Thank you for looking at my post.
First let me tell you, in terms of understanding Drupal, I am one step above a complete idiot. But I know how to incorporate the skills of true professionals to compensate for my shortcomings. Thats why I spent the past 2 days combing through this site searching for the type of talent that will make me look good. I've learned about what Drupal is, what it does and how it does it. I've also learned that there are some very talented code warriors contributing to this site.
Some background before I get to the meat of this post. I'm associated with a non profit organization in Michigan that lends support to the medical marijuana community. On November 4th, Michiganders approved the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, a law legalizing marijuana for patients and caregivers that possess a state-issued identification card. The organization I represent needs an internet presence to properly service the members of our community.
Before you try to send me a PM let me tell you it has been disabled. First, let's discuss what I'm proposing and in a couple days I'll enable PM and you may contact me for whatever. I would be willing to let our organizations web site be themed and developed (we would provide some direction and most of the content) by many of the members of the Drupal community. A workable scenario would have a member of the Drupal community act as a project manager and oversee other members that would develop various segments of the site. This would afford many members the opportunity to enhance their personal portfolios and receive credit for a fantastic website. Yes, we are looking to have a top notch site developed for free, or as close to free as we can get. But you will get something in return! First, you will get to add a top notch site to your portfolio along with our recommendation. You will also be endowed with an enormous amount of street cred! Afterall this is a site about marijuana and we have lots of friends and acquaintances in the business and political world that need web site help and we will direct them to you's. And lastly, as we are a non profit organization we can provide members with a tax-deductible receipt for services performed to use for income tax purposes.
Below are most of the capabilities that the site will require.
Scripting or modules
1) a couple query forms (moderators, advisory board, more?)
2) user logins levels (master, admin, moderator, patient, caregiver, public)
3) Banner ad generation (in-house ads only - no banner-farms)
4) Random profile snippet generation for Featured Caregiver area based on detection of each users location
5) Forums (See example http://forums.cannabisculture.com/forums/ubbthreads.php)
6) Comments Sections on select pages not in the Forums area (like newspaper site comments)
7) MySpace style application for patients, caregivers and professionals to create a MySpace type page
E-commerce enabled
1) Get a merchant account for Visa, MC, AMEX and Discover, Debit Cards and a PayPal account
2) Be able to accept donations
3) Be able to process Recurring Contributions
4) Be able to sell merchandise less than 100 products
RSS Feeds
1) for the newshome.html page
I've posted a rough static mockup site for you to see what we have in mind for a layout and theme, and to show you what data gets posted where. http://www.mmmfriends.org/site
Bear in mind that there WILL be changes along the way as our input meshes with your expertise.
For our Forums we like the way CannabisCulture.com's forums are laid out with user data posted on the left side of the layout. http://forums.cannabisculture.com/forums/ubbthreads.php
We also have no hosting commitment with anyone at this time so if you are reliable and affordable we are flexible and receptive.
So please tell me, is anyone interested in this idea or have I just smoked way too much medicine today? Please post your thoughts on this idea.
Thank You
Brad Forrester
Comments
I can't resist...
You think someone has enough time to do all that work for free? What are you smoking?
(Ok, laugh is over... ; )
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Drupal by Wombats
Take it easy, Ryan. I think
Take it easy, Ryan. I think it sounds pretty dope.
DISCLAIMER: although I can't really commit to contributing to your project, I wish you the best of luck in providing people with the medication that can efficiently treat their illness.
A Response
To cha0s, thank you.
To rszrama, I said that I was one step above an idiot when it comes to Drupal. What kind of time are you talking about? I have no conception of how long it takes to do anything with Drupal. Please tell me your thoughts.
Respectfully,
Brad
Nah, mine wasn't a serious
Nah, mine wasn't a serious critique... cha0s and I were having a bit of fun w/ the subject of the site. ; )
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Drupal by Wombats
Put me in the ballpark
Help me out a little with some info.
Subject matter aside, approximately how many weeks would be required to assemble a site like this, and if we have to pay what kind of numbers (in a general sense) are we talking about. I've heard time frames from two weeks to two months and cost estimates between $3,000 to $over $40,000.
first off, congrats Michigan
first off, congrats Michigan :)
but yes, I'd have to say, it's really hard to see people able to spend the time to get this setup for free.
drupal may offer a lot of stuff already made however, customizations and piecing everything together takes time.
the benefits of drupal is once your first phase is complete, you have a great product that you can scale well and update.
so with just a quick view of your post, i bet you are looking at anywhere from 100 hours - 300 hours of work (dev time, meeting times, update times, theming time, qa time, etc..). big gap of hours yes, but that's kinda the reality without a good hard, locked in spec.
would be cool to help you out, but i just can't afford to for free.
best of luck with this and once again, finally the US is accepting marijuana more :)
i bet legalizing and taxing it would alone pay for the bailouts lol.
Many thanks
Thank you Steve for your kind and informative comments. If our group can't find support in the form of free development from the Drupal community I'm sure we will still contract with a developer or developers from Drupal.org.
