Camp Websites

This year's SANDCamp site started with the great contribution LA Drupal made when they released the codebase for their camp site.

It takes a lot of work to put up a good camp website, and they're only really useful for a month or two! It is, honestly, completely out of proportion, and everyone working on it is a volunteer so tasks can take some time to finish.

But, we want to encourage *more* camps. Part of that effort is making the camp websites as easy as possible.

I would like to start a group to further this effort. Our mission would be to make creating a camp website a 10 minute task.

Of course people would be free to expand, tweak, and customize their new camp site. But imagine how much more successful all drupalcamps could be if they could launch a site within minutes instead of weeks. More sessions posted, more users registered, more planning time for everyone!

I think San Diego is a great place to start this effort. I plan to rope in as many LA team members as I can, and I believe SD is the first site to use LA's released code, so we know what was difficult for us.

My plan is to start with the DrupalCamp LA codebase.

Code: complete (may need module upgrades). The core features for any camp are present - registration, sessions, voting, sponsors, forums.

Theme: Zenlike - expand this to provide a more finished base theme. Garlandy, in the sense that you could use it without any additional work. Color module enabled.

DB: not included with the LA codebase. This is a major weakness. No module is configured or set up initially, and it's a impossible to configure them all properly unless you're a member of the LA team that built the site. I believe using Features we can get a lot of this info into code. The rest we can get from...

Install Profile: (possibly other solutions as we learn more) Here is where we can have the biggest impact. This is what can get a new camp site up and running in no time at all. Prompt the admin for some basic information, include module configuration that can't be done via features, and we're done. I believe this is a perfect use case for Install Profiles, as the site will not need to be maintained or upgraded, and this really will be a one-shot install.

Handbook: another area that could have a big impact. No one likes to write docs, and especially when they're not getting paid and the camp is already over :) If we build out the other areas, campers will be able to get their site up and running in no time, but they'll need to know what they just got. What features does it have, what views, how are the content types and fields intended to be used, how/why were things configured a certain way, etc. Especially info on how to make a new theme and what classes, ids, etc are available.

Hosting: This is a lower priority, but combining all of the above with a hosting partner (Acquia?) to provide a complete solution would kick ass and make the whole process so easy. Being able to get a whole working camp site installed, configured, and live - ready to accept registrations and session proposals - in 10 minutes would be incredible.