Drupal Modules, Themes and Settings for IMCs

Table of content :

The modules below are or may be used by IMCs. The most common ones are (will be!) part of the ImcDrupalProfile.

Module Development by IMCs

Some IMCs develop their own drupal modules. As long as they are not an official project, this should be the place to link them

• AtImcDrupal

How IMCs use Drupal and which ones should be in the profile.

Core modules first (no link), additional modules including link to module info.

Much of this information is the result of this survey which was compiled in June 2008.

	Survey results	In IMC alba install?	Proposed 'new-imc' install
Version	5.x(5), 6.x(2)	6.x	6.x
Core Modules enabled	Aggregator(4), Blog(2), Blogapi(1), Book(1), Color(1), Comment(6), Contact(3), Content Translation(2), Database Logging(1), Drupal(2), Forum(3), Help(6), Legacy(1), Locale(3), Menu(7), openID(1), Path(6), Ping(3), Profile(2), Search(7), Statistics(2), Syslog(1), Throttle(1), Taxonomy(7), Throttle(2), Tracker(3), Update Status(4), Upload(6)	Aggregator, Color, Help, Menu, Search, Taxonomy, Translation, Upload	Aggregator, Comment, Help, Menu, Path, Search, Taxonomy, Update Status, Upload
Other Modules:	audio(2), cck(6)-Note1, cck: date(5), event(1), image(2), image assist(2), upload image(3), indymedia_cities(6), notify(3), hidden(4), spam(1), taxonomy access control(2)-Note2, web links(1), captcha(4), tagadelic(3), views(6)-Note3, tinymce(3), pathauto(3), panels/Panels2(3), (more)	fckeditor, indymedia_cities; custom modules: article, dadamigrate, imc_alba, imceditor, imcviews, nodecomment, nodeextradata	cck, cck:date, images(which?), hidden, captcha, cities list, pathauto, views, views:ui
Roles/Permissions	editor, admin roles and some have 'regular contributors/user/trusted' role (use adminrole - no d6)		editor (content admin) and site_admin (all)
Workflow	Hiddens: Hidden module and node queue for featured articles. Workflow module (inc. 'hidden' state).
Views	mostly simple views, but see: Keyword-based podcast generator	imcviews
Themes	contact any IMC that you like http://drupal.org/project/abac radio.indy	indymedia_alba
Patches	http://drupal.org/node/210405 - a views addition for image upload http://drupal.org/node/276732 - hidden for 6.x IMC Belgium patches Forward, Panels2, jQuery media, Token

Image handling

• Image module, image upload but then using views addition patch: all should probably go CCK.
• Still in the air. I plan a solution based on upload / comment_upload / upload_preview / inline, that I think is pretty similar to dadaIMC. No imce or image_assist. Perhaps we switch to use images as nodes, to use a gallery (acidfree) or perhaps images as nodes and uploads will coexist...
• Imagefield & Filefield. On the new site, we'll use imagecache for automatic image maniplation and Lightbox2 to create slideshows.
• currently using FCKeditor and IMCE and creating small thumbnail images for stories and haven't figured out a better way of integrating this with multiple sizes for stories.
• Images are uploaded as separate nodes, and inserted using Tinymce.

Other Modules in use

• cck: link, Field Permissions, Filefield
• Javascript Tools: JS calendar(2), Activemenu, jquery ui
• views: ui, calender, calender ical
• Location(2), transliteration(2), boost(caching), organic groups (for local groups), nodequeue, taxonomy defaults, token, vocabulary permissions, administration_menu, link, dadamigrate & node extra data (both part of imc_alba), comment_upload, inline, upload_preview, ASCII art CAPTCHA, jstools, Imagefield, Imagecache, Media mover, Mollom, Views_fastsearch, Forward, Print, Token, Calendar, FCK Editor, IMCE, Video, Mycaptcha, Embedded Media Field, Contact link, Actions, Workflow, Excerpt, Form Collect, Form Store, Form tweaker, Module weight, Node comment, Printer-friendly pages, Safe HTML, Calendar, Image Inline, i18n, iBlocks, icecast yp, ip anonymizer, localization client, secure login, jquery treeview, jquery update, custom radio.indy modules: "radio", "radio legacy", "upload more"

Survey Comments

• EVENTS: It is important to note that we dont use a exclusive nodetype for events (event module nor custom cck). We just added a multivalued date field to story content type. The user posting has to fill the date if this story is an event, left it blank if not an event. The events newswire will show the next events based on stories with date filled.
• video/audio/uploads handling

Other options (audio, video etc)

• upload module and look for modules to easily handle audio, video, etc based on flash players...

