Website Update

From NzGpsWiki

The current website is in need of an update to provide a more reliable and comprehensive service for members.

1 Society Internet Service
2 Main Website Functions
- 2.1 Software
- 2.2 Waypoint Bank Module

Society Internet Service

Overview of gps.org.nz

The Society provides all of its Internet services via the gps.org.nz domain name. Currently their are three distinct services provided.

Main Website - hosting the home page of the Society, and other functions such as the wiki and gallery
Forums - hosting the forums, the main location for collaboration
Email - at this stage more for administrative use

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Main Website Functions

The intention of the main website is to act as promotional pages for the society, and a multi-author blog that members can post news to.

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Software

The current home page is powered by Mambo. The Mambo development community had an issue with the commercial sponsor of project, and the two communities ended up going their separate ways. The Mambo product is now the commercial fork, and Joomla is the fork supported by developers.

I (rediguana) have recently been moving my Mambo websites to Drupal recently and have found it to be a far better content management system than Mambo. Drupal also has a far wider range of modules available.

Whilst both Mambo/Joomla and Drupal support components/modules - the much more active development community and information available for Drupal suggests that it will be easier for the Society to develop modules for Drupal.

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Waypoint Bank Module

One of the best ways that we can provide a service for Society members is through the provision of a waypoint bank - a means of sharing waypoints. It is envisaged that this service could be provided as a Drupal module. There are various benefits to coding the waypoint bank as a Drupal module, that would allow us to save development on other aspects of the module. The waypoint bank module would be able to use: -

taxonomy - used to classify waypoints. A waypoint 'vocabulary' would be created with a taxonomy to classify waypoints, e.g. Service Stations which may have members Shell, BP, Caltex etc.
access control - use the built-in Drupal access controls and groups to control access to certain rights of the waypoint bank.
comments - if a waypoint is created as a node, then it can easily have comments associated to that particular waypoint. These could be used for maintenance and the like.

Otherwise, it would be necessary to devote time to development of access control (not trival) and taxonomy.

The development of the waypoint bank would probably need to occur in stages, to allow gradual introduction of features, whilst getting the basic functionality available as soon as possible.

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Stage 1

The intention is that a waypoint is represented as a 'node' in Drupal parlance. Nodes appear as their own page, have comments and can be assigned taxonomy terms. An outdated module called Flexinode allows nodes to have custom fields added such as Latitude, Longitude, URL, verification status, and date last modified.

User - maintains 'ownership' of their waypoints, unless they want to release them to the Society to manage
- Add/Edit/Delete waypoint via web form
- Download waypoints in GPX format
- Verify the location of a waypoint (this gives the waypoint a higher level of trust)
Administrator
- Manage all waypoints

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Later Stages

Import of GPX file to single taxonomy term (e.g. import a GPX file of Shell Service Stations)
Export of waypoints in alternative formats
Import of GPX file matching waypoints to matching taxonomy items

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Waypoint Taxonomy

Below is a sample vocabulary of taxonmic terms that could be used for waypoints.

GraemeWi Comment - logical grouping, however there should be some geographic tag on each waypoint so that they can be grouped across all 'types' perhaps(e.g. all South Island)

I've added Waypoint Type and Location taxonomies to support this. Both should be compulsory when entering a waypoint. They may have multiple. Ideally we may be able to automatic classification by running co-ordinates against shapefiles with boundaries. --RedIguana 18:03, 6 June 2006 (NZST)

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