Find It Use Cases
Curated by members of the Cambridge Kid's Council, Find It Cambridge was designed to help busy parents stay informed about the plethora of educational opportunities available for their children.
Find It Immigrant Navigator (link coming soon!)
Curated by Immigrant Family Services Institute, the Immigrant Navigator was designed to provide information on events and services for new Haitian Immigrants in order to ease their transition into life in the United States.
El Reto
La identidad de la marca de MASS Design necesitaba una actualización para que coincida con su nuevo trabajo de arquitectura y un impacto en expansión, con un sitio web que coincida. Querían un conjunto de herramientas que su personal pudiera emplear para afirmar con flexibilidad su identidad actualizada y contar historias de manera que pudieran seguir el ritmo de su evolución.
Al mismo tiempo, sabían que parte del diseño es la accesibilidad. Con una gran audiencia en toda África, fue crítico que el diseño no comprometiera el rendimiento, asegurando que los visitantes en dispositivos con poco ancho de banda pudieran leer sus historias tan fácilmente como sus contrapartes estadounidenses.
El Enfoque
Creación Flexible de Contenido con Párrafos
Todd Linkner tomó la nueva identidad visual de MASS Design y la tradujo en componentes que se podrían ensamblar en innumerables formatos, dando un amplio control creativo a los editores de contenido. Tomamos el sitio, construimos el sitio con la participación y aprobación regular de MASS.
Para lograr este diseño basado en componentes, Todd, como un diseñador notablemente experto en Drupal, tenía en mente el módulo Paragraph, y es lo que elegimos para implementar la funcionalidad (esto fue antes del período de dos años en que cada tercera charla en Drupal campamentos fue sobre el módulo de párrafos). En lugar de crear tipos de contenido con campos fijos siempre en el mismo orden, los párrafos nos permitieron definir una variedad de formatos de medios (carrusel, cuadrícula de imagen, texto, etc.) que podrían agregarse y reorganizarse a voluntad.
Los editores pueden personalizar la disposición de diferentes elementos de contenido con el módulo Paragraphs.
El Rendimiento del Sitio es Justicia de Diseño
Anteriormente, el sitio web de MASS Design cargaba imágenes de varios megabytes en la página de inicio, cargando lentamente para todos los visitantes, particularmente aquellos con ancho de banda limitado. (También cuesta cientos de dólares al mes en ancho de banda de su proveedor de servicios en la nube).
El rendimiento es parte del diseño y cuando priorizamos a nuestros públicos con menos recursos, nos mantenemos fieles a nuestros valores de acceso e inclusión. Lo hicimos para MASS Design manteniendo el rendimiento al frente de las conversaciones desde el principio.
Drupal es un poderoso CMS que, de forma inmediata, cambiará el tamaño de las imágenes y realizará el almacenamiento en caché interno. Aseguramos que el nuevo sitio MASS se cargaría rápidamente con la configuración estratégica y el uso de herramientas clave de terceros.
Comenzamos con el almacenamiento en caché agresivo, pero sensible. Nos dirigimos a una red de distribución de contenido (CDN) con ubicaciones cercanas a Kigali, Ruanda, para que esto sucediera. (Lo más cercano que pudimos conseguir fue, Mombusa, Kenia). Usando la API de WebPageTest.org, realizamos scripts de pruebas de rendimiento para ver regularmente las velocidades de carga de páginas del sitio desde Johannesburgo, Sudáfrica, la más cercana (no muy cercana) que se ofrece en ese momento.
Se configuraron dos puntos de entrada al sitio. Uno para el público que utiliza el almacenamiento en caché de CDN y un punto de entrada separado para editores con un subdominio. Esta estructura mantuvo el CDN funcionando correctamente. Las funciones que se basan en las cookies, en particular el inicio de sesión como usuario autenticado, no funcionan con un CDN de bajo costo.
Resultados
Desde la actualización de su sitio web, MASS ahora cuenta historias convincentes de su trabajo, lo que resulta en un 84% más de páginas vistas, más páginas por sesión y más usuarios que regresan. El tráfico del sitio desde Ruanda es diez veces mayor gracias en parte a la mejora del rendimiento del sitio.
Desde la actualización inicial del sitio, también hemos agregado formularios de donación en el sitio, una función de registro por correo electrónico para sus documentos de recursos clave y ampliado su conjunto de herramientas de narración guiadas por Paragraphs.
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Part analyst, part troubleshooter, and part troublemaker, Stefan serves as Agaric's secret weapon and resident heretic. From his homeland of Germany, with other Agarics in Massachusetts, and at Drupal events around the world, Stefan programs, administers systems, and questions Drupal dogma.