Module Details

Indymedia Specific Modules

• Hiddens: Hide nodes or comments. Hidden module on drupal.org -- notes on aktivix wiki -- earlier version and discussion on groups.drupal
• Cities list
• IP anonymizer: scrubs IP addresses from drupal db tables

General purpose

• adminrole: to automatically asign all access to a given role
• checkall: add a checkall box to select elements of forms
• forward: send a node via mail
• jstools: enable javascript useful things
• jscalendar: a javascript calendar for date fields
• pdfview: exports a node to pdf
• printable:
• taxonomy_batch_operations: to batch add terms to a vocabulary, is able of cut&paste operations.
• tinymce: wysiwyg javascript editor

Comments and moderation

• comment: a core-optional module.
• comment upload: Allows users to attach files to comments.
• comment aproval: Reactive moderation of comments. Comments get published normally but appear in an approval queue. From the queue they can be approved, disapproved or deleted.
• comment closer: Schedule automatic closing of comments for selected node types based on the age of the node
• comment mover: Move comments to other threads or convert them to nodes.
• comment page: Display comments as individual pages to build your site content.
• In addition: Indymedia specific Hidden module (see above)
• In addition: RSS feeds for comments (see Feeds section)

Localization / Internationalization

• Autolocale: automatically import locale files of modules when activated
• Locale
• i18n
• transliteration: sanitize names of uploaded files

Feeds (RSS, Atom,..)

• RSS for comments

Media

basics

• audio
• video
• image

extended

• Audioblog
• Phoneblogz: http://drupal.org/project/phoneblogz (see implementation at http://www.ithou.org/talkingstick)
• MMB: http://drupal.org/project/mmb
• Moblog: http://dream.sims.berkeley.edu/~sahern/?q=node/34
• BlogSMS: http://drupal.org/project/blogsms
• Station (module made byKPSU): http://drupal.org/project/station
• Playlist (toolkit, modules)
• Shoutcast Streaming Server
• Custom Pagers
• Audio Gallery: http://drupal.org/project/audio_tab
• phpfreechat
• Skype Support
• Shoutcast: http://drupal.org/project/shoutcast
• Twitter
• Flashvideo: http://drupal.org/project/flashvideo (and tutorial: http://www.travistidwell.com/flashvideo)
• Web Media
• SMS Gateway
• Prodigem (make torrents)
• Slideshow Creator
• Media: http://drupal.org/node/19304

