Black Dog Blog

Well, most importantly, I learned that it's pronounced "droople". ;)

(Also that I'm in the minority by saying "micicle" where most people say "my-sequel". I can't resist it, though; it's too much fun to say.)

Other than that, while chatting to the organiser I brought up (what I guessed, from brief reading, to be) the main requirement I have of a CMS that could cause problems with Drupal's way of viewing the world. Thanks to having read through drupal.org in advance, I was able to convey this intelligently and ask the right sorts of questions.

*waits for disbelief to die down*

In brief, building on my last entry, this potentially problematic thing is creating sub-users as part of a user profile:

• a user can post as themselves (their main profile) on every type of node
• on some types of node, a user can post as any of their sub-users
• sub-users are switchable using a simple interface (with UI design issues here too, obviously)
• the switcher interface is only visible on the appropriate node types (this much I know should be easily done with *blanks and looks up the term* blocks or something similar)
• some site features are organised per user (user role/permissions, sitewide communication)
• some site features are organised per sub-user (though the main user gets one too) (blogs, 'profiles' which are also encyclopaedia entries)

For sub-user, of course, read "character". Aha, Ceiling Dog sees where I'm going with this.

I was told that I'm the first person to ask about this. Whee, I'm special! However, I'm also told that it should be possible, and that a module called Node Profile is what I need to look for.

Other random features I'll need — list may be updated as I think more:

• Collaborative authorship features
  • Multiple posts, as well as co-written posts, viewable on a single page in certain node types (ie storyboards) (SFV's one post per page was maddening and user-unfriendly; believe me, I helped out with some copy-pasting of archives from there…)
  • Attribute parts of content in co-authored nodes to a single user
    • Tricky question. I could require everything to be broken up into multiple short posts instead, but that would be needlessly irritating – and besides, I want to encourage play-by-email or play-by-AIM if they like (because hey, if they're connecting, it's good) and post up the results.
    • I really want competent, flexible, powerful attribution, because it's a key issue in the T&Cs that you're welcome to post excerpts on other sites but must include credit and linkback.
    • And ditto because of how tightly the site is going to be interlinked. From any post you should be able to jump to the author's bio, look up the settings and characters in play, jump to discussion of the story…
  • Having trashed the one-post-per-page view, I'd like a user preference (single pref, set site-wide) to default to "multiple (up to x) posts per page" or "always one post per page" view in the applicable node types. Because connection speeds and some people may just hate long screenfuls of text, however pretty.
• friendly URLs — possible with a certain module, but I may need further functionality
  • Depends on a number of things, like how I decide storyboards should be organised. Books are looking like the obvious choice if the "how many posts shown per page" is flexible enough.
• insane amounts of interlinking — because this is the web, and hyperlinks are bloody fantastic. Readers should never be left thinking "what's that jargon mean?" or "who is that character?" when linking is made so simple for the authors (and it will be). Because encyclopaedia articles will be nodes just like story posts, I'll hopefully finally achieve my ambition of locking everything together beautifully.
• strictly limited subset of allowed markup (certain HTML tags only — absolutely no PHP, ye gods, though Drupal can be set to allow it)
• plus unique tags
  • One of the really vital aspects of my dream is to link our main two types of content, story-writing and encyclopaedia, firmly together
  • I envisage, for example, something as simple as "He greeted <sitelink>Siri</sitelink>" or "He greeted <sitelink target=Siri>his friend<sitelink>" (example syntax only, of course)
  • Obviously this interacts with the friendly URLs
• Feedback for Shy People™
  • I don't know why I know so many borderline Aspies, but I'm rolling with it. ;)
  • Ability to give props (for which I'll think up a cute name) for storyboard posts, plus some way to stop this being abused once we start getting stalkers and cliques
  • Comments enabled on certain types of node (namely solo writing)
  • Reward for helpful comments? Ability to give "IAWTC" or "Thanks for the feedback" props? If so, some kind of ranking system or reward badge for good concritters. As I suggested to someone on BRPS, perhaps eBay-style stars…

I even have ideas for presentation, with a few stylistic things that I hope will cement the IC/OOC line as firmly as I-the-admin can. The rest is up to my star players.

So basically now I just have to make time to install and play with Drupal, as well as investigating the other options (my mind's suddenly blanked, but I've got a list of possibilities mentioned by GeekUppers). And learn PHP and SQL. Riiiight…