Relocalization Network beta launch, fork of organic groups

I've been busy using the Moshe's organic groups module to make a 'group' feature for my site. But finding that it lacked some features I needed, I ended up pretty much forking it and creating my own module. Called 'groups.module', I'm afraid, for those worried about a potential nameclash if I ever submit it as a contributed module.

http://beta2.postcarbon.org/groups/example

... shows it in action.

On top of the organic groups module, I've

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1. Added three new content types: group events; group news; group pages. I chose to do this rather than using existing content types, or even flexinode, because it enables more control, the possibility of extra custom fields, and most importantly the ability for groups to exist within a larger site, and the main site admin can edit 'pages' which appear in the main site, whilst a group coordinator/manager can only add pages within their site. For the 'group page' content type, I've added the ability to order those pages when shown in lists.

2. Done a lot of work with blocks the module generates. Added a new block 'group header' which appears at the top of the page (not in a block down the right or left). Added a block which lists 'group pages'. And edited the 'group details' block so it shows 'group features' which I think is more user-friendly.

3. Made the groups' home pages more rich. I've added a body field to the 'group group' node type, which acts as a kind of introduction to the group on the group home page. Below that, x number of group news node teasers are shown, with x number of group events and forum discussion topics by the side in a box.

4. Nifty display of group events. The events module must be installed for group events to work. On the group home page, the most recent x events are shown, going back to up to a month in the past. Past events have a line through them. The module is clever about how it displays events which span different periods of time/days. It *should* also work as expected with timezones now.

5. Below the news on the home page are x items from the community blog. This uses the standard blog node type (forum discussion topics also use the standard forum discussion node type).

6. A new role called 'group coordinator' has been added. Users with this role can submit group events, group news and group pages, whilst normal group members can't (they can only do blog entries and forum topics). However, one thing I don't like is that say a user is a member of two groups, but is only meant to be a coordinator of one, this isn't yet possible. They're automatically a coordinator/manager of both, as it is defined in a general site-wide role. Adding roles for each individual group may be an idea, but will result in the admin role page being massive if there are a large number of groups. Any ideas here?

7. For usability, added a box at the top of the group home page to tell users how to join etc.

8. Various other usability improvements

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Some things I hope to add soon:

a) get the group image to work. I believe this may be a problem with the organic group module as well. Any feedback on this Moshe?

b) Extending the 'group page' module so that groups can either be subdivided into subpages or have an option whether or not they're listed in the block which lists group pages.

c) better control as to keeping a coordinator of one group from being a coordinator of another group

d) ability to add multiple coordinators per group... though I haven't thought about how this can work yet seeing as currently the coordinator is the owner of the 'group group' node type, and you can't have more than one owner for a node type

e) maybe allowing group members to email all members within a group, or something generally to do with group emailing... I haven't really looked into this much yet, but can imagine the groups on my website asking for extra features like this

f) integration with the world cities database, to enable people to find the group closest to them. this will be a killer feature, and something I've worked on before to great success :)

g) any other ideas??....

h) the extra node types are in their own .inc files. It'd be good to extend the module so that its easy to plug-in whatever node types people want.

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If there's interest in this module, I can consider adding it as a contributed module. But it'll take me a lot of work to clean up the code, get it to the drupal coding standards, debug, add lots of admin settings/options, make it universal rather than based purely around its current need (the website I've made it for) etc.

But I'm quite pleased with my work so far :) This is the second Drupal site I'll be launching, the first being www.peakoil.ie . Eventually , this beta site I'm launching today will take over from www.postcarbon.org , and I also hope to move www.globalpublicmedia.com over from my own custom-built CMS to drupal, and integrate all the sites (and a couple of others) together.

On another note... how does licensing work with the work I've done? e.g. if I do a module based upon someone elses module, do I have to release that new module to the community? What about if I start a new module from scratch?

Jake.