About the Global Phosphorus Network
- News site
- Member directory
- Discussion forum
- Global resource repository
- Covers matters relating to phosphorus sustainability including food security, pollution, efficiency
- Aims to attract experts or people interested in the field eg. Scientists, consultants, policy-makers, industry, NGOs and the general community
Who runs it
- Run by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, a research body at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
- An initiative of the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative
- Funded by the Global Phosphorus Forum, Formas and Novozymes
- Managed by:
- Dr Dana Cordell & Professor Stuart White, UTS
- Dr Tina Schmid Neset, Linköping University
Live site
Project Planning
Proposed in November 2010
Layout already designed, development hadn’t yet begun
Hosting environment was to be shared host
Started with an interview to determine what was possible
Basic Components
Components of the site included:
- News
- Calendar of Events
- Discussion Forum
- Members Directory
- Resource Catalogue
- various static pages
Period of Development
Development started in November 2010
Mostly finished by mid-December
Final testing and polish early January 2011
Launched on 15th January
Minor bugfixes & updates afterward
Drupal Core & Module Setup
- Drupal 6
- CCK
- Views
- Filefield
- Computed Field
- Views Bulk Operations
- Forum
Due to shared hosting environment, Solr wasn’t able to be used
Interface & Theming
- jQuery Upgrade
- jQuery UI
- reCAPTCHA
- Google CSE
- Google Fonts
Module Setup: Profile
- Profile Taxonomy
- Profile Category Weight
- Profile Checkboxes
- RealName
- Invite
Module Setup: Utilities
- Markdown
- SpamSpan
- Custom Breadcrumbs
- Chaos Tools
- Panels
- XML Parser
- Admin Menu
- Vertical Tabs
- Filter Permissions
- Module Filter
- Taxonomy Manager
- Taxonomy Super Select
- Google Analytics
Taxonomy
- Forums
- Keywords
- Member Type
- Resource Category
- Resource Type
- Global phosphate reserves
- Phosphorus & food security
- Phosphorus use efficiency
- Phosphorus recovery & reuse
- Phosphorus pollution & waste
- Phosphorus – general sustainability
Drupal Customisation
The theme was a custom Drupal theme based on Basic
Custom modules written for the site included:
- Endnote XML importer
- Some basic form alters
Not much theme customisation used, except in profiles
Content Types (1/2)
- Page
- News Item
- Forum Topic
Content Types (2/2)
Resource
- Title
- Secondary Title
- Author
- Year
- Publisher
- Location
- Link
Resource Metadata
- Periodical
- Pages
- Volume
- ISBN
- Notes
- Originally Published In
- Resource ID
- Keywords
Stumbling Blocks - Theming & Environments
Issues with Invite
- Had difficulties sending out invites
- Mail system differences between environments
Theming issues and IE bugs
- Lots of little theming fixes involved
Confusion over environments
- Three environs: dev, test/beta, live
- Some people trying to log into old environments
- Manual lockdown
Stumbling Blocks - Data
Importing EndNote XML
- Custom reader needed
- Wealth of metadata, but how to index and display it?
- Imported all we could and then themed around it
Search
- Keyword search was a persistent problem
- Default Drupal taxonomy search unhelpful
- Computed field substitute
Depth of data
- Hundreds of resources to be manually catalogued
- Extra features had to be added to allow mass tagging
Stumbling Blocks - Other
- Timeframe
- Availability for discussion
- Changes in scope
- Spam & fake user accounts
- Private discussion groups
Results
- Over 250 people listed in public Members’ Directory
- Over 400 resources listed in Resource Library
- Positive response from ISF and community
- Ambassador for site is the Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen