Migrating BeWelcome to Drupal

This is an overview of the project to migrate BeWelcome to Drupal. This is a work in progress. You're welcome to edit.

The BeWelcome project was started late 2006, and it has gained considerable respect for the way it's run. Unfortunately so far this has not materialized into an big active member base. One possible underlying problem is probably the current code base, which takes an considerable amount of time and effort to get into, experience that is not directly usable on other projects. So the idea has risen several times to move to a more active platform. According to a survey among potential and actual BeWelcome developers, taken in October, there is considerable knowledge of Drupal, compared to Zend, Symfony and even the BW Rox framework itself. (See also the developer survey.)

The main git repo is at gitorious.org/bw-drupal. This currently contains Drupal, some contrib modules and a BW installation profile. See also Set up BW Drupal.

Want to help?

Some things you can do right now:

• create an account here and watch this page so you get updates
• Drupal site building
  • build features according to current BW functionality
  • find out what's working in D7
• PHP coding
  • fix what's not yet working in D7
  • add needed functionality to Drupal modules
• Drupal theming => turn the BW layout into a Drupal theme
• learn Drupal 7

More will follow later, such as testing and bug reporting. We should have an issue tracker. Meinhard? :)

People

• guaka, d.o - everything but graphic design
• lemonhead - everything but graphic design. donquixote on d.o.
• Robin - experienced site builder (hardly any PHP)
• su2010 - experience with theming
• Sitarane - Site builder (hardly any PHP)
• globetrotter_tt - learning Drupal, can help with theming and graphic design
• crumbking - help with theming and graphic design
• planetcruiser - Project coordination, PHP pro :)
• sign up and add yourself

Migration

Main things to migrate:

• userprofiles (comments / relations / location (geodata) / groupmembership)
  • feature: bw_user_profile
  • current status: proof of concept for migration of Rox user and members into Drupal users + profile2
• messages
  • privatemsg
• preferences
  • some things will probably already have stuff set up
• admin (backend)
  • most things will probably have admin functionality, and permissions.
  • we will need to figure out what needs to be adapted at a later stage
• page-like content:
  • FAQ => faq content type - working migration!
  • tour => content type - where is it in BW Rox db?
  • about pages => pages - where is it in BW Rox db?
• blogs
  • now: D7 core Blog module, could become something custom but core might be good enough?
    • possibly ditch?

Other:

• forum
  • use D7 core module?
• groups
  • og
• galleries
  • custom content type
• trips
  • realitygaps and lupochen have shown interest in this

wiki

Couchwiki for now

User fields

• user/register should show more than username/password
• geo + address: see "geo stuff".
• User fields settings should be exportable as features: http://drupal.org/node/989900

Geo stuff

We need a combination of geo and address features, as with support for the D7 field api.

Possible modules:

• openlayers. D7 dev release out since a few days.
  • tmwc says:

    OpenLayers CCK will be axed; geofield or another module may be the replacement.

    Well, here's what GeoField is currently - it's a very, very simple implementation of a fields-based geo module.

• openlayers_geocoder. No D7 announced.
• location. No D7 announced.
• geo. No D7 announced, see this d7 request

Privacy

Waiting for D7 modules:

• CCK Private Fields?

Roadmap

Like Drupal: it's ready when it's ready - no more open critical issues. So no roadmap with dates here. (Yet. Open for change.)

1. Implement as much as possible on a D7 installation at bw.guaka.org
   • No importing of data yet
2. Make it distributable
   • git
   • everything should become code
3. Start importing data
   • With some funky data modules
   • Start with data that has no privacy issues such as wiki
4. Create alpha D7 BW

bw.guaka.org

• Reflection of current codebase?
• Set up from scratch?
• Run migration scripts automatically?
  • Issue: security! Possible solution change email addresses and passwords while importing test database?

Drupal 7

We have chosen to start right away with Drupal 7 (D7).

Con

• Many modules aren't ready yet.
• There are still some bugs.

Pro

• No need to upgrade to D7 ;)
• D7 has many good things in core that we want.
  • Especially: "Fields in core". In D6, only nodes could have fields. To allow (full-featured) fields for users, one needed modules like content_profile, which brings structural problems.
• A lot of Great Stuff we don't yet know about will not be for D6

Learning Drupal 7

Some ways:

• Create a D7 site at Drupal Gardens.
• Set up D7 on your own machine
• Read stuff from http://drupal.org/planet

This page is written in the context of BeWelcome.