Multilingual in human and computer languages, Stefan's technological curiosity and talents have benefited Agaric clients and the Drupal community. With an interest in integrating systems via web services, his work has included LDAP and Kerberos configuration. With his contributions to RDF in Drupal, Stefan is helping build the semantic web, in which computers understand what we mean and let us do fantastically smart and complex things with the knowledge we're all putting online.
Agaric makes websites and applications that matter. We provide development services, training, and consulting to help define and meet your needs.
Get updates from Micky, Ben, and other Agarics on their involvement in lots of movement work. We will send you occasional dispatches from our perspective on various overlapping movements for freedom and justice, and the building of democracy thereby, as workers fighting the good fight and as passionate observers.
Select a language
Navigate the site in your language of choice or contribute improvements to the translations so that Find It can better meet the needs of the diverse communities it serves.
350.org es una organización global de justicia climática que ayudó a organizar la huelga climática más grande de la historia. Juntos, mejoramos su Mapa de Acción de Justicia Climática (CJAM) en el período previo a la huelga para que los activistas pudieran movilizar mejor a sus comunidades.
I am very happy the bug is fixed and this blog post will be obsolete in mere days! Usually this sort of technical noodlings get relegated to our raw notes, currently hosted through GitLab, but figured at least a few other Drupal developers would want to know what has been going on with their toolbars.
Image credit: "Too Many Tabs" by John Markos O'Neill is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Challenge
Many teachers lack the skills and confidence to effectively integrate computer modeling and simulation into their science classrooms. Research studies show that it takes more than a single professional development workshop to build the necessary skill and confidence. Online communities have been proposed as a means to address this problem. Teachers with GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically) offers an engaging middle school curriculum and accompanying professional development for teachers.
Through the use of an online community of practice, Teachers with GUTS is able to support teachers in mitigating challenges, gaining expertise by providing additional training and resources, and providing answers to teachers; questions as they bring computational science experiences into their classrooms. To truly teach with GUTS, teachers needed a community they could turn to.
Social media platforms and existing online discussion forums were considered, but research showed that these platforms lacked the features specifically needed. Instead, they needed a platform tailored to their needs:
- Forum for topical discussions
- Resource library to share documents, videos, and code
- Events listing page
- Practice area for participating in monthly “challenges” or “work sessions”
Our Approach
Through our discovery work we specifically identified that a forum, resource library, practice space, and faceted search would provide teachers with support and resources and tools they need to teach the curricula with confidence. TWiG would then support the website with both drip and push marketing to promote the resources and encourage activity.
Resource Library
Project GUTS CS in Science curriculum is the heart of TWiG’s work. There are several learning modules as well as supporting documents such as rubrics and supplementary activities. We built the resource library that displayed the most recent additions front and center, while providing a faceted search option so teachers can drill down to specific resources.
We also took advantage of the collaborative spirit of the TWiG community by allowing teachers to submit their own resources. These resources are then reviewed by TWiG staff and published after review, revision if needed, and alignment with standards.
Faceted search allows teachers to find resources based on several criteria.
Forum
To support online discussion and peer assistance, we built a forum. We built off of Drupal Core’s Forum module and extended it to include an area accessible only to facilitators with a custom module.
We customized the forum further by disabling threaded comments, as that structure did not work well for the teachers using the site. However, in doing so we learned of a longstanding issue with Drupal and comments in which converting threaded comments to a flat structure risks deleting the nested comments. In response, we ported the Flat Comments module to Drupal 8.
Bookmarks
Even with faceted search and thoughtful categorization, the number of resources and discussions on the site can be overwhelming. We created a Drupal 8 version of the Backpack module that allows teachers to save pages to their “backpack.”
These backpacks can either be private or shared with other members. Curating specific lists is another way teachers can share knowledge with one another.
You can download and use the Backpack module on your Drupal site at https://github.com/agaric/bookmark
Teachers can bookmark a resource or discussion for quick access in the future.
Notifications
While a custom site was more advantageous than an email list or Facebook group, the reality is that most teachers’ daily routine does not include visiting teacherswithguts.org. In order to keep teachers engaged they needed a way to know when relevant activity was taking place.
We built a notification system, configurable by each teacher, so that they could be emailed about activity pertinent to their work. Teachers can choose to receive the following notifications:
- When a new article is posted
- When a new resource is posted
- When a new discussion is posted
- When a comment is made on a discussion
Additionally, teachers choose the day to be sent emails, as well as the frequency. This was all made possible by enhancing the Personal Digest and Comment Notify modules.
We enhanced the Personal Digest and Comment Notify modules to give users fine grained control over their notifications.
Member Directory
To build upon the networking happening in the forums, we made it easy for teachers to find one another based on shared on interests, experience and geography. Each teacher customizes their member profile with key information about themselves, their areas of expertise and the areas they wish to grow. We then surfaced that in a filterable search of members, helping teachers mentor one another.
