Drupal musings 5: Jump start for a new blog / site

Last month I had a great offer from the Drupal North West UK user group members at Manchester's - MadLab.

The proposal is using a central Manchester venue with wifi for a day engage some volunteers and create a new version of this blog in Drupal. This has woken me up! Putting a request out MDDA - Manchester Digital Development Agency have kindly offered to help out in terms of the venue.

At this months meeting I explained where things are up to and it was clear I still had some sorting to do.

As Chris and the others asked: What can Drupal do that Blogger cannot deliver?

Recently Blogger have extended their template design and functionality. So, now I should be able to find a new (and clean) template and re-introduce comments. In 2006 when I started the blog there were problems with spam.

So... it looks best to leave the blog as a going concern and focus on a new site for Hodges' model and the specific content and functionality requirements there.

I have my ticket for Drupalcon Copenhagen, for me this is 3rd time lucky, last chance saloon. This would be great timing and with the darkening nights too. ...

A phantom outline (currently an example of the 'living-dead') has been known for a while:

• Archive
  
• Case Studies (content types)
  
• Glossary
• Introduction - beginners guide to the health career model
  
• ...
  

If in one day a group of Drupalers can help me jump start this project that would be - awesome! First though I have to get an idea of numbers and a poll to gauge which day is the best for people - looking ahead to October - November. Before then I have some work to do...

Drupal musings 4: Modules and the nursing masquerade

Periodically I go through the list of available modules for Drupal both the current version and that in development - at present that is versions 6 and 7.

Reading the descriptions and reflecting on a module's functionality it is surprising where they can take you. Some of the modules stand out, prompting thoughts of potential applications. This is not just a case of descriptions fulfilling their role. Some of them shout out just by virtue of their name.

'Organic groups' will change to 'Group' in Drupal 7. If there is one thing about groups in nursing they are organic - whether that's disciplinary groups, groups held by nurses. Groups are a basic part of the structure and content of Hodges' model, and so it may be well worth factoring in the Group module from the outset.

As I read about the Masquerade module:

The masquerade module is designed as a tool for site designers and site administrators. It allows a user with the right permissions to switch users. While masquerading, a field is set on the $user object, and a menu item appears allowing the user to switch back. Watchdog entries are made any time a user masquerades or stops masquerading.

I thought of the tribes and camps within nursing and health care in general. Have we moved on? Well OK, let's see how holistic, integrated, multidisciplinary nursing is these days: picture then the nurse in medicine, surgical, operating theatre acting as a mental health nurse, learning disability nurse and vice versa?

Can we spot the imposter? One suspects (surely) that given a technical case study, care scenario then the game would be up very quickly. As to basic nursing care situations, there might be an interesting party there?

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