page and the profiel/ user backend.Modular design, submodules hook into almost everything.

The users public profile, ”profile blocks”. DBOL data handling. Autocomplete data for autocomplete/%/%.

All submodules provide specific form bits, not direct menu callbacks.

Application Level Modules

Profile

Users have their own public profile. Customizable. Different blocks of information exposable to

different groups of people.

Users add data to their profile using a LinkedIn style 'my account' page.

Resume Builder

Build your own resumes based on all profile data in a WYSIWYG form.Expose different resumes to different people, job hunters, friends, corporations.

Abstracted export formats and templates. PDF (uses LaTeX) HTML

Workwiki

It is ”the knowledge base” when it comes to the Dutch working society and law.Not a Wikipedia replacement.Users can help contribute their content.Over 700 articles, most are tagged.Built on top of liquidwiki, simple nodetype.Uses 'this is validated content' style marks.

Present & Future

1 February 2009

Pageviews: 3.455.851Unique visitors: 676.590Registered users: 43.901Jobcircle is by far the biggest Dutch community on labour.Due to the economical crisis lots of employees to assist.

The future

Interesting upcoming partnerships. External deployment of the workwiki. Flexible API to extend and exchange data.

Self growing userbase and buddylist.Rating companies and exchanging experiences.All sorts of small improvements and marketing campaigns.

Questions?

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