By bomarmonk on

I just wanted to share my efforts to produce a local government website with Drupal. The following link brings you to the site, still in development:

http://www.alpinecountyca.com/drupal/

[edit: live version: http://www.alpinecountyca.com ]

I thought this might be a good thread to discuss not only what I've tried to put together (feedback is appreciated), but also what else can be done to create a solid government website with Drupal. I think corporate sites and government sites might have a lot in common, as they are both hierarchal organizations that often require very structured sites. So this thread might not deviate greatly from some of the existing discussions about corporate sites.

I've hacked together the spread firefox and lincoln's revenge themes to produce a semi-custom look (thank you factoryjoe). I've used tables to kill whitespace issues with my theme. How important is originality and modifications of the stock theme in this case? Have I done enough to differentiate my theme from the stock themes everyone can download (a good question, I think)?

I'm using the following modules (in addition to many core modules): attachment (for the darn title feature!-- why isn't this a part of the core upload module?), article, copyright, custom error, event, excerpt, feedback, filebrowser (not the officially released module-- but a taxonomy file browser), filemanager, filestore2, flexinode, fscache, image, img_assist, layout (not an officially released module-- and currently not utilizing its features--soon for the front page), nodelist, nodeperm_role, pathauto, poormanscron, relativity, taxonomy_context, taxonomy_dhtml (for my sitemap), tinymce, webform, workspace, and the weather module (deburka's updated version). This seems like a lot, but all of these seem somewhat necessary, if not convenient for what I needed to accomplish. Is there anything in this list that is placing a burden on page loads? Security? Etc. I'm not sure.

I've used flexinode and the node_relativity modules to create a custom contact directory (themed through tpl.php files). I've also structured the site around multiple books and book navigation blocks, as this seemed the best way to create hierarchal content (although there are some gaps here-- looking forward to whatever advantages may be unleashed with JAZA's book/taxonomy/category module).

Node listings, from navigation links, are generated by nodelist.

As far as rough edges: breadcrumbs and path aliases still need to be set up and/or refined. And I'm still struggling with using tinymce and htmlarea (as an alternative). Nodeperm_role and taxonomy access seem to play nicely together (as does the workspace module). I'm also anxiously awaiting a release of the repeating events module for the calendar.

Some general difficulties: approaching taxonomy as a library-like classification system for a site's content can be problematic for site navigation and menu modules, and the user interface (it seemed I had to compromise between making the classification system inclusive and parallel to the site's hierarchy, and using taxonomy to facilitate site navigation and user experience (it would be ideal if these went hand-in-hand).

Also, file management seems like it could be far more robust. A single module (in my dreams) would allow for separate directories by user role and for directory pages to be created from these role and taxonomy based directories and files.

As possible additions, I'm considering the subscription module (for subscribing to agendas, minutes, etc), the volunteer/rsvp/civicspace contact management stuff (good for reserving public facilities for periods of use?), and the question module for help in creating Frequently Asked Questions.

Plus, I'm considering what it might take to implement some sort of e-check module for property taxes. Maybe this can be accomplished through some clever use of the e-commerce module?

Please let me know what you think. I'd be interested to hear about similar attempts to use Drupal for government websites. Drupal really is some powerful stuff, but trying to get this site to do everything I wanted it to do, has been a bit of a challenge: a good learning experience. There is certainly more to learn.... and I would like to thank all those developers in the Drupal community who helped me along (some of you were really more than generous-- thanks and thanks again). I will find every opportunity to give back to the Drupal project!

Comments

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

One thing I'm concerned about is how older browsers handle .css and php theming-- IE 5.0, for instance, just displays the images and the content in a bare-bones sort of list down the page (div tags are apparently chucked).

Any ideas? I could probably include some script that would bark at users to upgrade to later versions of their browsers?

Jaza’s picture

Jaza commented

Well done, bomarmonk - the site's design looks great (perhaps too much so for a boring old council? hahaha), and you've managed to integrate a lot of interrelated content together in a pretty well-organised way.

I can only begin to imagine how much time you spent getting the structure to work properly in Drupal - you seem to have gotten a taxonomy-based structure playing nicely with book pages, in some sections - this is something to be proud of! The breadcrumbs are also working very well, althought not perfectly (once again, I can see that you've put many hours into this). I also like the taxonomy_dhtml site map that you've got there.

Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh

Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

It's nice to read your comments about this site. And thanks again, Jeremy, for your tutorial on breadcrumbs and taxonomy: it helped me have a much better understanding of Drupal and my own struggles with hierarchy.

kae’s picture

kae commented

Your site looks really nice. I like the photos at the top. I haven't had time to explore the rest of the site, but sounds like you've done a really nice job in pulling together various nodes.

Charlotte

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

www.alpinecountyca.com. Let me know if you find anything that could use work. Still looking for feedback. Thanks!

dman’s picture

dman commented

Check out the breadcrumb when you click on 'resource links'
I get an option to 'add view' -> 404

I haven't used views before, so I'll leave that to you to figure out.

I've been doing a government site recently as well. :-B
http://biosecurity.govt.nz/ (I'd like to fix those pathauto URLs a bit, but there's something in the terms or reference that makes doing so tricky)
Mostly so far I did some custom hacks to the menu blocks, but there's some other stuff under the hood and in the pipeline. Different content areas are (or will be) assigned to different 'contactees'. Linked by user profiles that are tagged to show up using path selectors like blocks do.

.dan.
http://www.coders.co.nz/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I did see that problem and I'm not sure why the "add view" breadcrumb is there. I've filed a bug report with the views project. In the meantime, I might need to embed the view in a node and this will eliminate the faulty breadcrumb... I'm glad you've reminded me of this, as I had somewhat left the issue behind in my dizzy push to get the site going. Thanks again!

C-Watootsi’s picture

C-Watootsi commented

Nice - it shows a lot of work. There are a few CSS probs though; on Firefox 1.5 your rounded tabbed corners disappear on hover. In IE5+ your tabs are breaking on the search box. If only my site had this few problems :)

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

Me too.. I'm looking to redesign the inherited http://www.co.brazos.tx.us with a CMS. I'm not 100% set on Drupal yet, but I'm getting there quickly, and your post is helping!

Thanks for posting! -- If you get the chance, please update this thread as any new discoveries/developments arise.

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Some of the issues I struggled with in designing a hierarchal site (representative of the local government's departmental structure) have been addressed (or are being addressed) by a couple of new modules. Both the views module and the category module (in particular) hold a great deal of promise. I think these modules will make building government websites much easier. (I already replaced several of the modules that I originally listed with the 4.6 version of the views module. 4.7 will prove to be much more powerful, I think.). Also, check out CiviCRM (wow) and the CCK module (content creation kit). These developments make Drupal worth considering now and in the future. Powerful stuff! I also think there is more work going into permissions and access control-- also useful for empowering government websites with more options.

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

Well, you've really captured the spirit of good navigation and structure by making dept's and documents accessible from whichever content you're approaching it: list all docs and get to dept or list all depts and get to forms-- exactly what I've had in mind.

CiviCRM is probably not necessary for me (we're using ldap), and I couldn't exactly figure out what CCK is..? It's mentioned a lot of places, but not really clear to me what it is..

Might you spare the time to post a really straightforward explanation of exactly how you've implemented drupal [ver?] to:
1. create a left-nav listing some menu items and
2. how the departments and documents are connected?

Also, I'm wondering if you've managed to create a template of some sort for the departments: they're all identically structured... can users break the structure?

thanks!

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Well, I first tried to use only taxonomy to build the structure of the site, but the presentation through taxonomy wasn't quite structured enough-- there were limitations for hierarchy and really glueing things together-- particularly having a parent/ department page with child pages. Books seemed to be the logical solution. The book module also comes with the book navigation blocks on the right hand side of the site (the green blocks that I borrowed from the Spread Firefox theme).

So, each department is a seperate book. The departments listing is created with the views module (as are some of the other lists). The main department pages are created with the flexinode module (makes it easy to list just that one department page in that listing) and are themed with a custom template. While departments can edit the image and the content, they cannot modify the look of the page.

Right now, I have simple access and taxonomy access working together to allow departments to edit content that I've created and also edit and create content only within their own department.

The node_relativity module creates the links from the departments to the related contacts (there may be a better way to do this someday-- a more dynamic way-- right now relationships must be created between each contact and his or her respective department.

