Rebuilding Coulee Region Online - A Drupal social networking site recipe
Update Aug 3, 2009: Here we are 6 months later and I haven't made much progress on either this book or my site. When I started, I had big plans of documenting step by step everything I do on the site. But I found myself struggling because I just don't build things in a nice linear order that the book needs. I bounce around all over the place, go back, make changes, try different things. On top of that, my modules take so much time, I really don't have much time for my site and keep pushing the launch off further and further.
So, I've reluctantly decided to abandon the book idea. I feel bad to have dangled this tease for so long and I assure you it wasn't intentional. But I've decided I need to be selfish, and do what's best for me for a while, and that means finishing my site without taking 3 times as long documenting every bit of it.
When it is done, I will take a look at writing docs retroactively on anything really custom I do and will still write up a nice and detailed "case study". So there will be more docs coming, just not the ebook I had planned.
A little history
When I built what is now the current version of Coulee Region Online, it was done with the help and support of the Drupal community. I wanted to give back to that community and share what I had done so I had in mind to do an extensive case study / site recipe to help others build a site like mine. Back then, nearly two years ago, there wasn't much documentation in this area. I put out the first of what was meant to be a series of tutorials, my user profiles tutorial, and it was popular beyond all my expectations. So much so that it eventually morphed into a module (Advanced Profile Kit). Between the time that took me and Advanced Forum, also from Coulee Region Online, my site recipe idea petered out.
About this book
Now that the bulk of modules I need are ready for Drupal 6, I'm ready to upgrade Coulee Region Online. But I want to do more than simply upgrade; I want to rebuild it better with all the knowledge I've gained in the last two years. And, along with that, I had planned to resurrect my plan to write that site recipe and flesh it out into a full fledged eBook for a start to finish documentation on building a community / social networking site in Drupal. Unfortunately, now that I am ready to try again, I find there are already two physical books and an eBook on the subject that have beat me to the punch. Rather than doing yet another take on the same thing, I have decided to go back to my original plan of an extended case study / site recipe. Therefore, this book will be a blend of looking over my shoulder as I rebuild my site in Drupal 6 and tips for building your own community site, with heavy emphasis on what I did and why. It will also be focused on building a local community site, which is more than just a social networking site, though at least the first half of the book should be of interest to people building any sort of community site, local or not.
This book is being written literally as I rebuild my site and is very much a work in progress. This outline will likely change as I go along but it is a start. As I do each section, I will post it and refine it and update it until, finally, the book is just the way I want it. At that point, I will put it in a PDF and make it available for download. Until then, you are welcome to glean whatever usefulness you might out of it but I am not offering any support. Please don't email me to ask when it will be done as I don't know. This is a hobby and life often gets in the way of hobbies. I'm anxious for the rebuild to be done and will devote as much time as I can on it but there is no ETA.
License
While this book is being written, I am keeping all rights. Once it is finished, I will change over to a more open source friendly license, probably one of the CC varieties. For now, though, I would prefer to keep all the text on this site rather than having bits of it floating around in all different levels of revisions. If you link to it, please link to this first page as all the other pages are subject to moving and removing.