We can do this, right?
I recently came across the newly designed site for Little Radio. It surprised/impressed me
for several reasons:
- It's a great looking site
- Is pretty rich with multimedia (photos, podcasts, streaming radio, playlists, etc.)
- Most of the content seems to be seamlessly aggregated from outside sources
- The kicker is that it's done on wordpress!!
Another fine site (obviously built by the folks behind this) was built on Django.
Upon exploring these sites, it raised a few questions:
- Can Drupal do this? Ok, that's a stupid question.
- What are some examples of similar drupal sites?
- Is there some sort of blueprint/process? Themes, modules, and all that good stuff?
- If there really isn't something quite similar, how could we set up an open-source/Drupal/Bryght version of this?
If there isn't something close, possibly the site that I've been haplessly trying to build/update/manage, could serve as a blueprint/showcase for what Drupal can do. Any help/assistance, as always, is
most appreciated. Whatever we create should be of value, not only to the Drupal community, but also independent musicians (like myself) and creatives. Zines, hyperlocal communities, music blogs, podcast/online radio sites, etc. are essential in this new indie/music/creative landscape. The tools/templates/processes need to be open and readily available. Then we just have to raise awareness outside of the web2.0/podcasting/myspace crowd. That's the easy part, right?
Comments
Aggregator module?
Maybe the first post was a little to bloated/general... Let me start with the aggregation:
The front page is nicely laid out and contains excerpts (i.e. just the first few lines; a photo/album cover and the title) from what's presented on the detail page. The content itself (stories, images, mp3 links) is aggregated from other sources.
For example:
Is there a way to achieve this same type of functionality and layout? Can the aggregator module do this? Some type of theme that has comes close how the front page is laid out?
Assuming this can be done, I'd like to do a similar thing where, below each title, they're very clear about where the content is coming from and provide direct links back to the original source. That's very important to me - I'd only want to aggregate content that has been made available by the author (via creative commons or something like that). Instead of having people create an account, and create content directly from my site, I'd rather aggregate the content and drive traffic, attention, etc. back to the authors own site.
Any feedback on the process and/or my reasoning is most appreciated!
Consulting and design
You should be able to theme the aggregator pretty much however you like, as well as the other parts of Drupal-powered sites, since all the modules generate very clean XHTML and CSS. You'd definitely need to do a lot of work on getting the site setup and designed the way you like, though. To my knowledge there aren't any themes that match exactly what you're looking for, so you'll either need to do the work yourself or hire a consultant and/or designer to help get the site set up.
For writing, video and whatnot from other sources that have RSS or Atom feeds, aggregator is a great choice, as is the aggregator2 module. The latter module is still under heavy development, but it allows you to create a node per RSS item. That would solve part of the technology piece, but my guess is it would still take some work to get the site the way you want it. Like I said, very much—including what you describe—is possible with Drupal. Feel free to contact us if you want to get setup with someone who can help build that site with you.