One of the ideas that I think works out well, is that agendas and minutes are actually events added to the calendar (with a file upload). This way they can be easily sorted by date and show up not only on the listing pages, but also on that calendar (the user only has to enter them once). I've created a custom template that shows the agendas and minutes listed by the date first, so that no matter what title is entered by the user, these files will be sorted by date within a particular view (views module).

The new 4.7 views module will make a lot of this site configuration easier. I hope that helps!

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

bomarmonk-
I've had a chance to wrap my mind around a few things now, and I think I'm a little more hip to the lingo.. I'm confused, however, about dept's still: is a department a book or a flexinode (or both??)?

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Basically, with Drupal 4.6, any page or node (just about) can be added to the book outline/structure. So, the initial node is a flexinode that is made to be the top level book page for each department. The other pages for a given department are made of other kinds of nodes (webform, pages, and other flexinode types). I hope that helps.

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

bomarmonk-
it's me, your #1 fan again :)
How did you elect to use a view instead of a taxonomy for the list of departments? I find myself limited by view (I'd like to include the Node Title (dept name) and the Node Teaser (summary) but can not in a view. I'm attempting to implement dept, affiliates, and courts as "organizations" and using a taxonomy query like "/taxonomy/term/2+3+4" (under an alias of course) to return all county organizations.

An idea for your site: a click into "list departments" gives the nice view-list as compared to clicking "department" in the breadcrumb trail, when viewing a department, which gives an apparently useless look at a specific taxonomy term. Suggestion: a simple url alias on that might serve well to point to the list of departments view, which is what I was expecting to see. I've not even attempted breadcrumb trails yet, so it could be next to impossible.. no se.

--
..foaming at the mouth in anticipation of a complete tutorial from you, but I'm reading and rereading your earlier post in the meantime..

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I think the issues with breadcrumbs, taxonomy and views all working together will be solved in Drupal 4.7 by using the updated views module and the Category module (I think this will combine taxonomy and book functionality in a way that will greatly benefit the navigation of my site).

I think that the distant parent module would allow for that departments breadcrumb to work a little more as expected. That is a bit of an issue (however, distant parent is built into the category module).

Part of the problem is that there are other things listed under the department taxonomy term than just front pages for each department. If I list everything under the category or taxonomy term, I get everything, not just links to front pages. My solution was to use node-list at first. Then views came along and it seemed to handle more flexible arrangements. It allows a simple list of the department home pages, yet I can use my taxonomy labels to organize more than just the front pages.

I also didn't want my taxonomy to be complicated by terms and categories that were labels only for the purpose of getting Drupal to properly display content. I wanted my classification scheme to be the simplist and most meaningful way of describing various content (forget how Drupal would use this to make menus or listings of nodes-- subsitute views). I also didn't want users to be unnecessarily encumbered by too many terms and categories.

I don't know if my approach is best, but it is what evolved out of my attempts to get Drupal to do what I wanted it to do. There are, as you've noticed, still some issues with breadcrumbs.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll update this thread as I resolve any issues or otherwise improve the site.

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

Would you please describe how you managed to allow users to edit/create content within their respective departments (books) and nothing else? Do you have a separate group or role for every department you want them to edit? You mentioned that they can create-- if they've made a page, can they accidentally orphan a page? Can they delete a page they've created and nothing else? Group vs Role..??

thanks!

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I am currently using taxonomy_access and simple access (by virtue of an experimental node_access module). Users can only post content or edit content that they have both created and is in the right taxonomy for their department. I can additionally, with simple access, allow them to edit or delete other nodes. Roles are used in combination with taxonomy to achieve this.

One of the features I'm still waiting for: simple access and workspace integration. This way, if users access their workspace they will see what I have made editable for them. Right now, this isn't working. Workspace only shows the nodes they have created.

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

In relation to departments and users, how are your groups and roles structured?

What appears to be working for me so far is to have a separate role and group for each department:
IT department:
- role: ITDept
- group: ITDept
Upon creation of the user (or hopefully via ldap), I set his access to his respective role/department.
What's bugging me is how to disallow a newly created book document (allowed by checking "create books" and "edit own books") from outlining under another department, and how to default that new node to be group-editable. I found that checking "node module>>administer nodes" in the permissions page for the group makes that allow-which-groups box to show, but it also allows all users to edit another dept's work!..

Not just anyone can become a bomarmonk, can they?

- Confused in Texas..