Modules by IMC CMS feature requirement

Feature	Description	Drupal 5 solution	Drupal 6 solution
Anonymous open publishing	It should be possible for users to anonymously add content to an indymedia site.	admin/user/access config	admin/user/access config
easy mirroring capability	To be able to cope with massive hits it should be possible to host mirrors easily. The requirements for a prospective mirror host sdhould be as low as possible. Also it should be easily set up.	Squid or Boost and Rsync	Squid or/and Boost and Rsync
syndication -out/in	most indymedia sites offer rss feeds. some indymedia sites also import rss feeds	Views RSS feeds; aggregator module	Views RSS feeds; aggregator module
search		search module	search module
The ability to create multiple instances	It should be possible to host multiple IMCs on a single server	sites directory	sites directory
Multimedia handling	It should be possible to post images and videos, as these are used frequently by our user base	multiple options
Categories	It should be possible to organise content (i.e. postings) by category, region, type, etc	taxonomy module	taxonomy module
Good performance on affordable hardware	Our often improvised equipment should be able to host the IMC sites	enable aggressive caching (install memcache contrib)	enable aggressive caching
Customisability	The CMS should allow different IMCs to tailor the organization of their site	intrinsic	intrinsic
internationalisation	The ability to present the navigation of an IMC site in multiple languages / the ability to easily add suported languages	locale module	locale module
translation	The ability to allow users to anonymously translate postings	i18n	drupal core
comments	The ability to comment / add clarification / updates to an article is an essential feature on most IMC sites	comment module	comment module
anti-abuse measures	Unfortunately, a lot of IMC's have to deal with a lot of abuse: spam, trolling, ddos attacks. The CMS should offer the tools to deal with this.	flood control, spam module, captcha	flood control, spam module, captcha
easy moderation	moderation of open postings is one of the least favourite tasks in indymedia collectives. This should be as easy as possible. Think about removing spam postings, hiding racist postings entirely from sight (as is required in some countries)	hidden module
calendar	A lot of IMC sites have a calendar where people can post there activism events on	CCK date and views calendar (or event)
features	Most IMCs work with an open newswire and a middle (feature) column with postings by the editorial collective.	views, node queue, etc.
documentation		drupal.org handbooks, ...	drupal.org handbooks, ...
Logins	In order to prevent people abusively masquerading as another user, it would be nice to be able to register the (nick)name of a poster. This feature might furthermore be employed to allow easy navigation to "more of this user" postings, stimulating open publishing for frequent contributers. An extra aspect of this feature might be to have these (nick)names registered globally, so one registration suffices to have a (nick)name registered for every IMC.	user module	user module
access control	It would be desirable to be able to differentiate between different admins / users with regards to what they are allowed to do. An example usage might be: for a multi-collective imc site, each collective might only have access to change the pages belonging to the collective. As CMSes may implement this feature in widely varying ways, it is extra important to make a good description of the possibilities of the given CMS regarding to functionality like this.	core	core
user moderation	In what sense can visitors play a role in the moderation of the site? A CMS may for instance support voting a la http://slashdot.org .	votingapi, spam module, etc.
open editing	Can posters edit their articles after submission?	user access configuration	user access configuration
profile	What possibilities does the CMS with regards to user profiles? This might include a page with the articles posted by the user, a list of their friends and so on	profile module	profile module
user notifications	Related to the previous feature: does the CMS offer the possibility to contact an author by way of his profile, without the author having to publish his email address in plain sight?	contact module	contact module
notify moderator button		spam module
podcasting/vodcasting	Does the CMS support podcasting/vodcasting? What possible extra features does it have in relation to this?	upload module, audio module, etc.
redundancy (DB content storage)	Given the problems indymedia has with server seizures, we would be much helped if we could find a CMS that can be installed so that "if one machine is taken by surprise out of the network, no imc will suffer downtime as a result". This would typically include database replication, but this is neither necessary nor sufficient.	replicate database, rsync filesystem	replicate database, rsync filesystem
version control	Does the CMS offer version control on publish content? That is: is it possible to track all previous versions of an article as it's edited?	enable node revisions	enable node revisions
customisable skins by user	Can users customize the presentation of the site? If so, what possibilities are available?	enable multiple themes, allow users to choose	enable multiple themes, allow users to choose
accessibility		core is accessible (custom theme could introduce accessibility issues)	core is accessible
xhtml validation		contrib html corrector	core HTML corrector filter
GIS		?location module? (not sure what this is)
photo galleries		views, image gallery, etc.
licensing options		creativecommons_lite
image manipulation		auto thumbnail generation: imagecache or image module or media mover
p2p integration		bittorrent module
social networking / filtering systems		??
wysiwyg		tinymce
tagging:	Does the CMS support tagging? What options are available? (think of searches, the ability to moderate tags, etc)	free-tagging taxonomy
anti-bot systems like captchas		captcha module
easier installation	Is it easy to install the CMS using default configuration values? Do packages exist for the major distros?	install profile needed!	install profile needed!
cross site search		possible to integrate 3rd party search service or search aggregated nodes

Notes

York

Presently Drupal 5.1, hosted on meuse@tachanka which has the mod_removeip patch.

[1] CCK using link and text
[2] Taxononmy access control uses node access. This is really clunky for big sites, and bad for a small site like York that wants to use groups. All tac is doing here is preventing just anyone posting to topics like features. I intend to remove it with a created lite module that just does posting access and not reading access.
[3] Views is stupidly big for what it does here, just make the Newswire. Unless it is used more often as the site develops, it will be far better to create a custom module to display the newswire. It's all a case of time isn't it! RSS and UI are enabled.

-- SashaCostanzaChock - 15 Jun 2007
-- WikiKes - 23 Jul 2007 - Modules in use section added
-- JonhattanA - 29 Jul 2007 - Grouping modules in sections, added hidden, cities list and the ones for general purpose
-- JonhattanA - 02 Dec 2007 - Comments and RSS section, make module names links, added some more under general purpose.
-- BenjaminWest - 22 Feb 2008 - Added link to transliteration module
-- MarkB - 04 Apr 2008 - Added link to ip_anon
-- LeVin - 07 Jul 2008 - Added survey results and rearranged a bit
-- LeVin - 09 Sep 2008 - Finished survey results table