Members can easily find others with similar interests in the member directory.
Results
With an onboarding process much improved from their previous site, plus the ability to bulk invite users, TWiG was able to sign up over 700 teachers when the site launched in 2016. We’ve continued to improve the site to increase participation and surface useful metrics for site administrators and researchers.
UPDATE: The DrupalCon Seattle training SOLD OUT a few days after we posted the details on the DrupalCon Seattle 2019 website! There were 45 trainees and six trainers - the Agaric team was joined by Leslie Glynn, the recipient of the 2019 Aaron Winborn Award, presented in the DriesNote! Leslie has been a volunteer at just about every Drupal event we have attended and she is well versed in many aspects of Drupal. It was a real pleasure to have her help on the mission to get people's hands and minds on the Drupal 8 migration process.
Agaric builds tools for medical and scientific communities to advance their work, enhance collaboration, and improve outcomes. And we've been doing this—helping healthy discussion about science and medicine flourish online—since 2008.
Reusable platforms for advanced online collaboration
The Collaboratory
The National Institute for Children's Health Quality partnered with Agaric to build the Collaboratory—a platform designed specifically to help healthcare improvement teams collaborate, innovate, and make change. During this partnership, begun in 2015, Agaric built a collaborative analytics tool that allows healthcare quality teams to visualize, compare, and benchmark data, identify opportunities for improvement, and celebrate their successes. We were proud to be NICHQ's 2020 partners in making the most of the digital health revolution.
Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE)
In 2015, we began contributing to PECE, an open source digital platform that supports multi-sited, cross-scale ethnographic and historical research. PECE is built as a Drupal distribution that can be improved and extended like any other Drupal project. Agaric's contributions include building an API integration between PECE's bibliographic citation capabilities and Zotero's open source reference management and collaborative bibliography tools.
We have been brought back for a larger role to realize the full upgrade of this distribution and platform to Drupal 10.
Partners In Health Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Network and EndTB.org
Beginning in 2010, Agaric took over the development of the DRTB Network platform for Partners In Health, the famed international nonprofit public health organization, and the TB Care II initiative. The core of this work was connecting practitioners in the field with experts through a natural yet structured response process complete with careful editorial review. This crucial work lives on with endTB.org, a partnership between Partners In Health, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Interactive Research & Development. All of this work for PIH is in Drupal.
Science Collaboration Framework
Agaric was the lead developer for the Science Collaboration Framework, a project of Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing. Working with researchers from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, we built a reusable platform for collaboration and communication in biomedical research, enriching the contributions of scientists and the biomedical online community with semantic data, highlighting advanced, structured relationships between contributed resources, and facilitating structured community discourse around biomedical research. We even earned a writeup in a scientific journal for our work!
As part of SCF, Agaric led the work of building the website for an online community of Parkinson's disease researchers and research investors, on the Science Collaboration Framework, for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.
Ask Agaric for help building your world-bettering community today!
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The Find It Platform
An Open-Source Program and Event Locator for Communities
You can define your own permissions for the Drupal permissions page (/admin/people/permissions in modern Drupal, Drupal 8, 9, 10, and beyond) and then add conditional options to your code to do different things based on the role of the user and the permissions configured by a site administrator.
Here's how.
Create a modulename.permissions.yml file
This simple file has the permission machine name (lower case with spaces) and a title (Sentence case) with an optional description.
For our module, which has a particularly long name, that file is drutopia_findit_site_management.permissions.yml and its contents are like so:
access meta tab:
title: 'Access meta tab'
description: 'Access meta information (author, creation date, boost information) in Meta vertical tab.'
You can repeat lines like these in the same file for as many permissions as you wish to define.
Check for that permission in your code
The process for checking permissions is simply to use a user object if that's handed into your code, or to load the current user if it's not, and use the hasPermission() method which returns TRUE if that user has permission and FALSE if not.
For example, in a form alter in our drutopia_findit_site_management.module file:
/**
* Implements hook_form_BASE_FORM_ID_alter() for node_form.
*
* Completely hide the Meta vertical tab (field group) from people without permission.
*
*/
function drutopia_findit_site_management_form_node_form_alter(&$form, FormStateInterface $form_state, $form_id) {
// If the current user has the permission, do not hide the Meta vertical tab.
if (\Drupal::currentUser()->hasPermission('access meta tab')) {
return;
}
// Code to hide the meta tab goes here, and is only reached if the user lacks the permission.
// ...
}
See all this code in context in the Find It Site Management module.
To learn more about defining permissions in modern Drupal, including dynamic permissions, you can see the change record for when the new approach replaced hook_permission().