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Actually if you look at all the requests for help that I posted in my journey to make this site, I was lucky to have the support of the Drupal community. I had a great deal to learn and I still feel that I improvements to make on the website (I'll probably wait to make big strides with Drupal 4.7).

This might explain the differences between what you have tried and what I have done: for each department, there is also a taxonomy term. The role for planning department only has the authority to edit or create content with this term applied to it. Also, a department term is required, so that all nodes must be created to use taxonomy access control, as well as node access.

It sounds like you are trying to accomplish access permissions with only node level access control? Is this right?

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

Yes Yes Yes!! you're my hero-- I was racking my brain over flexinode/node access rather than taxonomy. It's still a bit like mojo to me, and a user can create a book page and still insert it into another dept's outline, but I'm pretty happy with things for the time being. If you can't trust your users who can you trust?.... . :|

Here's what I've learned about one way to structure departments, and note that I'm starting with "organizations" and breaking that down into three components: affiliates, departments, and offices:

Structure is built by a combination of taxonomy terms and book outline. Each organization main page must have both its parent organization taxonomy term (ex. Departments) and its organization's tax term (ex. IT department), and each organization subpage must have its organization's tax term (ex. IT department):

* organization (tax term)
** dept (tax term)
*** ITDepartment (flexinode/category<dept,ITdept>)
**** ITDepartmentSubpages (book<ITdept-parent>/category<ITdept>)
** affiliate (tax term)
*** BailBondBoard (flexinode/category<affiliate,BailBondBoard>)
**** BailBondBoardSubpages (book<BailBondBoard-parent>/category<BailBondBoard>)
** office (tax term)
...

That looks about right. I am thoroughly mixing terms/content-types/concepts, but maybe it will help someone crack some issues :D thanks for your continued help bomarmonk.

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venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Does taxonomy_access really work? I enabled it the other day on a live site (always a bad thing to do, but I have backups every 4 hours) and half the site vanished- really! I have seen a comment from budda elsewhere on the forums that TAC kills sites randomly.

Disabling it restored the site and I am hoping my adventure has not made any db changes that will trouble me in some other way in the future. I think you are using 4.6.5, so would you be so kind as to tell me which version of taxonomy_access.module you are using? Also, I guess you have patched your taxonomy module to make TAC work successfully on 4.6.5?

Another question- once taxonomy_access is enabled, what is simple access for? Is it for node-level control?

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I have tried to stay with the most recent version of Taxonomy Access for 4.6 (there were some bug fixes not so long ago-- say in the last couple of months, and I updated the module within that period of time). I did patch the core taxonomy (not needed in 4.7).

Also, simple access allows departments to edit and modify nodes that I have created. The main reason I needed this was to allow these departments to change the content I used to initially build the site (I needed some of those node access permissions to prevent users from deleting or modifying content that is essential for the basic structure of the site-- that way I can still preserve a basic framework but allow for user modifications). Once this works with workspace, it will be nice, because I can add content to a given user's workspace and it will be easier for users to locate content they are allowed to edit.

Does this make sense? So far everything seems to work. Although I only have a couple of departments that are actively editing and creating their own content. A greater test will come when more people come on board!

I do have an idea why half of your site disappeared: you need to set permissions to allow user roles to view content for all of the appropriate taxonomy terms (for all content that should be publicly viewable, or viewable by that particular role, including anonymous users). Maybe this explains your experience? I'm not sure.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Thank you for the detailed reply. May be I need to invest more time in TAC.

drawi01’s picture

drawi01 commented

Chad,

Let me just say I applaud your efforts to get the most of what Drupal currently has to offer.

I've been searching the last 2 weeks for some type of "plan of action" on how to allow me to perform file management/access control for my new Intranet site. I kept running across your "bomarmonk" in threads, asking the same type of questions that I had. I've run through the gamut of OGs, Tax Access, FileManager, FileStore(2), NodeAccess, etc, without finding a solution to my needs. My basic needs are I need to be able to control users access to certain "folders" (or Books as you have designed it) that contain files. I need to allow them to update/replace/view those files based on Tax or Roles. Then I'd like to present them similarly as you have with a nice navigation menu that shows dept/subdept, with one click downloads.

I believe from what I see described above that your solution may work for me (pls correct me if I'm wrong). Administratively, I (the admin) needs to be the one who determines who can upload files into which folder (or book) - as opposed to allowing any user to upload files into any node they wish. Hopefully your config allows for that.

