Community builders

Community builders

A group for people building a Drupal community

Creating communities in Drupal can be a challenging task. Let's support eachother.

Comments

1. just a thought

Submitted by charos on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 16:25.

Should posts that are not related to the ebook , be posted here?

2. I find it to be a good idea,

Submitted by dallas.ramsden on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 22:09.

I find it to be a good idea, as long as the submitter understands this community has a large demographic of drupal beginners. As a proficient software engineer I bought this book because I found it to be a GREAT resource for those that are unfamiliar with drupal. Drupal has a respectable learning curve and sites like this make learning drupal manageable.

This site could act as a starting point for answering technical questions that are outside the scope of this book. Because, from personal experience, I find it is difficult, or in some cases frightening, to ask questions in other communities... I believe there to be no stupid questions but some communities, with their level of expertise, act as if there are.

Often I had very complex and technical questions but I didn't know where to start looking for the answers. I didn't post those questions here because I felt that perhaps it was out of place and I didn't want to confuse other beginners. I would LOVE to have this community act as a starting point for questions like this, even though they may be outside the scope of the book.

As a community, collectively there is a great ability to solve problems. As we are all experts in our own areas, I believe that collectively we can answer any drupal related question even though it is outside the scope of the book.

Drupalfun continues to be a resource for drupal beginners, but as we continue to grow and understand new drupal concepts we can teach others. Drupalfun can be a resource for knowledge transfer.

Thanks for reading.

3. how come you can't make topic in here?

Submitted by charos on Sun, 03/08/2009 - 10:48.

this won't function properly unless we can make related topics....

4. click "create new group note"

Submitted by dorien on Sun, 03/08/2009 - 12:04.

click "create new group note" on the left.

Until panels for OG is stable, the layout may be less then optimal for a little while still.

5. Food for thought on Building a Social Networks

Submitted by Thomasr976 on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 22:21.

I wrote a review on David Silver's new book on this http://drupal.org/node/378578

6. Book Review Silver

Submitted by safeday on Sat, 06/20/2009 - 00:39.

New Book: The Social Network Business Plan by David Silver

I too am trying to develop an online business. I am in the research phase and have learned a lot on how to market your site and products. I am in the brand building using Twitter and associated tools.

My next aim is to start to post more affiliates on my site.

On this Site DrupalFun. I like what is done here and also agree with replies that Drupal is the way to go. I have site built in Joomla, emeetingplace.com, durpal, drupalus.com (I am in the process of building), and wordpress, emeetingplace.com/safetyblog and my new site that I am working on jamesroughton.com. I am looking for comments and or suggestions on websites and also on more details on how to market products via websites.

I have also played around with ning and one site, jobhazardanalysis.ning.com and agree that the flexiability is not what I like.

I am even mentoring a friend of mine on a Drupal Website, ncsafetyandlife.com

Thanks for letting me run and run.

Good review on the book

7. White Screen of Death- how to avoid/fix it

Submitted by Thomasr976 on Sat, 06/27/2009 - 19:59.

I wanted to share my experience with the White Screen of Death (WSOD). For thos not familar, all you get is a white screen on your drupal site absent any messages. I am working on my test site which happens to use Dorien's Ultimate Community Guide. I used MAMP as a test bed and the WSOD happened when I was updating modules of all things.

What got me in trouble seems to be the use of Custom Snippets taken from the community guide. Some great people from the Drupal Community helped me regain control of my test site and offered my some guidelines. Flor those of you trying to decide on whether to use drupal this situation will illustrate just how good and helpful the community is and how essential the forums are.

See http://drupal.org/node/499290 for my specific situation and also check out for general fixes if you experience this situation http://drupal.org/node/482956

Tom

8. White Screen

Submitted by safeday on Sat, 06/27/2009 - 20:56.

Thanks for the great comment. I have also seen the same problem and found 2 things that helped: Modules will some time cause problems. Just make sure you what you have installed. I just delete from the sites/all/modules. The 2nd is if the php.ini does not have enough memory allocated you can see the same problem.

