decipher/hackerspace

Hackerspace(.org.au)

This is a Drupal make based source for the Hackerspace(.org.au) project being currently developed by the Ballarat Hackerspace.

Drush (DRUpal SHell) is required to build a usable codebase from this repository with the following command:

drush make https://raw.github.com/ballarat-hackerspace/hackerspace/master/stub.make hackerspace

This is still very much in development.

bHack modifications

The bHack modifications module that is currently in place is a temporary quickfix and the functionality of a temporary landing page is to be merged back into the main project ASAP.

hackerspace's Issues

Messaging

Commons messaging out of the box is somewhat gnarly, it requires a 'handshake' so that only approved contacts can contact you.

Ideally members of a moderated group should automatically get that handshake, but maybe it should stay the same way it currently is for open groups, as technically anyone could join those groups and spam people.

Projects

Projects will need to be added, my thoughts for it at the moment are:

It will be a content type with link fields for external resources (github, etc), file/image fields for photos and other resources.

It will be comment-able by members of the hackerspace (group), but possibly moderatable by the Project owner.

It will be referencable in some sort of Blog post (which isn't part of Commons by default) so that the owner can tie all blog posts about the project back to the project, although this might be a future addition.

Disable Commons functionality?

Some of the default Commons functionality could probably be disabled, although it might be better (in the future) to make these items optional on a group by group basis.

In particular, the items that I don't think are necessary are:

• Q & A (FAQ system)
• Wikis (Although maybe in the future)
• Polls (Again, maybe in the future).

Beta 1

Theming

In my mind the project should follow the Meetup.com concept, allowing minor customisation of predefined areas so that each group still has a similar look and feel but get's their own branding and such.

This is also the way that Commons works out of the box.

I'm open to alternatives if it's a big issue for others, but I would like to reduce the complexity and not have to allow each (future) group to add their own custom themes.

Closed beta

I intend for the site to launch (beta 1) in a closed beta state, so that the site can be usable by the Ballarat Hackerspace with some of the more ambitious functionality can be added in the future (namely, making this a open system for any Hackerspace to use).

To do so, I intend to toggle the 'site_offline' variable based on the domain, so that if the domain is ballarat.hackerspace.org.au the site will work as expected, otherwise it will show the maintenance message which will link to this issue queue and/or repository.

Custom domains for groups

Groups should be allowed to use custom domains instead of the standard subdomain, and they should be able to assign them easily.

As far as the Drupal side of things go, this shouldn't be too difficult, but as for the server, it will need to communicate the domains back to Aegir.

Join behaviour.

Commons 'Join' for non site members is too many steps, it requires the user first to signup to the site then after that to request to Join the group, even though they initiated the process by trying to Join the group in the first place.

This process should be vastly simplified, so that it can all be done in one hit.

Although moderation of the group members should still be an option on a group by group basis.

Blogs

As referenced in #6, Blog posts is probably functionality that should be added, however it may not be a Beta 1 release.

Remove 'Groups' menu item.

As Beta 1 is to be a closed beta (#2), the 'Groups' item should be removed from the menu as there will be no other groups visible.