I'd appreciate any insight that you may have and am planning to pull out all the other security modules and use specifically what you outline here in hopes of finally using Drupal to it's fullest.

Thanks for your hard work and for sharing the info,
Bill

"Always Ask Why!"

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

My download pages are made possible by a combination of three things: flexinode, views, and custom phptemplate files that control the teaser as a direct link to the file (a bit tricky).

Views filters these pages based on a taxonomy term (board_minutes, for example) and returns a list that is formatted by the custom phptemplate file (both the "minutes file upload nodes" and the "views page node" are seperate flexinode types (the view needed to be embedded in a flexinode so that I could add the node to the book outline) -- In 4.6, I had to customize the views module, but in 4.7 there is a seperate module that does this-- I've submitted my changes to 4.6 to the views project page). One word of caution: my version of embedding a view into a node only works if you allow a URL to be created for this view.

Taxonomy access control allows only certain roles to add files to pages to which they are authorized to contribute.

I hope this helps? I'm also using simple_access along with an experimental node_access module that allows multiple access controls to work together (I'm not sure how robust this all is or if it will be supported in future versions of Drupal).

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

bomarmonk-
hot on your heels, I'm loving the work you've done and all the more in awe at what you've managed to get Drupal to do for your county website.

I wanted to post a comment that I posted elsewhere (but either failed or is in a moderation queue) which may help you-- I gathered from your post and class names apparent from ViewSource on your site that you've got a separate view and flexinode template for each set of files...?? I've come up with a way to utilize a single flexinode template for a single view to handle all files and departments:

Starting with your patch to views to allow views to become embedded into a flexinode using <?php print render_view_page(2); ?>, I created a view filtering on tax terms defining file type(s) and added an argument to choose my departments' taxonomy terms. Here's a basic flexinode template with embedded view using dynamic argument determined by current taxonomy ID to pass into the view-render function:

  <div class="node<?php if ($sticky) { print " sticky"; } ?>">
    <?php if ($picture) { 
      print $picture;
    }?>
    <?php if ($main) { ?><h2 class="title"><a href="/<?php print $node_url?>"><?php print $title?></a></h2><?php } ?>
	<?php 
	$arrcategories = taxonomy_node_get_terms(arg(1));
	foreach($arrcategories as $catterm) {
		$cattermid = $catterm->tid;
		break;
	}
	 ?>
	<?php print render_view_page(2, $cattermid); ?>
    <span class="taxonomy"><?php print $terms?></span>
    <div class="content"><?php print $content?></div>
    <div class="links">&raquo; <?php print $links?></div>
  </div>

Why I had to do a foreach instead of something like the following I don't know:
$cattermid = $arrcategories[0]->tid;

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

It seems that you have streamlined my approach. Very cool. I'll explain my setup briefly and maybe see how this relates to what you have done: I have one flexinode (and custom template) that is a files directory listing (a flexinode in which I embed a specific view of a particular set of files-- usually a set of files for a particular department-- this also allows views to display an overall document index based on the flexinode type of these directory flexinodes).

Then, I have a flexinode content type for the files themselves. Minutes and agendas are their own flexinode type (with a custom template) that renders a node title appended with the event date (these agendas and minutes are also added to the calendar, since they correspond with specific meetings).

I could probably combine some of this based on your work. This would be better, as I'm sure the less files and code, the faster the page loads.

As time permits, I'll get to making some improvements. Thanks for sharing yours. I also thought I would mention the insert views module, as this does some of what we are doing in a module (4.7 only): http://drupal.org/project/viewtags

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

I gathered what you described in the first paragraph from viewing your source and checking classnames and such-- it's how I'm building mine as well (using a collective "file_list" flexinode that contains the view_render).

I thought I was being clever by allowing my "file_download" flexinode (each actual file) to be categorized as an agenda, form, or document, but creating a separate flexinode for each filetype would certainly allow more flexibility.

And a couple minor edits to the code above: instead of using the deprecated arg() function to determine the current node, use $node->nid as in:
$arrcategories = taxonomy_node_get_terms($node->nid);
and you can't be certain that the first taxonomy term returned from the foreach will be the term that describes the department taxonomy, so I had to put this in:

		if ($cattermid != 14) {	// skip "agenda" taxonomy
			break;
		}

just before the break, where 14 is my Agenda file type.

