By James Andres on

Drupalers Here This!

"We plan to release code from Project back to the community," it's been said many times. Sometimes more directly and usually more discreetly, and we know everyone is tired of hearing it (and not seeing it).

Now that things have settled down, a bit, we've been working on ways to make releasing code easier for us and you, the Drupalite. We hope this will translate into: code being released more quickly, and code being released more smoothly.

What we really need to know is: What do you want?

Questions I have for everyone interested:

  • What parts of Project Opus would you like to see released first?
  • Would you be interested in starting projects on druplal.org with code from Project Opus? What code?
  • What really irks you on Project Opus? When do you say, "I could have programmed ____ so much better!"?

    • We appreciate any feedback given! Even if your not a "programmer" per se, your thoughts are welcomed.

The original post here: http://www.projectopus.com/node/3698

Anyone who is interested in Project Opus (and it's Drupal base) post your thoughts. Let us know what you would like to see released!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x, Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

HatchetSpace’s picture

HatchetSpace commented

I don't know where to post this....but I would love to have the ability for people to choose from two different ways to sign up. And the ability to add friends to one another's space.

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi HatchetSpace,

Thanks for the reply. We've recieved many requests for the multiple user signup. Our solution to that problem, alas, isn't very "elegant" so I've been reluctant to post it.

Basically what we did was hack the user module to allow for two registration urls (instead of just user/register we have user/fanregister and user/bandregister). From there we just duplicated the registration code until those 2 options both worked.

I posted the details in this comment a while back.

We have been meaning to revise this code into a module for a long time. When that is done we will release the update onto our documentation site http://docs.projectopus.com.

PS: Check out http://docs.projectopus.com/releases for all our code, module, and theme release updates :-)

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented

James, wouldn't it be possible to alter user.module to allow registration paths relying on user roles, i.e. user/register/fan and user/register/band ?

Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind

Daniel 'sun' Kudwien
makers99

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi Daniel,

I'm sure that would be possible, and it seems like a damn slick solution too!

I'm pretty sure that could be done entirely in a seperate module too .. hmm. An issue would be dealing with the original user/register path. In our code we just map that code to fanregister. But for this solution you'd need a 'default' role or something. Maybe force the admin to choose it with a radio button in admin/user..

Good idea though :-)

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented

Hi James,

I've created a request for this feature: http://drupal.org/node/75130
Your support would be greatly appreciated.

Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind

Daniel 'sun' Kudwien
makers99

sym’s picture

sym commented

I've just posted some rough code on the issue - testing and feedback welcome!

thall’s picture

thall commented

This is really great info. I love your registration page. How did you accomplish this?

apex’s picture

apex commented

I would love to now which core & contrib modules you are using?

Client is looking for something similiar and we are currently evaluating which modules to incorporate.

http://www.ApexMediaDesign.com

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi apex,

That is a tricky one, and actually the main reason we haven't released much code back to the Drupal community to date.

Project Opus uses around 80-100 core and contrib modules (seriously!), and roughly 75% - 80% of those were made totally inhouse. A few were based on ideas in other modules (ie: fanlist module is quite similar to buddylist).

Here's a rough list of fairly 'unharmed' modules:

  • adsense
  • bbcode & wysiwyg toolbar
  • captchya
  • devel
  • feedback (minimal modifications)
  • flatforum
  • flexinode (a few changes)
  • image (slight changes)
  • legal
  • og
  • pathauto
  • privatemsg (a few extra API calls added)
  • spam
  • variables (for the admins)
  • Almost every core module (comment, user, node, blog .. etc)

Some of the modules we made critical and structural changes too include:

  • buddylist (this ones actually quite mangled)
  • event
  • trip_search
  • node (not that many changes made, but enough to put it here)
  • user (heavily changed)
  • profile (very changed)

Of course these don't add up to 100 here ;-), the rest of the modules deal with everything from playlist handling to music uploading to ecommerce to theming.

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

K-Surf’s picture

K-Surf commented

First of all, your website is amazing & impressive. A really good job :)

particulary the members profil page with the search engine (ajax)

When I install drupal, i hpbe that module like yours have already released (i try to build a website for student'association & community)

but i see that is not yet already develop :(

So i would like to know, if you can release your member profil first, please :) ???

Thx for all

Ayman’s picture

Ayman commented

I see you are using Flatforum, anything worth sharing?

Thank you, and great site you have there by the way.

--
Ayman Hourieh
http://aymanh.com/

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi Ayman,

Thanks for the props :-).

The flatforum we are using is pretty much stock. The only things of note were that we ditched the drupal threaded comments everywhere on the site (listed them oldest to newest). This made for much less confusion when the flatforum mod was running :-).

