Re: Forums are future work?

Here's Alan's response to my first message.

Being that Bric/Drupal integration seems like a "good
thing," people  
are interested in, Alan's offered to create a new project
for it and  
let people take a look once he gets it up.

Thanks, Alan!

-Matt

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Alan Dixon" <alan.g.dixongmail.com>
> Date: October 24, 2007 9:13:00 AM EDT
> To: "Matt Rolf" <rolfmdenison.edu>
> Cc: "Karim Nassar" <karimgiant-rock.com>, "Dawn Buie"  
> <dawnbuiegmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Forums are future work?
>
> Hi Matt & Karim:
>
> I'm not on your list, feel free to forward this if you
want.
>
> The bricolage/drupal integration works this way:
>
> 1. Drupal is the 'master' in the relationship and
'integrates'
> bricolage by making use of bricolage output.
>
> 2. Bricolage is modified to output "drupal
template pages" instead of
> normal html. For thetyee, this just meant adding a
placeholder on the
> page for the comment content, and converting a few
other tags into
> dynamic elements.
>
> So technically, it's not so much a way of integrating
forums into
> bricolage (though you can do that) as a way of making
use of
> bricolage's workflow/layout/interace for a drupal site.
The side
> benefit is that you can make use of any other drupal
features/modules
> to extend your site as well (blogs, aggregator tools,
etc.). Of
> course, I'm a drupal programmer, so Dawn probably has
the opposite
> view of how the two systems relate!
>
> In any case, my design was based on an existing
bricolage
> site/install, so it tries to be as non-invasive as
possible to the
> existing bricolage stuff, i.e. you don't have to
retrain on the
> existing workflow, etc. and the adjustments to your
bricolage
> templates should be relatively painless.
>
> I started work on the module more than a year ago, i
think it's been
> in use on the active site for more than six months now,
so it's
> generally solid. On the other hand, there are some
things I would
> improve for the next version, which needs to get done
to move it up to
> drupal 5 (it's only on drupal 4.7). Also, though I
wrote it to be a
> module of general use, there are lots of ways to use
bricolage that I
> don't know about, so if others started using it, I
suspect that there
> are new things to think about. I haven't created a
drupal project page
> for it yet either.
>
> re: UI issues. Fortunately, the last couple of years
has seen a lot of
> improvements to Drupal's UI. Though it'll probably
never be as finely
> tuned as some of the dedicated "forum"
software interfaces, there's
> some pretty nifty tools available to you to make it
look good and work
> well.
>
> in conclusion - the project isn't about adding forums
to bricolage
> anymore, it's about blending the benefits of
bricolage's well
> developed focus on content management with the
community-building
> benefits of Drupal.
>
>  - Alan

This is a very interesting question!

In the first version of http://thetyee.ca (March 2005)
the vBulletin  
integration with bricolage generate story templates was done
very  
hastily and on a tiny budget so there may have been room for
 
improvement that never got explored. How it worked was all
bricolage  
generated stories were interpreted as php by the apache
server, and  
they included all the variables required by vBulletin to
dynamically  
call the proper comment thread from vBulletin mysql
database. One of  
the hacks to the vBulletin database we did was to map
bricolage story  
IDs to vBullletin thread IDs. This mapping occurred
dynamically the  
first time a story was published.

We were trying to mimic the vBulletin environment using a
minimal  
amount of varibales. In this scenario the bricolage story
was the  
'master' and the vBulletin comment thread the 'slave'. One
of the  
problems we had was trying to use the vBulletin backend to
manage  
comments and commentors. It was very complicated to teach
our non-tec  
staff how to get back there and interpret the vBulletin
system,  
partly because a) vBulletin is huge and complex b) we
weren't using  
all of it's features so our staff could just poke around and
figure  
out what made 'sense' and c) we had hacked vBulletin in a
way that  
wasn't very intuitive.

The other problem we had was trying to upgrade and
troubleshoot  
problem with each new version of vBulletin (2 times a
year!).

My dream was to have a dynamic comment system that could be 

integrated into the frontend of our stories, and that users
with  
administrator permissions would be able to edit comment on
the  
frontend (or at least be bounced back to the backend in an 

intelligible way, and then bounced back to the frontend site
after  
editing or deleting a comment). And as Alan says, I assumed
that we'd  
be able to add all the social bookmarking bells and whistles
to our  
static bricolage generated stories.

Currently I'm not satisfied that the Drupal as master
solution is  
working, although I think Alan has done really great work on
this  
project, and there may be a way to optimized the hybrid in
the  
future. I originally chose bricolage as a platform because I
knew it  
could produce thousands of static html pages which I knew
would  
produce a much lower server load than any dynamically
generated  
product. So running my static story pages through Drupal now
slows  
down the load time of each story and negates one major the
reason I  
chose bricolage as my CMS in the first place! Also both
Drupal and  
vBulletin are complicated programs to administer and
optimize on  
their own, used together I think it's a bit much for some  
organizations to handle.