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MrTaco’s picture

MrTaco commented

you might wanna try out my subform field for CCK (http://subform.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/subform_trunk.zip)

it makes creating/relating content, very easy

MrTaco’s picture

MrTaco commented

there's a demo up at http://www.tcao.com/drupal/

BenSp’s picture

BenSp commented

hi bomarmonk, wow, nice work.

i cant comment (yet) much on the drupal side of things, as im fairly new that this (and still struggling to get to grips with drupal - a common problem, i think), but as for the web design aspect, i have a few things to say.

Firstly, really nice use of both Drupal, and CSS. But there are a few very minor tweaks that could really tidy the site up a little.

- Navigation, Events and login. Login has no capital L ;)
- Your main stories on front page. Sometimes they are completely different fonts (and sizes). The same goes with the attachment and read more - sometimes they are bigger than others.
- The links on the main stories: when you hover over them they change colour, but they dont underline - if you changed that people would more clearly know where they're going (ok - yep, this is minor)
- The main picture at the top - if you re-sized it and set this as the background (instead of the black it would look at lot better)
- the ul li images - give them 1px more padding on the top
- and finally ;) move the search bar up a couple of pixels so move it out of the content area.

OK, hope that helps, then you will the most beautiful site in the world, and I hope mine is as good as this in a few months time :)

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

When I get a chance, I'll definitely fix the site according to these wonderful suggestions (some of these fixes shouldn't take that long, I'm just very busy, and as long as the site is working I'll have to hold off). As for the search block, I've struggled with its positioning, as I'm not terrific with

tags and how IE and Firefox can sometimes treat things differently (I'm guessing you are looking at the sight in Firefox).

Well, keep those comments coming and in the near future, I'll sit down and tidy things up. Thanks a lot!

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I embedded the view in a node for now (for the bad breadcrumn issue listed above). I'm not sure why this breadcrumb had the issue, but other "views" produce okay breadcrumbs. I'm sure that with Drupal 4.7 and the more powerful version of views, things will work even better.

C-Watootsi’s picture

C-Watootsi commented

A funky addition to your site might be a reminder email for regularly occurring council meetings ... might encourage people to check back.

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

In fact, they have had a subsciption service in the past where a clerk mailed the minutes and agendas to subscribers. This could be automated through the use of one of Drupal's many modules. That would be a solid feature.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

I have been following your site ever since you first announced it and I have no doubt it is one of the better thought-out drupal sites with smart use of the contrib modules and theming.

Although you have shared your tips in this thread, it would be great if you could sit down one day and write up a case study that can be a book page on this site and also posted in the showcase section. It would really help a lot of people.

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Come the end of May I may be able to put together some better documentation on the process that I used to make this government site work. In the meantime, I am overloaded. I think I'll be able to make improvements to the site with 4.7 and newer modules (CCK, Category, CiviCRM--with taxonomy integration, and Views). Once all of these updates are done, I'll probably have an even better understanding of what can be done for government websites with Drupal. I would really like to give back to the community and give a fuller account of what I've learned. It will have to wait for a couple months, though. Thanks for all of your feedback so far.

anand_gsva’s picture

anand_gsva commented

I am new to drupal... i have seen your website its superB....
i need some guidelines from your side...

created view for blogs,pages using help from advance Help Modules.
i can't able bring the page to the Panels or container

Please help me...

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Can you give me more information about what you are trying to do? Maybe I can help.

dman’s picture

dman commented

But the last mention of the files download solution (which I was doing something similar to this week) had me look again.

(Incidentally, I found the documents quite badly presented - no pdf icon warning, no filesize. Surely that would be a basic start?)

I'd note that you got a problem with your 'read mores' in the links. There IS no more content than what is shown.

I encountered the same when building a FAQ page comprised of many short nodes.
I patched node.module as shown here: It's the 'trim()'s in the first line that (seem to) fix the problem.


/**
 * Apply filters to a node in preparation for theming.
 */
function node_prepare($node, $teaser = FALSE) {
  $node->readmore = (strlen(trim($node->teaser)) < strlen(trim($node->body)));
  if ($teaser == FALSE) {
    $node->body = check_output($node->body, $node->format);
  }
  else {
    $node->teaser = check_output($node->teaser, $node->format);
  }
  return $node;
}

Just a suggestion or two.

http://www.coders.co.nz/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

A little more theming could go a long way in making the files "show" a bit better. I'll definitely implement your suggestions as I have time. However, I was just happy to make a file listing that linked the titles directly to the files (I thought this would be an easy thing, but I didn't find an easy way to do this).