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

j0k3z’s picture

j0k3z commented

as seen on this page: http://www.projectopus.com/profile/profile_instruments/bass

How can I create a page with informaiton the can fold and unfold like that?

Does that work in all browsers?

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi j0k3z,

I'd love to say we invented that, but you'll have to thank the good people at script.aculo.us and prototype for most of the cool effects on the site.

A few of them are our own creations, and a few are interesting mashups (ie: the new album editor :-D).

I won't go into detail on how to use them here, they have way better docs on their sites than I could match in this comment.

Cheers,

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

stephthegeek’s picture

stephthegeek commented

I'd love to know how you are enabling users to syndicate external blogs!

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi stephthegeek,

That was a module I wrote a long while back. I plan to release it, when I get some of it's issues worked out such that it can be useful to the general public.

For anyone interested it's fairly simple:

1) hook_user displays the "syndicate your blog from another site" form.
2) cron runs every 10 minutes and checks if there are any blogs to syndicate (we actually only pull feeds every few hours for each user, I'd like to change this..).
3) a loop runs and syndicates all the blogs that are needed
4) for each blog I grab the "new" posts (ones not in the site already)
5) we insert the posts into the site as standard blog nodes, this way they show up and behave exactly like your normal blog entries.

*) also a few theme tweaks were made to help users keep track of which posts came from the outside blog and which are internal to Project Opus.

Cheers,

PS: Whenever I post that module it will be posted to docs.projectopus.com.

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

tixx’s picture

tixx commented

we insert the posts into the site as standard blog nodes, this way they show up and behave exactly like your normal blog entries.

How can you do that? I'm interested in this kind of feature.

Thanks.

Best Regards,
Tixx.

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi Tixx,

It's all pretty much standard PHP and SQL ("insert into node (nid, body, teaser, title) values (...)" .. etc).

Check out the drupal handbooks, and take a look at some simpler standard modules for a better idea on how Drupal code goes. Drupalers tend to write code in a similar way usually.

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

tixx’s picture

tixx commented

Thank you very much for this tip.

Tixx

johnchalekson’s picture

johnchalekson commented

I tried to apply this code into the user.module, for 4.7 drupal. I kept getting errors, and could not for the life of me figure out how to do this. Wouldn't it be easier if you just posted the user.module, and allowed other people to edit it, and insert their own user types, by going thru the code themselves? I'm sorry, but I spent about 3 hrs on this and then showed some errors to some folks in IRC, and they said some of the basic php codes were missing. Either I am a terrible hack of a programmer (which I am), or the way this code was shared by the kind people at projectopus was done so in a very inefficient way.

Please advise.

Thanks.

John Chalekson

Projects:
American Local News - http://www.americanlocalnews.com
Hedgedfund.com - http://www.hedgedfund.com

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi John,

Sorry, I forgot to mention that Project Opus is a 4.6.x codebase so it is unlikely that this patch will work with 4.7.

The code was posted in hopes that a hacker would get inspired and brush it up into a module. It should be fairly straight forward to implant it into a stock 4.6.x user.module but I can't speak for 4.7.x.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. We plan to get this rolled off into a module at some point, although it's a rather low priority. When we do I will definitly post the code.

Thanks,

James

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

q0rban’s picture

q0rban commented

How's this for a compliment... I set up a band on projectopus and didn't even recognize it as drupal.. I read somewhere it was drupal, and didn't believe it at first...

Anyways, some things that I really like, and would love to see available:

  • I love how the audio player opens in a new window with the whole playlist.. Is the audio/playlist stuff all your own creations, or modified versions of existing modules? I especially enjoy the multiple codecs..
  • I also like the (AJAX?) login bar at the top..
  • the uploading tool is pretty awesome..

There are so many other areas that I like, that its hard to narrow it down to those three.. but those are the ones that i think are particularly unique... Other things I liked were the "Influenced by" & "Favorite Bands/Artists" block that turns each item into a link if there are other bands that have the same likes... reminds me of epitonic.com where they have 'sounds like' links for each band.. It's a great way of finding new music that fit a particular style...

Great site, I'm very jealous, because I want to start a similar style site, http://thejettisonparty.com , but don't have the code muscles to do it myself, or the cash to hire out.. So I grind along at my slow pace... It will be similar in functionality, but I want to have it be a juried music site, and hopefully have the bigger indie labels offer downloadable songs in exchange for ad revenue...

Thanks for a great site, and good inspiration..
_ _
( ' _' )

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Thanks for the kind words q0rban !!

Project Opus' members are largely not interested in its Drupal roots (but we forgive them ;-) so we need to stay on top of the design to keep it fresh for them.