It was only after working with bricolage for awhile that I  

recognized its  flexible element/story/template/output
channe/ l  
framework (is that the right term?)  could also allow me to
create  
any kind of content I could dream of. While, other dynamic
platforms  
require the use of modules, often at produced at varying
levels of  
skill, to create new 'views' of information, (often
requiring dozens  
of database calls ) something like the bricolage template  
story_list.mc  can output for me in a static final form
something  
very complex and specific, easily. And then there is the
handy  
infinite versioning of templates and stories and other good
native  
abilities of bricolage.

So what is the answer for people who want to produce fast
loading  
static stories using bricolage, and add comments and other
important  
dynamic dodads to their sites? Well Movable Type (written in
PERL)  
apparently can output static comments as well and I want to
look more  
closely at their model. Maybe we have to build something
unique that  
will work best with bricolage but can be used by other kinds
of  
systems as well.

I'd be happy to provide what ever details I can on what
we've tried  
in the past. And again, Alan has done really fabulous work
on this  
Drupal/Bricolage hybrid experiment and as it evolves it
could be the  
right answer for some organizations. I view it as one more
step in a  
long line of useful experiments on the web.

Dawn




On 24-Oct-07, at 9:28 AM, Matt Rolf wrote:

> Here's Alan's response to my first message.
>
> Being that Bric/Drupal integration seems like a
"good thing,"  
> people are interested in, Alan's offered to create a
new project  
> for it and let people take a look once he gets it up.
>
> Thanks, Alan!
>
> -Matt
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: "Alan Dixon" <alan.g.dixongmail.com>
>> Date: October 24, 2007 9:13:00 AM EDT
>> To: "Matt Rolf" <rolfmdenison.edu>
>> Cc: "Karim Nassar" <karimgiant-rock.com>, "Dawn Buie"  
>> <dawnbuiegmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: Forums are future work?
>>
>> Hi Matt & Karim:
>>
>> I'm not on your list, feel free to forward this if
you want.
>>
>> The bricolage/drupal integration works this way:
>>
>> 1. Drupal is the 'master' in the relationship and
'integrates'
>> bricolage by making use of bricolage output.
>>
>> 2. Bricolage is modified to output "drupal
template pages" instead of
>> normal html. For thetyee, this just meant adding a
placeholder on the
>> page for the comment content, and converting a few
other tags into
>> dynamic elements.
>>
>> So technically, it's not so much a way of
integrating forums into
>> bricolage (though you can do that) as a way of
making use of
>> bricolage's workflow/layout/interace for a drupal
site. The side
>> benefit is that you can make use of any other
drupal features/modules
>> to extend your site as well (blogs, aggregator
tools, etc.). Of
>> course, I'm a drupal programmer, so Dawn probably
has the opposite
>> view of how the two systems relate!
>>
>> In any case, my design was based on an existing
bricolage
>> site/install, so it tries to be as non-invasive as
possible to the
>> existing bricolage stuff, i.e. you don't have to
retrain on the
>> existing workflow, etc. and the adjustments to your
bricolage
>> templates should be relatively painless.
>>
>> I started work on the module more than a year ago,
i think it's been
>> in use on the active site for more than six months
now, so it's
>> generally solid. On the other hand, there are some
things I would
>> improve for the next version, which needs to get
done to move it  
>> up to
>> drupal 5 (it's only on drupal 4.7). Also, though I
wrote it to be a
>> module of general use, there are lots of ways to
use bricolage that I
>> don't know about, so if others started using it, I
suspect that there
>> are new things to think about. I haven't created a
drupal project  
>> page
>> for it yet either.
>>
>> re: UI issues. Fortunately, the last couple of
years has seen a  
>> lot of
>> improvements to Drupal's UI. Though it'll probably
never be as finely
>> tuned as some of the dedicated "forum"
software interfaces, there's
>> some pretty nifty tools available to you to make it
look good and  
>> work
>> well.
>>
>> in conclusion - the project isn't about adding
forums to bricolage
>> anymore, it's about blending the benefits of
bricolage's well
>> developed focus on content management with the
community-building
>> benefits of Drupal.
>>
>>  - Alan
>

On Oct 24, 2007, at 06:28, Matt Rolf wrote:

>> in conclusion - the project isn't about adding
forums to bricolage
>> anymore, it's about blending the benefits of
bricolage's well
>> developed focus on content management with the
community-building
>> benefits of Drupal.

This is exactly the way I would do it. If Bricolage can be
used for  
workflow and publishing, and publish to front-end systems
like Drupal  
using their formats, that would just be very slick. All the
better if  
we could have "mover" Bricolage plugins that did
the publishing to  
these systems. I've done a few projects where I wrote
Bricolage  
templates that inject stuff directly into the database
dedicated  
forum systems using SQL. It works great, but if the forum
apps should  
change their schemas, it's a drag. Dedicated Bricolage
plugins to  
handle this sort of publishing would, however, be ideal,
IMHO.

Best,

David