Building Blocks

To summarize the Features of iGEM2007.com:
Rich user & team profiles; Team blogs, Forums, Wiki; Team-centric user access control; Google maps + teams mashup; RSS for everything; Limited, distributed (amongst team leaders) user registration; Feedback & submission of team application; Help docs based on Books, oh yeah, and tagging and digging, of course.

How do we build it? Hopefully a functional skeleton will coalesce out of the following list of drupal resources:

practical demonstrations & explanations

• Great list of modules useful for building "YahooGroups-like mailinglists and wiki support," (includes 4 og related modules) AND a 10 minute screencast of how to set it all up. Perfect? Maybe - thanks Zack Rosen!
• Another great screencast from Rosen demonstrating "how to use Drupal to create Google Maps mashups of virtually any arbitrary data or content with no coding in minutes." Uses Views, CCK, Node Import, GMaps, & Location modules.
  
• Dojo 1 - Drupal basics, FormAPI, & CCK: writeup & screencast
  
• Dojo 3 - Concluding Dojo 1, NodeAPI: writeup & screencast
• Dojo 4 - Views, Panels, & CCK: writeup & screencast
• Dojo 6 - Drupal 5 Themer Pack: screencast (no writeup yet)
• 20+ screencasts listed on drupal.org
  

modules

• Overview of Drupal 5 components & example modules - from api.drupal.org doc
• Creating Modules (a tutorial): Drupal 5.x - "The full tutorial will teach us how to create block content, write links, and retrieve information from Drupal nodes."
• php demonstrating how to view a list of nodes on a google map using the views, location, and gmap modules
• Gmap - API lets other modules use google maps, can generate basic maps in any node from gmap macro code. Integrates with the location.module. Port to 5.1 still unstable.
  
• Location - API for geocoding (only u.s. and some of ca & de?), can add location fields to nodes, can do proximity searches on nodes. Port to 5.1 still unstable.
• Views - "provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists of content (nodes) are presented... This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results."
• CCK - "allows you add custom fields to custom content types using a web interface. In Drupal 5.x, custom content types can be created in Drupal core, and the Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to any content type." Here's the list of all Dupal 5.x CCK-related modules
• Node Profile Module - "This module builds user profile's as nodes, which ... allows using CCK and its field types as well as the CCK form builder. For a maximum of flexibility it'll be also possible to use custom node-types and modules instead of the CCK." Also, it's integrated with views.module.
• Organic Groups (og) - "An organic group is created by a single group owner, who has special permissions including the ability to delete the group the owner created. Group subscribers communicate amongst themselves using the group home page as a focal point." - basis of "team portal" pages? Or could it just be done with a taxonomy? Also see og list manager and og views. Alternatively, see mailhandler for a non-og way to link forums w/ lists.
  
• Converting 4.7.x modules to 5.x

themes

• How to theme CCK input forms - "So, as a non-developer, semi-technical, marketing/business type person, I set out to discover how to 'theme' my input forms." Breaks it into 4 steps: creating CCK content type -> create [yourcontenttype].tpl.php -> modify template.php -> modify style.css
• Content Templates module - CCK can generate ugly content; this module adds a "template" tab to CCK editing pages pre-populated with CCK's default layout, making it easy to customize how the fields are output. "But Content Template can actually be used on any node type and allows modification of the teaser and body properties before they go out in an RSS feed or are handed off to the theme."
• Converting 4.7.x themes to 5.x

Good to know

• Customization & theming handbook on drupal.org (extensive) - "Included in this section are PHP and SQL code snippets and examples for use in your sites pages, blocks and themes. There are also a few articles on theming engines, which provide the infrastructure to build and create new themes."
• Basic syntax for getting accessing the drupal CVS repositories
• Google Maps API documentation - if only all documentation was this good...