Has your node patch been submitted for 4.7? I hate to get too many customizations of core modules (I already have my node.module patched with something else). Thanks for the tips!

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Also, the documents link that dman referred to above has a zero at the end. This happens when you use pathauto and when there are two aliases for a node. A minor thing, no doubt, but easy to miss when you are building a complex web site.

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

The site's theme has beeen improved -- a hybrid of Mollio, pushbutton, Spreadfirefox and some custom stuff. I also made the file pages list files more appropriately. I am sure there are still rough edges (some zeros in paths, etc). But more feedback is always welcome. Thanks again.

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

Lovely!

Nice work on the design.

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

Yes quite nice bomarmonk- thanks for keeping this thread alive with the heads-up.
Couple icks:
* IE6 doesn't render it the way you meant it to. The slick new tabs menu floats just over the banner image; looks great in Firefox
* In both IE6 and FF, something about the site (the text size perhaps?) necessitates some pages of this site to be viewed in full screen/hires, or the page has a lot of undue scroll. This is apparent on the Watershed dept page, for instance (contrasted against the Admin dept page which for some reason fits much nicer) and the dept list page.

I've been sidetracking myself left and right and haven't had the guts to implement on our county page yet. However, I'm working more steam toward our voter awareness page, and I greatly look forward to sharing the results mid-summer. 4.7 has brought some nifty enhancements, and the language module (i18n) is proving an essential asset to this forthcoming site.

--
..happiness is point and click..

--
http://drupaltees.com
80s themed Drupal T-Shirts

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

It looks like IE 6 in Windows 2000 was doing this more often than not. I think I supplied a fix for this, so if they are still floating around, please let me know. As for the scrolling, I resubmitted the Watershed page and it seems to fit in the window just fine now. I'm not sure what is going on with that. I'll have to keep on eye on it and see if there is some flaw in my CSS that can be fixed.

Another bit of magic that I would like to use: Civinode and CiviCRM for department and employee contact information. Wonderfull stuff. Thanks for the feedback and let me know of any other problems. I hope I fixed the floating menu...

texas-bronius’s picture

texas-bronius commented

I hate to be the [water] barer or bad news, but the watershed group page still extends well outside the browser(s) for me. I checked my "text size" and verified it is "Normal". I'm on 1280x1024, and maximizing browser is all that helps. My browser viewing area is 936 normally (exceeding the typical 720-wide design rule). I think a clue is that other departments fit fine: could be that a diff't style is applied to "Other county groups" than "Departments".

Yes, the floating menu has settled down in its new position in life. :D

--
http://drupaltees.com
80s themed Drupal T-Shirts

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I'll check it out... it should be themed in exactly the same way as the other pages, but it may have something to do with the block in the right margin working differently.

edrupalec’s picture

edrupalec commented

I just got access denied on your front page.

Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/troubleshooting
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/modulegroupings
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/47vs46
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/compared

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

My first post shows the site in the subdomain "drupal." If you try visiting www.alpinecountyca.com, you shouldn't see an access denied message (once the site went live, there was no longer a subdomain). I hope this addresses the problem you experienced. Let me know if it is something different. Thank you for your input!

edrupalec’s picture

edrupalec commented

thank you. I got in with no trouble and looked around.

you are using relativity. did you test out all the others: relationship, distant parent, tagnodes, etc. etc. it takes so long to try them all. Just wondering what else you tried out and how you decided on relativity.

did you see the new taxonomy breadcrumb module?
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/node/740

Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/troubleshooting
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/modulegroupings
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/47vs46
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/compared

lias’s picture

lias commented

Thanks for the thread and explaination, I really like the look of your department pages : )

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

There is one site that has helped me a lot in the creation of my site. Use this site. It is designed for a complete novice - http://www.seoecom.com/cms.

"Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, never-in nothing great or small, large or petty-never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." ~Winston Churchill

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Was viewing your impressive work when I noticed some code showing. Thought you would like to know.