With regard to your questions:

  • The audio player is based on the XSPF player. The backend work is completely custom as is the skin and much of the player's functionality. When we feel it's done we plan to release many of those changes back to the XSPF musicplayer community on Sourceforge.
  • The login bar at the top is just standard DHTML javascript, but the uploader, playlist sorter, tagger, album editor, and many other features heavily rely on AJAX techniques.
  • The uploading tool is a monster... Lol

Nice design on thejettisonparty.com! Did you put that theme together yourself or is it based on a standard Drupal t heme?

Thanks!

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

q0rban’s picture

q0rban commented

Thanks! The theme is mine from scratch.. I'm glad you liked it..

Have you checked out bryght's backstage product? It would seem like a lot of things you are both doing overlap, and could benefit by working together, or sharing some code..

Have you thought of any way of incorporating more fluidly with myspace? ie having a way for people to add specific songs to their profile, the same way they can using the myspace player? I think what you have is a great start, but you know how leery people are of copying and pasting code..

Thanks again for a great site...

_ _
( ' _' )

ddonat’s picture

ddonat commented

It would seem like a lot of things you are both doing overlap, and could benefit by working together, or sharing some code

What's the overlap you see?

I had approached Bryght over a year ago to talk about Project Opus. At that time they mentioned that they were working on a music product - later to be known as BackStage. We tried to work together (hooking BackStage into Project Opus.), but for whatever reason it just did not happen.

We talk on a semi-regular basis with the crew at Bryght, and I believe we are on good terms. They are a very smart crew, and I think there is a genuine desire to work together. I'm not frustrated by the situation, as both companies are trying to run businesses that have different models, and I guess at this point in time neither company deems the services of the other company aligned with their business goals - or some sort of collaboration would be happening.

However, if users of the two systems can see where they want us to work together then that might just be the catalyst we need to make something happen.

Finally,

Have you thought of any way of incorporating more fluidly with myspace? ie having a way for people to add specific songs to their profile, the same way they can using the myspace player?

Can you go into more detail about what you envision?

q0rban’s picture

q0rban commented

Yeah, the overlap is not a complete one. But I guess what I'm thinking about in particular is the audio.module. Bryght has really been the driving force ($$) behind the development of the audio.module, and what you guys have on projectopus for audio handling really lines up with (from what I understand) their desires for the audio module. For instance, playlists, multiple codecs, album art, etc.

As far as the myspace stuff.. There doesn't seem to be a way around the initial code copy/paste of your player... There seem to be two different players you have.. one that is for one song, and one that plays a playlist

Let's create a hypothetical situation. Let's say a user creates a playlist on their projectopus account. they copy and paste the code for the player into their myspace page. they happen to be browsing myspace or projectopus, and find a great band that they would like to add to their myspace playlist... Instead of having to navigate to the song on projectopus and click on the "get the opus player" link, what if there were links to project opus in the player that added the music to your playlist for you? obviously you would need to login to perform that sort of action.. And this would also require that the xspf playlists be public, but I assume they are already...

I would think all it would require would be a menu item that would direct something like /myspace/add/1234 (where 1234 is the nid of the song) to a login/register screen.. After logging in, the user would then confirm that they wanted to add the specific song to their myspace playlist... If it is a new user, a new myspace playlist would be automatically created for them, and the code displayed on the screen for them along with instructions on how to embed it into their page.

I don't know... not sure if that poses a security risk.. but it would probably be good on the social networking side of things, since non-opus-users who happen to stumble upon an opusplayer in myspace will have a pretty quick route to adding the music to their myspace page..

Hope that all made sense

  _ _
( ' _' )

ddonat’s picture

ddonat commented

Take a look at my blog.

The player on the sidebar.

Click browse this collection.

This is a demo only. No Telling! For Drupalites only!

We are well in to developing this product into something well along what you are talking about.
Release - coming soon!

edrupalec’s picture

edrupalec commented

Thank you very much. Two questions:
1) are you planning to upgrade to 4.7?
2) What you've done to buddylist sounds very interesting. If you were planning to share that at some point that would be quite interesting to me and I imagine others.

Drupal ecommerce, at http://www.drupalecommerce.com
Drupal for beginners: http://www.drupalecommerce.com/drupal_explained_simply

jpwillms’s picture

jpwillms commented

Buddylist isn't really mangled at all.

We just ditched the hook_user(op==view) and instead made the callbacks appear under user/X/whatever.

That way, you can see someone else's friends, and their friends' latest posts -- instead of just your own friends.

A little more power in the social networking department.

..jay

mwu’s picture

mwu commented

Hi, you have a great site. However, I'm having trouble viewing it with firefox.

http://www.projectopus.com/music/browse/genre/23

Are you using nodevote for that?