Thanks for the sharing and check out my Drupal sites that I building, http://www.ncsafetyandlife.com and http://www.Drualus.com.

All comments are welcomed.

9. Drupal Panels Module

Submitted by safeday on Sat, 08/22/2009 - 16:29.

Finally got the new drupal panels working with CTools. Looks like there are some great improvement, but complicated.

Any one used the new panels. Just trying to get comments before I start learning it. Maybe a screen cast.

10. Gigya Socialize + community site building

Submitted by Thomasr976 on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 20:15.

I attended the Acquia Webinar on the new gigya module. Very interesting way to build membership, but it does not work with Content Profile Module.

Also a good community site building website is http://www.communityspark.com/

11. Building Communities - A tough job!

Submitted by After the Mouse on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 19:16.

Building a community web site is comparatively simple, there is great help out there online, sites, e books, user groups. Drupal makes it a real sweet deal… but making a community gel and work together on line is the next challenge and the harder one of the two to get right.

For the last two years I have been the guy behind a community site, an unusual one because there are a lot of the members who know / knew each other in the teal world long before the site went live online. And for almost all of that time I have also had to be the main contributor, writer, forum poster and photo subscriber. Why? Because it is hard to get other people to get involved.

People are happy to sign up, give a little of themselves but most do not stay around. I hear the 10% rule spoken about recently.
• Of all the visitors to your site 10% might be really interested in your message.
• Of those that are interested 10% may join your community.
• Of this membership 10% will return more than a hand full of times.
• Of these happy few only 10% will get into the community with any real enthusiasm.

The math says around one in a thousand users will really be the core of any site, forum posters, picture sharers whatever…

In reality I have been lucky. http://afterthemouse.com has around a thousand members, of those ten or so are regulars who come back every week or so. And don’t forget these are real people in a real world community that bleeds over to the web to find another method of communicating with old friends.

But things are improving; I now have a couple of people who are committed to building a community with me. They do their share of the heavy lifting, posting to the forums etc. The site is starting to fill out a little, it is not just my personal and admin avatar on all the posts anymore. Looking at the private message modules and forum reads the site is beginning to work as I intended.

All this to say don’t be too down hearted if your little corner of the web doesn’t lift off and become a Facebook or MySpace over night. Keep working at it. Kevin Costner was right, built it and they will come – eventually...

12. Good Post

Submitted by DSNet on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 08:57.

Thanks for sharing your experiences; very interesting and balanced read.

13. drupal

Submitted by mark on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 12:17.

Very interesting to see what you can do with Drupal

14. Be persistent and experiment

Submitted by Thomasr976 on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 23:31.

Very good post. I have been trying to build my own community and have similar experiences. However, lately I have been experimenting with different formats using the Panels module and with different kinds of posts.

Some changes illicit immediate and startling results in the number of visitor, others fall flat on their face and fast. I used google analytics analyze things as well.

I good source of information on building communities is Community Spark at http://www.communityspark.com/

Good luck.

15. Hello!

Submitted by Nellartista on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 16:24.

I'm new here!

16. Drupal and Social Networking

Submitted by moosh101 on Mon, 12/20/2010 - 13:35.

After spending quite a bit of time testing and using a variety of open source Content Management Systems to power a Christian social network, I finally settled on Drupal. I tested quite a few, including Joomla, BuddyPress, Elgg, Xoops, and a few less known ones, and while I found that they all had their strengths, they lacked the flexibility of Drupal. While Drupal is not a social networking framework 'out of the box', it is an excellent framework for one. Using a variety of user contributed modules, you can build a solid and reliable social network with it.

Some of the key social networking modules I use include; CCK, Chaos Tools, Views, Panels, Author Pane, Advanced Forum, Content Profile, PathAuto, Heartbeat (activity stream), Rules, Private Messaging, Organic Groups, User Relationships, Invite, Facebook Style-Statuses (for posting wall messages), QTChat (facebook style chatbar), and User Points. These modules are actively maintained and most integrate well with each other.

Please feel free to look at our website for a demonstration of what you can do with Drupal. Your comments and queries are most welcome.

Shane.

http://www.lambsnest.com