GreenRenter

About a year ago, a few friends and I were having dinner and a beer at a brew pub on Hawthorne. One of them works for the Portland Office of Sustainable Development and told us about how she receives frequent calls about people looking for green buildings. This inspired her idea of developing a website containing a directory of green buildings. We were really excited about the idea, and the GreenRenter team was formed!

More information and our new site can be found at http://GreenRenter.org.

Naturally, we chose Drupal as the platform. The site is fairly simple for now, relying heavily on CCK and Views (don't most sites?). The content types are quite complex, so we turned to a tab based interface to help organize the information. For mapping, GMAP seemed too complex, so we are using a combination of Location and a small custom module to integrate the excellent Mapstraction library. I'll work on polishing this and releasing it as a module.

The 4 of us worked in fits and starts over the past year or so to get the site launched. Half the team had experience in the green building field, and me and another handled the development and other web related aspects. It is very basic at this point, containing listings of commercial and residential buildings featuring an in-depth break down of each building, focusing on the green aspects. We have big plans for the site moving forward, and would welcome any feedback with open arms. We are have seeded the site with about 40 buildings, although this barely scratches the surface just in Portland. If you know of, own, or manage a green building, please create an account and list your building. Our initial release is focusing on Portland, OR, but we will quickly expand the system to cover more areas.