Tech

Tech

last modified January 11, 2009 by johm

| Project Home | The Content | The Website Vision | User Interface | Tech | User Stories | Volunteers |

Tech Roadmap for AlternativesIMC

UPDATE: 1/11/2009 : DRUPAL PROTOTYPING IN PROGRESS

Strypey started this roadmapping proposal on Aug 27 2007, during a weekly irc check-in. While it's a good start, I think the version numbering needs to reflect the nature of the development path. For example, the transition from 1.0 to 1.1 might involve a total rebuild to fully integrate the knowledge-base to the degree we want. So it might make sense to call the first test site 0.1 and the first version with the knowledge-base 1.0.

AlternativesIMC 1.0

As of Aug 07, our plan is to set up a fairly traditional IMC site (based on Drupal) with a newswire (or solutionswire) and a features column. Then we want to add more advanced functions as they become workable, such as a persistent knowledge-base and activist networking functions.

If techs want to help with AlternativesIMC, the first thing they can do is make contact with the cluster of Indymedia techs who are working on migrating their own IMCs to Drupal. AlternativesIMC is working closely with a group of techs from Philly IMC, whose IndyDrupal base we plan to use to set up our 1.0 site.

AlternativesIMC 1.1

This would add the knowledge-base, which is a crucial aspect of the AltIMC project. Whereas the traditional functions of an IMC site are chronological, the knowledge-base would allow archiving and searching of quality content by topics and themes. The plan is to integrate the knowledge-base with the features/ solutionswire so that useful ideas, tips, links etc from articles can be easily incorporated into an evolving wiki-style(?) interface.

AlternativesIMC 1.2

This would start to add networking features to allow activists working on alternatives projects to meet up with each other and share ideas, skills, knowledge etc There are a number of existing projects whose code could be implemented to add these functions:

ActivismNetwork
This is a usable PHP/ MySQL codebase, developed by AaronK over 5-6 years. More info here:
http://www.openplans.org/projects/imc-alternatives/howtouseactivismnetworkforimcs

If we use Drupal, it seems like ActivismNetwork would be a sensible choice. Either we could set up an AN site and integrate it with the AltIMC site, or we could incorporate code from AN into our Drupal base (perhaps as a module?). If we use Plone, it would probably still be possible to integrate with an AN site. However, it may be that there is another Plone-based project that could fulfill this function.

Crabgrass
A fairly recent project being written in RubyOnRails by people who are likely to be friendly to our project. As of Aug 07 RiseUp.net is hosting a pre-alpha test implementation:
https://we.riseup.net/crabgrass/about

Source code can be obtained from the Trac here:
http://code.autistici.org/trac/crabgrass/

It may be that it could become useful to us as development progresses. I definitely think it could be worth involving its developers in any ongoing discussions about activist networking software going on among AltIMC techs.

Other Options
Anna posted this list of open source social networking platforms:
http://mashable.com/2007/07/25/open-source-social-platforms/