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DrupalCon Chicago site launch and COD
Did you see, the Chicago DrupalCon website launched!? After conducting an open RFP process the Drupal Association hired us to build the site, with Palantir.net handling theming and content. It's been fun working on this project since it's so important to the community to create a solid, reusable platform for future conferences. We're working towards that with Drupal's Conference Organizing Distribution (or COD).
We want to give the Drupal community some insight into how the site was built, why some decisions were made, and get your feedback on which features should be moved back into COD.
What is Conference Organizing Distribution (COD)?
COD is an install profile and set of modules and features that make it easy to build robust conference websites. COD is currently in Alpha2, and already provides features such as:
- Rich session submission workflow
- Themeable schedule grid
- Personal session schedules
- A system for collecting sponsor information and displaying it on the site
- A smooth registration and checkout workflow
Several DrupalCamp sites have been built on COD, as well as a non-Drupal conference. usecod.com has COD news, list of sites built on COD and the the entire downloadable COD package.
DrupalCon Chicago uses many of the features from the COD Support suite of modules, and building upon those features made it easier for the teams to focus on the features and design that makes the Chicago2011 site unique, rather than starting by re-building the same features as other conference sites.
Once most of COD Support was enabled, we set about making enhancements and customizing it to match the needs of the Drupal Association and specifically the DrupalCon Chicago team.
Bakery means smoother login and registration across drupal.org subsites
We put a lot of work into the Drupal-based Single Sign On Bakery module. You can now login or register directly from the subsites like chicago2011.drupal.org and groups.drupal.org. This keeps people who are new to Drupal.org in the flow of registering and logging in all on the same site, and means that eveyone who registers for an account on the conference site has a single login that connects them to the rest of the *.Drupal.org sites.
Profile fields sync across sites
We also added new fields to Drupal.org user profiles (such as LinkedIn profile) and enabled syncing of those fields with the DrupalCon Chicago subsite and future DrupalCon sites, reducing the need to answer these same questions on future DrupalCon sites and manually maintain the same profile across the drupal.org subsites.
Using a third-party registration system
Based on concerns from previous experiences using Ubercart for ticket sales, the Drupal Association required the use of the RegOnline registration system. Specifically, some of the benefits of using RegOnline are:
- Great, ad-hoc reports that can easily be created by non-technical users
- Financial data that can be reconciled between the ticketing system and DA bank accounts
- Out-of-the-box workflows for sponsor, scholarship and other discount coupons, ticket transfers and refunds
- Tight integration with hotels for booking rooms, which is increasingly important as our DrupalCons now depend, in part, on selling blocks of rooms to keep the ticket cost of the event low
GVS had hoped to improve how Ubercart works in all the ways needed for DrupalCon sites instead of integrating with RegOnline, but the Drupal Association felt it was more important to use a tool like RegOnline first. We were happy to work with them to help make the best possible DrupalCon site and to make sure that the project still resulted in great community contributions.
RegOnline integration benefits Drupal
While it might seem contrary to the spirit of open source to use a proprietary, closed-source system like RegOnline, we feel that doing so still made Drupal stronger in the end, even if we would have preferred to build the site using Ubercart.
We built and contributed the RegOnline API module which integrates Drupal with some of RegOnline's API. By increasing Drupal's compatibility with RegOnline, we make Drupal more appealing as a go-to option for the many RegOnline customers who want a richer conference site outside of the ticket selling process.
Our integration connects RegOnline registrations to signups with Drupal's Signup module, ensuring that once data is imported from RegOnline, we can work with it similarly to how we would with any other Drupal events site. This approach allowed us to roll, review and commit several patches to the Signup module.
Working with RegOnline also allowed the GVS team, DrupalCon Chicago team and Drupal Association to become more familiar with RegOnline's features, which informs how we can make Ubercart (and Drupal Commerce) a stronger option in the future.
That said, we did build an automated sponsorship sales system in Ubercart for the Chicago site, and will be contributing it back to COD. This feature has already resulted in new patches, reviews and commits to the UC Node Checkout module.
What does RegOnline support mean for COD?
We remain confident that the Ubercart & COD combination can handle all signup and e-commerce related needs, and we think that its smooth registration workflow is one of its greatest strengths. Still, both COD and Ubercart need some work to handle other important aspects of event management as smoothly as RegOnline does.
If you are contemplating using COD with either RegOnline or Ubercart for your site, we recommend Ubercart, although RegOnline is a strong second option. Putting your user registration workflow onto a third-party system means you have less control over the user experience and checkout process, and in the case of RegOnline, less access to user data.
What features are headed back to COD?
We have already included the new scheduling tool in COD. This was developed initially for our client at the MeeGo project, the MeeGo Conference 2010. We enhanced the tool greatly for the Chicago DrupalCon.
For everything else, we're open to suggestions. For example, our preference is that voting on sessions should be done via a Flag instead of Fivestar. The concept of one through five ratings on a session seems overly complex compared to "I like this one" and "I don't like that one."
If we think it's generally useful to the world, we will integrate it back into COD. If it seems specific to DrupalCons then we will simply have a DrupalCon-specific install profile or set of features that is based on (or complements) COD.
So, which DrupalCon Chicago site features do you want incorporated back into COD? Tell us in comments below!
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GVS projects
GVS is now part of Acquia.
Contact Acquia if you are interested in a Drupal Support or help with any products GVS offered such as the Conference Organizing Distribution (COD).
We Wrote the Book On Drupal Security:
Comments
Glad to see that you have had
Glad to see that you have had success with our API. Please let me know if you have any feedback around making our API more powerful for similar development.
Also, we are actively working on an API 2.0, so stay tuned.
Feedback
Hi Nick, thanks for commenting. I would like to provide feedback about the RegOnline API because it was difficult to begin working with. Perhaps better to email than write it out here? Care to http://benjeavons.com/contact ?
Flag vs Fivestar
Site looks great guys!
I'm a little bummed that Ubercart couldn't be made to work, but I've worked with Ubercart and understand that sometimes you need to compromise.
Just a thought on the Flag vs Fivestar swap -- while rating 1-5 stars is overload, a single "I like this" vote is too little granularity in my opinion. I attended a DrupalCamp recently, and this all-or-nothing voting system was the sort that was implemented, and I found it very frustrating. Some things I had no interest in, some things I thought I might check out, and some things were high on my radar. I found that I was "Digg"-ing most sessions, and so was irritated that my favourites wouldn't be recognized. To compensate, I was forces to think harder about how I wanted to vote, altering my behavior so that my favourites were more clear. And as far as user experience goes, you don't want to make your users think that hard, right? :)
Anyhow, voting for sessions in that instance was like filling out a poorly designed survey -- it left a bad taste in my mouth because I knew the data I was providing didn't align with my sentiments.
Anyhow, hopefully this helps in the future. I would think that at least 3 degrees of opinion would be warranted (ex. doing nothing, expressing interest, expressing high interest)
Cheers! Again, great job on the site.
Flag vs Fivestar
@Patrick - I've helped organized DrupalCamp LA for the last few years.
I understand what you are saying about not all sessions are of equal interest. But as an organizer, you do in fact want to make your attendees think hard. ;-)
At DrupalCamp LA we use flag instead of voting in order to accurately gauge attendance for a session. As an organizer you need an on/off indicator of attendance - allowing us to plan room capacity and even lower the cost of putting on a camp by only having a coupl large rooms. Plus, it has allowed us to organize and move sessions in real-time as votes can (and often do) change the day of the event.
no system is perfect, and you can't make everyone happy all the time, but we opted for making it simple to change you vote, as well as providing a personalized real-time schedule.