Check out first line under
"Winter Driving Safety" at
http://www.alpinecountyca.gov/taxonomy/term/72

Was reading your information on how you constructed the Alpine County site and had to see for myself. Very impressive. You've done some fine work, thanks for sharing your experience. I just took a quick look and will be reading the rest of these posts, and yours, in working to get myself started. Thanks.

Al

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

That little bit of dangling code was left over in a teaser after switching from image assist to IMCE for image insertion. I'll have to look around in those teasers to make sure there aren't more. Thanks again!

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
he/him
Primary language English
commented

I'd be quite interested in hearing about the results of this initiative more than 2 years after you implemented it.

How have staff or community members been involved? Are things like RSS feeds playing a more important role now than when the site was first set up? Are there other counties that have set up similar sites that you are aware of?

What have you learned about setting up and maintaining a government Drupal site since your first post in the middle of 2005. Site still looks good btw!

Mike
--
OpenConcept | Government | Accessibility | Common Look and Feel

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I may have time to review how the site has progressed and how different modules have now been implemented. I'm looking at the upgrade to Drupal 6, so we will see... Thank you for the interest.

mgifford’s picture

mgifford
he/him
Primary language English
commented

Please keep us informed. I've got a growing list of sites involving drupal & government here -> http://delicious.com/mgifford/government+drupal

andyl29’s picture

andyl29 commented

I would love an update on this project. Your website looks great. I am currently building a gov't website myself and am very curious about this.

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

Actually, it has been easier with views and CCK to make everything work. Originally, I built the site with Drupal 4.7, which was very limited in its flexibility. With Drupal 6, I used some pretty standard modules to accomplish everything. I just started using node reference fields to expand department pages and flatten them (as opposed to using the book module to handle the structure of everything). I've used quick tabs and views to add related contact information to these same pages. Also, date and calendar modules are used for events and agendas. If you want any additional information on how something was accomplished, I would be glad to share.

andyl29’s picture

andyl29 commented

How did you create the document browsing located here: http://www.alpinecountyca.gov/documents

And thanks for all of the information, I am looking into quick tabs right now

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

For the documents, I use a CCK file field and then display the nodes in a table (styled) view, showing the specific fields that are desired (I'm displaying fields, not the full node). With the view, I then add a view filter based on a taxonomy term for each type of document. This is an exposed filter that is configured within the view. That's a basic overview; I hope that helps!

andyl29’s picture

andyl29 commented

Thanks for the information, but I'm still having some trouble with this.

First off, I'm using d7, views 3 (just fyi), and I have several different content types (not taxonomy, because I am allowing different roles to edit specific content types). Because I'm using several content types (each with them with a separate file field), I'm having some issues.

The current fields I'm displaying are "Content: Title(Page Title)" and "Content File (File(s))" Keep in mind that I have choosen Content File (File(s)) for each desired content type to be displayed.

This is producing incorrect view. I get the same node title several times (one for each Content File (File(s)) field that i've selected). And even if the node doesn't have an attached file it is still displayed. I tried to display only nodes that have attached files so I added a filter criteria "Content: File:delta(not empty)".

I havn't gotten to the exposed filter part yet because I cannot get the view to display as desired. Any help/advice would be appreciated

Thanks

bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I imagine your approach will work, although I used only one content type for all agendas and minutes (for example), and then I simply used taxonomy access to grant different rights based on a category that these minutes or agendas would be created under (the board of supervisors, the planning dept., etc.).

I'm not sure what is going wrong exactly for you, but I imagine that if you keep experimenting with your view's configuration, it will work for you. Duplicates are probably related to having multiple content types, and you might resolve this be creating relationships between the fields and their content types (I'm not absolutely sure on this).

You might also do a quick search for creating "views" with "multiple content types" and "duplicates." You might find someone has explained their solution in the forums already.

Sorry that this isn't all that helpful, but I hope it gives you some useful suggestions.

andyl29’s picture

andyl29 commented

Thanks again for the response. I'm not having any luck and just been frustrated with it. I may come back to it later, since I think that would be a good feature to include. I searched the views issue queue and didn't see much that was relevant to my situation.

I'm sure when I give it another shot I will post an issue in the queue and see if somebody has some input.

Thanks again, and I think this is a great thread. I'm in the process of finishing up my project and will be creating a portfolio site and maybe I will upload the documentation for this project that I'm leaving with the city as a user guide (while blocking out the private account details and everything of course)