Gnomepal <-> Drupal Gap Analysis

As Gnomepal starts to cohere from "I wish I could make Drupal do n" into a reasonable set of 1.0 requirements, it will be critical to assess how these requirements can be met by existing Drupal contributed modules or Drupal Core. This space will serve as a place where desired Features List can be compared to what Drupal and its Contributed Modules already provide.

Gap analysis should take into account that some features may not be present in Drupal 5, but already integrated in Drupal 6.

Here's a proposed format for this:

gnomepal requirements | candidate modules | contributed module functionality | gap | discussion | action

And here's a starter example (just an example):

Gnomepal Requirements:

• Community members need a means to create groups within their communities. -...

Candidate Modules:

• Organic Groups

Contributed Module Functionality:

• Enable users to create and manage their own 'groups'
• Each group can have subscribers
• Group maintains a group home page
• Group subscribers communicate with each other via posting the usual node types
• Groups may be open, require approval to subscribe or be invitation only
• Groups get their own theme, language, taxonomy.
• ...

Gap:

• Forcing user to decide between public and private on every post may not be appropriate for most Gnomepal communities. BorisMann: this is a setting, and can be turned off...only admins always have this option
• Will the way Organic Groups gives groups their own theme collide with Gnomepal's desire to have themes (or at least theme colors) for Sections? BorisMann: don't have to enable / allow themes
• ...

Discussion:

• Organic Groups has a rich family of modules designed to work with it. Some of these may provide part of the required functionality, but not all. Should new modules be created or should the maintainers of existing modules be approached with feature requests? BorisMann: the OG D6 build is going to be mightily simplified -- using the Messaging and Notification modules for email, for instance. I would recommend that this whole thing be built out on D6.

Action:

• Create a module for Organic Groups that provides the desired functionality, make sure it and plays nice with the rest of the Organic Groups family.

You get the idea...

BorisMann: rather than putting all the Gap / Fit on this page, I suggest that a list of features linking to a longer page with details. I've done a start below.

Format of following list is -- Full Page: description of feature (potential, modules, list)

• GapAnalysisGroups - Community members need a means to create groups within their communities ([Organic Groups][http://drupal.org/projects/og])
• GapAnalysisAntiSpam - an anti-spam solution that works on user creation, comments, and content ([Akismet][http://drupal.org/project/akismet], [Mollom][http://drupal.org/project/mollom], [Captcha][http://drupal.org/project/captcha])
• GapAnalysisImageInsertion - a way to easily upload, insert and position images within the body of posts ([Asset][http://drupal.org/project/asset])