I am starting this thread to discuss the prospect of Drupal integration to BOINC websites. I have very limited understanding on how to use Drupal but quite familiar with the current PHP codebase for BOINC websites. So far I like the idea of integrating this CMS, though I don't know what the end result will be.

Maybe we can start with a wish list.

1) If we could have a way of updating the main index page, that may be useful.
2) If we could have drop down menu using CSS or a tab for the main page, it will look a bit more appealing.

I'm not yet sure how easy it is to integrate dynamic code like that into Drupal.

Just some initial thoughts

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In the mean time, I'm trying to integrate Drupal into three project websites. I'm looking for some guidance on how to implement this.

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Everyone is, Jack. I think Carl (Christensen) dabbled a bit with Drupal, you could email him.

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I just came across these Drupal video tutorials. I don't know how useful they'll be as I was actually looking for the OScommerce and Zencart ones! :-)

http://php.opensourcecms.com/free/videos.php

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On MotherShip@Home, we started putting it in Drupal. Not sure exactly how to handle the content relative to the server path and a little trouble referencing the file paths for includes. So we took the static html and coded a php script out of it. You can see the results. We are using the fourseasons theme.
http://www.mothershipathome.org/

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Dupal in the news: Software System’s Fans Gather to Talk Code (New York Times)

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I think it's a waste of time to start trying to integrate Drupal into BOINC, from scratch, because someone has already done it. Better contact them and help :)

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I have not gotten any clear instructions regarding this yet. What we recently did was create different subdomains. Mothership is really a portal to 3 projects (both DC & DT). MedLinc, MedThinc and Bones. Bad Penguin is busying himself with configuring this main website now. you can visit the subdomains
medlinc.mothershipathome.org
medthinc.mothershipathome.org

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Hi guys,

Yes we're working on integrating BURP/BOINC with Drupal. Now that I've finally had the time to really look into Drupal more (a thing I should have done when we first decided to start dabble with it), I'm convinced that it's been the right choice. Finally we're starting to have a clue what to make out of it.

Some of the stuff we're planning is of course very BURP related and it's probably easier to make a kind a social website experiment with BURP than many other BOINC projects. However, I would be really interested in sharing ideas on how to best make use of Drupal.

We're planning to migrate to Drupal 6 in 1-2 months (currently using Drupal 5). At the same time we're going to redo the graphics and the way we're handling the animations coming out of BURP. What we basically hope to do is that we really start to create nodes out of the animation that comes out of the system, which gives us the possibility to start using stuff like the fivestar module and Drupal's own taxonomy handling.

Getting to real integration, we need to somehow integrate the BOINC user profiles + teams to Drupal. If someone has a working system for this, please share! It just makes sense when you're trying to develop a user friendly social website for people sharing common interest. I personally think BOINC should definitely start to go this way - the accessibility and interaction Drupal can provide could be a way of getting many more people involved with all of the projects.

Julius Tuomisto
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ORE (Open Rendering Environment) project manager
Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland
http://www.renderfarm.fi

If I get time, I would like to work on merging the profiles. For now I have drupal in a separate database. Do we want to have that separation?

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I am also wondering if we want to create a boinc module for drupal for all BOINC project code?

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A migration to Drupal is planned and underway; see
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/DrupalConversion

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David, I appreciate the input. I only have a basic understanding of the internals on Drupal. From the description it does not seem I can be of assistance at the moment. I would like to learn more and if possible examine the code that is being worked on. Is there any code currently posted in the SVN?

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Hi David,

Could you give any indication of how or when do you expect the level of integration that is described on the wiki pages to be ready? We would gladly help with the efforts in any way that we can.

The plan is probably to take existing Drupal modules into use (such as http://drupal.org/project/friendlist, http://drupal.org/project/user_relationships, privatemessages etc.)?

-Julius

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Project Manager, ORE (Open Rendering Environment)
Laurea University of Applied Science, Finland
http://www.renderfarm.fi
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Could you give any indication of how or when do you expect the level of integration that is described on the wiki pages to be ready? We would gladly help with the efforts in any way that we can.

It hasn't even started, so you can't really expect an estimated date...

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Will Drupal allow for a finer-grained allocation of additional user rights?

At the moment, apart from the staff super-user categories (Administrator, Developer etc.), I think I'm right in saying that the BOINC forum software only allows priveledged access and editing rights to one class of volunteers: Forum Moderators.

In most of the projects I have experience of, these posts are filled by people with a deep interest in, and knowledge of, the project and its scientific needs (witness the wonderful Skygrid file analysis thread at Einstein, almost exclusively written by forum moderators).

But SETI has the unfortunate reputation of needing the other sort of 'etiquette' moderation. I feel that SETI loses out by being unable to recruit a separate, different cadre of 'technical' moderators - with elevated rights but separated from the policing role.

If Drupal can offer at least some of the extra facilities that 'full feature' message board software like phpBB can offer, then that would be a great advantage: it should be implemented with those additional facilities.

>1) If we could have a way of updating the main index page, that may be useful.
>2) If we could have drop down menu using CSS or a tab for the main page, it will >look a bit more appealing.
Both are very doable :)

>I think it's a waste of time to start trying to integrate Drupal into BOINC, >from scratch, because someone has already done it. Better contact them and help :)
Based upon this, I just mailed renderfarm.fi.

>We're planning to migrate to Drupal 6 in 1-2 months (currently using Drupal 5).
Ops, here they are already :P Sorry, my bad, should have read entire thread first.
How's the porting going? I think we will find use for boinc and drupal in our corporate environment, and would be interested in integration. (Just gonna understand how to set up the boinc project to begin with ;) )
If so, I would aim for Drupal 7 instead of 6. The updates is fairly sizable, and I would prefer to work with 7. This would however require moving the time horizon to 3-6 months from today, as 7 was just recently feature frozen.
If you've managed to port to 6, I wouldn't mind looking at it and starting a port to 7.

>Will Drupal allow for a fine-grained allocation of additional user rights?
I removed an r from that sentence, and can answer definitely. Although I have yet to fully wrap my head around the access system.