Please Note: These starter kits are no longer supported, and most of the relevant Community Media modules have been forked as part of the Community Media Advanced initiative.

We created this fork to provide a central place to host all community media modules that are in ongoing development, and to facilitate new releases.

We are doing this under the terms of GPL version 2, and using Drupal branch/ tag/ release conventions on Github so that new releases can be shown on the Available updates Drupal page the same way they are for modules hosted on drupal.org.

The following organizations have undertaken this Community Media Advanced initiative together (listed alphabetically as of July 2017):

Amherst Media, Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV), Easton Community Access Television (ECAT), High Five Access Media (HFAM), Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), Open Signal PDX, ORCA Media, PhillyCAM, Regional Educational Television Network (RETN), St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN), Vermont Community Access Media (VCAM)

For more information please visit cmadvanced.org

Distributions provide site features and functions for a specific type of site as a single download containing Drupal core, contributed modules, themes, and pre-defined configuration. They make it possible to quickly set up a complex, use-specific site in fewer steps than if installing and configuring elements individually.

Each Community Media distribution targets a skill level, but they can be used with just the modules included in the kit or extend the kit.

What are the Community Media modules?

The modules often used by Community Media organizations have been included in 3 "STARTER KITS". These are not designed to be the only modules used, but simply make it easier to get started with Drupal based on the what has worked and what hasn't for other organizations.

1. Easy Starter Kit - Designed to be a WordPress alternative with some basic community features that would require a producer to have a username, password, and log in. Crew Connect and Printable Show Contract can save staff time and connect membership without investing too much staff time in learning the more technical parts of Drupal.
2. Moderate Starter Kit - This adds CiviCRM and Media to the what's included in the Easy kit. This is for organization ready to manage memberships, event registration, and video on demand. While complicated, both Media and CiviCRM are very well documented. At the moderate level, users start to do more customizations to their site and being to manage changes using Features.
3. Difficult Starter Kit - This is the collection of modules the largest community media groups share. There is very little documentation for these modules. Much of the difficult kit requires someone with Drupal and CiviCRM experience to configure. There are many elements of the difficult kit that stations use at the moderate level like the Reservations API, Single Sign On with Bakery, VOD Feeds, and more advanced playback server integration. The reason for defining these at the difficult level is these are MUCH easier to configure AFTER mastering the moderate. The moderate kit is also less overwhelming if you are selective about what you add and roll new features out to your producers after testing them. Reservations is MUCH easier to configure AFTER you've already rolled accounts out to your producers, have certification groups configured in CiviCRM, and understand permissions, content types, and Views.

Each Kit includes all of the modules required by any module included so the entire install can be done after a single download, but NONE OF THE CONFIGURATION is done for you. The modules are broken up into an Easy, Moderate, and Difficult downloads. We intentionally used those terms over beginner, moderate, and advanced. While many people wouldn't identify themselves a beginner, only people who really know what they are getting into are likely to go the difficult route.

All of the starter kits include the Community Media Checklist which is great starting point.

The Difficult Kit includes the Community Media Examples module. The Examples module is an export of configurations made at a number of stations including channelAustin, PhillyCAM, BNN, MNN and AccessVision.

These organizations are all different sizes serving producer communities with varying degrees of comfort with technology. While they all use many of the same modules, the configurations are very different. While the Community Media Examples module is a great way to learn what other stations have done, trying to start a site with every module another site added over a number years of years can be VERY difficult. Even if you are already familiar with Drupal, using Difficult Start Kits with the Community Media Examples module is designed to be teaching tool... NOT a site building tool.