I can see the 5 yellow stars, but I can't read anything in the column clearly because the lines overwrite each other.

What's powering opus bucks?

ddonat’s picture

ddonat commented

Just checked Firefox on PC and Mac. Version 1.5.0.4

Can't seem to replicate the problem you are having. Maybe the CSS didn't fully load did you try refreshing?

Opus Bucks is powered by our own credits module presently hooked into PayPal.

mwu’s picture

mwu commented

Hi,
I'm on linux firefox version 1.0.7. Opened it today and unfortunately still the same.

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi Maric,

I use linux on all my home computers so I'll try to duplicate what you are seeing.

Could you post a screenshot? You can email it to me also at james.andres at projectopus.com

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

mwu’s picture

mwu commented

Hi I sent you a screenshot

maxnb’s picture

maxnb commented

*

maxnb’s picture

maxnb commented

Hi

when can we expect something from this, I'd pay you to have some of the features on user profiles and front page that you have, I'm interested to host different kind of community and what you have done is very nice.

Can you let us know when you plan to share your code with community or if you'd be interested to help me develop my website. I'd pay up to 300-500$ for some help to achive what you have with user profiles and frontpage.

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hi maxnb,

Most of the code is Project Opus is releasable (meaning, we don't want to keep it closed source). The problem is time. Being the only full time developer my time is split between developing new code for Project Opus and fixing up code so it will be useful for people in the community.

The problem is further compounded because Project Opus is much more than a standard Drupal instalation (ie: lots and lots of core modifications). This makes most of the code I release unusable for 90% of the developers who use it.

All I can say is: we intend to release most of Project Opus back to the community, it will happen as I have time, and we don't want to release "useless code" to the community (I'm trying to only release modules that acutally run on a standard 4.6.x or 4.7.x Drupal installation).

Thanks!

PS: If anybody is interested in helping us clean up some of the Project Opus modules OR in starting projects on drupal.org with our modules we are more than happy to help :-) (hint: this will help modules get released faster). Just give me an shout in my contact box if you're, seriously, interested.

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

ctspsr’s picture

ctspsr commented

Hi James,

Is it possible to share your CSS and a node-forum.tpl.php

I liked the way threads in your forum is displayed and I want to do the same with one of the website I am creating.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Reddy

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Hey Reddy,

We've used the flatforum module there, with a few tweaks. Check out the Gallery website for another implementation of the flatforum module.

Cheers,

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

drurian’s picture

drurian commented

Your forums look so good! I'd love to take a look at CSS and a node-forum.tpl.php.

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

See above.

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

humlife’s picture

humlife commented

Hello, I love your site. It looks awesome, very creative. I am trying to set up a similar local music site. I am purely a photoshop/illustrator kind of person, so this php and everything drupal is all new to me. I really really want to have an events module like yours so that users do not get confused when entering shows. My site is http://www.humlife.com . If you could give me any help as to having an events module similar to yours that would be awesome!

j0k3z’s picture

j0k3z commented

How did you make the shout box on your user pages?

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

The "shout" system is a module I wrote for Project Opus. Shouts are basically comments, but on a user instead of a node.

You can get the code here.

NOTE: The shout module is not "Plug and Play" it ONLY works on Drupal 4.6.x and has not been rewired to work with standard drupal installations. You WILL need to hack some PHP to make it work nicely with your site.

Cheers,

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

James Andres’s picture

James Andres commented

Just an FYI for anybody interested. I updated the documentation for our shouts module on docs.projectopus.com.

  • Added a node-shout.tpl.php template that should plug "fairly nicely" into most Drupal installs.
  • Added a little snippet showing how to aggregate a few shouts on your user homepage (hint: check the comments ...)

Cheers,

James Andres

Lead Developer on Project Opus
www.projectopus.com

notarealperson’s picture

notarealperson commented

Hi,

I've been wrestling with the Events module and would absolutely love to know how you got your events calendar to work the way it does. I don't even need the complex By Region or By Genre choices, just the Browse All Events listing.

THANKS!

parklife2’s picture

parklife2 commented

Hi
your site is great!
One thing I would like to know is how do you let users have there own addresses e.g. projectopus.com/tom

cheers

apt94jesse’s picture

apt94jesse commented

Try clean urls and the pathauto module.

bajakan’s picture

bajakan commented

what's the best way to properly show the free tagging form element? i've got categories and taxonomy enabled and configured and the best i can do is get free tagging to show in a collapsed div under the upload form in a section called "categories"... not very intuitive. Did you write a new module for this or modify existing modules or is it in config?

plane phanatic’s picture

plane phanatic commented

What happened to the releases page? (http://docs.projectopus.com/releases) I'm looking to implement some of your coding on my site, but I just can't seem to find very much documentation....