From your post I could expect a site like this would take an average of 200 hours. What type of hourly rate should I multiply that number by to get a ballpark initial budget for this project?
Again, many thanks
Brad
80 - 100. Someone else
80 - 100.
Someone else suggested paypal, that's something that helps take hours off of production and saves you money for setup and etc..
A good way to run a project if you are trying to get things for less cost is to make sure that the community itself gets more in return.
If you can structure your documentation and planning around how Drupal is setup, then you can envision the bare bone components that you actually need (the modules).
So if you were to hunt down features you need by searching the modules that are available and test them, see what you don't like about them, see what you like about them, etc.. and iron out all those details, then you can "fund" modules that are more "drupalized" that more people can benefit from.
If a feature is missing in a module, sponsor that feature.
Or if that's too much for you, hire a project manager or consultant to do all that dirty work :P
A couple of
A couple of points
Regarding "Get a merchant account for Visa, MC, AMEX and Discover, Debit Cards and a PayPal account". I believe paypal can hand the others (otherwise it is going to cost upfront) You would also need to setup the merchant and gateway accounts.
And regarding "And lastly, as we are a non profit organization we can provide members with a tax-deductible receipt for services performed to use for income tax purposes." At least according to my tax account here in Wisconsin you can not deduct professional services volunteered.
A Response
nevets, thanks for the info. And I may have spoke out of turn about the tax receipt. That was an issue in our internal discussions and I guess I neglected to clarify that before I posted. Thank you for pointing that out.
Brad
Did you get a budget worked
Did you get a budget worked out?
(GULP)... Aaahhh not yet.....
frenzy3 and others, right now my group is not in a postion to spend perhaps $10k for this site. I am working dilligently to raise funds for this and other projects we are still organizing.
The state of Michigan will not start taking applications for patients until April 4, 2009. I would like to see the launch our site before then, hopefully by March 2009, and I know it will take maybe 6 weeks to develop the site. If my math is correct that leaves us about 2 months to raise that much money.
If this site could be developed for say $5k, maybe by someone sympathetic to our cause, this project might just leapfrog some of our legislative priorities.
From the articles and comments I've read, Drupal is a superior CMS and I'm sold on it. Please be patient with me.
Thanks...
I think if you have a
I think if you have a limited budget the first thing to do is simplify the requirements. The big change would be to use Drupals own forum module and maybe the advanced forum module, this would greatly simplify things. The other thing is to write out more specific requirements. For example "a couple query forms (moderators, advisory board, more?)" is both vague, what is the goal here or purpose of the forms, this could be possibly done with views exposed filters (though the devil is in the details). Also for me anything with "more" provides a "lots and lots of money response", be specific. As for the "MySpace" feature what is the goal? In the simple case people can add content about themselves and it displays on their user page in a fixed order/layout, much simpler than full MySpace functionality.
Lastly consider the goal of the website, what is it major number one purpose, what needs to be there by March 2009, maybe you can start simpler and grow from there.
I'm sorry for my inprecise
I'm sorry for my inprecise description. I'll try to provide some better explanation...
Scripting/Modules
1) Query forms - from drupaldude's site - Contact Module - contact form allows people reading the site an avenue to contact the webmaster, sales department, accounting, etc. It's actually easy to set up once you see the whole process in its entirety. What's really cool about the contact form is that you can set up multiple categories, and each category can go to a separate email address (or even multiple email addresses). The other nice benefit of this form, which I did not mention in the video, is that it hides the email addresses so spammers can't scrape your site for email addresses.
2) User Login Module - I will need 3 levels of access, new/registered users, moderators, and administrator. (Would a better option here be advanced profiles module? Maybe #2 and #7 work in concert.
3) & (4) I think the ad module would work well for these functions. Ad GeoIP would be a desired module too.
5) Forums - Yes, I could live with the advanced forum module, to start with.
6) I think this would be part of the forum module's function or would we need the comments module as this content would appear on random pages and not in the forums area?
7) I think the advanced profiles module would work best. See #2 above.
I believe that the taxonomy module will be required as well.
E-Commerce
The standard E-commerce package of modules through PayPal would work. On drupaldude's site he has a "Buy Me A Beer" block. That is what I'm looking for (the Billing Information Page).
RSS Feeds
I'm not exactly sure, but I think the Views module would work best.
There may be other modules required to complete the package.
To further simplify the theme a standard 3-column layout could be utilized instead of the 4-column setup our mockup site shows. A site like ZuNOB.com with forums and e-commerce and a couple tweaks would be a suitable start. We would also provide all the theme and content artwork.
I hope this is a better outline of our site's needs. Initially there shouldn't be alot of custom work, just stitching the pieces together. Down the road it is probable that some refinements or enhancements would be required. We would contract for those changes as they come along and gladly contribute everything back to the community.
I appreciate everyone's assistance. I'm really looking forward to getting this project underway. Thanks all.