Hyperlocal News Installation profile

Greg — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:25:01 +0000

The Hyperlocal News installation profile is an "internal project" for some of the folks at GVS. Profiles are ways to bundle together Drupal, some contributed modules, and the configuration necessary to make the site actually do something cool. Users are presented with an wizard that sets up their site and does all the configuration necessary to get something to work.

History of the site: Denver's Baker Neigborhood

We originally built this as just a site for us to write about our local neighborhood: Bakernow.com. You can also see it in work on Ice Cream Denver

Releasing the code: thanks Ryan Ornelas

We were contacted about the site by Ryan Ornelas who wanted to use it himself. Ryan was kind enough to sponsor our work releasing the site as an install profile so that not only he but everyone could use it.

Available on Drupal.org

Now the code is available as the hyperlocalnews project on drupal.org where people can download it for free, get support, provide ideas in the issue queue, and provide improvements in the form of patches.

Case study

We have written an in-depth case study of the BakerNow site implementation.

visit the site

Certified to Rock

lisa — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:33:31 +0000

CertifiedToRock.com was created to allow community members and employers to get a sense of someone's involvement with the Drupal project.

Certified to Rock (aka CTR) uses a custom algorithm that gathers publicly available information from drupal.org, which is then distilled into a score on a scale from 1 to 11. The algorithm produces scores for site builders, developers, documentation writers, themers and anyone else who is active on drupal.org. We've also designed the algorithm to consider how successful the person is at engaging with the Drupal project.

The only barrier to entry is involvement on drupal.org: once you have a computer and internet connection, you can start contributing work that will increase your CTR score: patches, code reviews, documentation, modules, themes and support.

Why Certified to Rock works

CTR scores don't get stale. As long as one's participation continues, their score will eventually go higher.
Unlike other certification programs, CertifiedToRock.com's scoring is free and doesn't require any time commitment beyond normal interaction with the Drupal project.
Someone with a higher score is more likely to be respected within the community, and this usually means they are more likely to get assistance from the Drupal community via IRC or issue queues when they need it.

The implementation

Ben developed the code, Evelyn worked on the design and Carl implemented the custom theme. CTR was built in early 2010 on a Drupal 7 alpha release.

Updating Certified To Rock

As the project matures, we are developing more frequent score updates and adding new individuals.

Another area that has required some iterative improvement is the secret algorithm used to calculate scores.

What people are saying

The GVS team loved this:

Several people are proudly displaying their CTR presence on their personal sites or drupal.org profiles.

Companies such as Lullabot and Grammys.com are asking job applicants for their CTR score, if they have one. We think it's great that a CTR score can help support a job application, but not guarantee a job nor exclude anyone.

More information

About Certified to Rock For Drupal