Map Shanty

I got involved with the Art Shanties through ExCo. I had always really enjoyed the Art Shanties, and from the first time I went a few years ago, have wanted to take part in this amazing project.

I helped with a lot of the activities, such as construction, events, organization, and photography. But my main contribution was the Map Shanty website.

Of course, it is built with Drupal.

Modules and Technologies

The original purpose of the site was to be a collaborative tool for our group to use to help facilitate communication and organization in a transparent manner. Since we had some major themes each weekend, as well as coordinating the building effort, I decided to go with Organic Groups module, with the help of Notifications and Messaging, which were all in development of that time. As the site came together, these modules became stable.

Even though it was meant to be a collaborative tool, I really wanted people to be able to come to the site and learn who we were and what we were doing. This meant utilizing the Content Profile module.

There was obviously a need to have some mapping on the site as well. Gmap and Location were also in development, but became stable as the site progressed. We actually got coordinates for each shanty and I created icons and created a Gmap of all the shanties. I was also able to flesh out my Gmap Field module with this project.

As it the time came to put the shanty on ice, we decided to make the site more focused for the visitors of the Art Shanties. This meant utilizing ImageCache and Lightbox 2 to create some more visual excitement for the front page. I also created some panaromics using the great, open-source Hugin program.

This project also led me to start using Drush, which is simple amazing. It really saves a lot of time on installing and updating modules. I think for my personal projects, its perfect, but have some reservations about using it at a company or organization that has its own code versioning.

Recognition

I even got some recognition in the Star Tribune, a local paper, as a Web Gem.