Planet Drupal BOF

I have no possibility to attend DrupalCon, but I am very interested in helping improving Planet Drupal and transform it into a resource that everyone, not only us in the community, will have great use of.

Below is my proposal for how that can be done. Let me know if anything is unclear and I will do my best to try and sort it out.

If the BOF will have any IRC chat or other communication let me know and I will try and participate.

The Future of Planet Drupal
Planet Drupal has served the community well over the years. It has provided Drupal users with lots of quality content to dive into for ideas, tutorials and everything else Drupal related. Now it is time it gets an overhaul and modernisation.

Over the last few years Drupal has seen a phenomenal growth, doubling on a yearly basis. Now hundreds of thousands new users discover it every year. These new users start using it for many different reasons and needs. A typical user today is very different from a typical user a few years back. Drupal 6 made using Drupal much easier, the just released Drupal 7 has taken this to a whole new level making it attractive for users with limited development skills.

Planet Drupal is now close to 400 feeds and many new stories are aggregated through it every day. New applications for being added to it are frequent. Currently there is a debate on d.o about the future of it and how it should be managed. Some users want stricter rules, including banning sites that provide content they see as "competing" with d.o, others want the opposite and open up the Planet even more.

My personal opinion is that Planet Drupal should be seen as a fantastic resource for the community, a place that is of tremendous use for every member of it. Any site that provide freely available content that fosters the use and growth of Drupal should be welcomed on it, not be treated the negative way they often are are now.

After all, it is called Planet Drupal and at least for me that implies it should offer me a smorgasbord of content from all over the internet.

Our challenge is how we best use this resource to serve the community in the best possible way.

Planet Drupal - News paper style
My proposal is that we simply turn Planet Drupal into a news paper style section on d.o, even better move the whole thing to http://planet.drupal.org.

The front page would contain the latest headlines divided into several regions based on the content category. The sidebar can contain top list of the most popular items (based on clicks or user rating).

New content will be presented in a completely new way. In the main content are images will be used, when available, in the lists making the pages beautiful to browse.

Sub sections will contain specific categories such as Articles, Tutorials, Case Studies, Event Reports, Press Releases and so on.

All links to external content should open in a new browser window/tab as well.

To do this we would need to break up the sole Planet Drupal feed that is now into several focused feeds. Then it would be easy to build a good looking frontpage as well as subsections that lists a single feed.

By breaking up the sole feed into several, each user will be able to select what content they are interested in. This makes it possible to have press releases, jobs and other things on it as well.

The feed on the frontpage would contain all feeds so those who want everything can get that into their RSS reader. The feeds on the subsection pages will only contain the items for that subsection. There would also be a feed overview page listing all RSS feeds users can subscribe on.

The new Planet Drupal will not only contain content from external sites. Content such as Case Studies posted directly on d.o should also be aggregated on it.

Feed Requirements
The goal should be to automate this as much as possible, which should not be a problem with modules already available for Drupal, such as the excellent Feeds module that easily can import content and create nodes of them.

The managing News distribution is also a strong contender to be used for the new Planet Drupal.

Guidelines for how sites need to design their Planet Drupal feeds will be needed so that for example images can be used on the pages properly. Feeds will have to comply with these guidelines to be included.

The guidelines should also stipulate that new content can only be added to one of the feeds.

Feed/Content Administration
The new Planet Drupal should have a dedicated team of administrators that take care of the day-to-day work, including managing the feeds on it. This team is presented on the Team page as well.

The team can also be divided into roles, such as Editor and Feed Administrator. The role will stipulate the responsibilities.

Each item published should have a report link so it is easy for readers to report inappropriate content.

Revenue for Drupal Association
Redesigning Planet Drupal like this will open up a whole new host of possibilities for generating revenue for the Drupal Associations. Some of these are:

• Advertising
• Sponsoring
• Job Posts

Job posts can easily be managed by an eCommerce solution where the whole process is automated.

Conclusion
Drupal is now so big that it is impossible for everything to be on d.o. With so many users, with different needs, it is important that they easily can find content that suites them. Planet Drupal could be the main resource where they will be able to find that.

It should showcase a smorgasbord of Drupal resources in the world, including d.o. It would then be a great resource for the community to utilise for fostering the use and growth of Drupal.

Done right it will also be a tremendous place for everyone interested in finding out more about Drupal. In one place they will quickly get an overview of what is available. This will without a doubt make their decision to use it or not much easier.

The new Planet Drupal would also help take some heat of d.o. Things such as Case Studies, Job Posts and other content can be moved to it so that d.o can be more focused.

The Managing News distribution mentioned above could provide a fast-track to quickly get this up and running. It would not only save a lot of time, but at the same time show the power and possibilities of Drupal Distributions.

I am also volunteering to help with this in any way I can.