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Amazing what you can build in just 4 weeks

This morning our latest project the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) was launched. http://avrr.belgium.iom.int.

The website is a multilingual website that offers all kind of information about migrants that voluntary want to return to their country of origin. We built this website for the Internation Organisation for Migration which is part of the European Union. It offers information for these target area's:

Migrants: how they can voluntarily return to their home country;
Partners: information on how they can help migrants voluntarily return to their home countries;
About REAB: a comprehensive overview of the Return and Emigration of Asylum seekers ex-Belgium (REAB) programme.

We (WebCreatives) have built the site in a joint cooperation with Delius.

Technology:
The website is multilingual, Joomla 1.5.x based, and uses one|content from Delius extensively.
We have used Nooku to facilitate a multilingual website.
With one|content we have created various content types that are related to each other. For example content type "iomcontact" was created to describe an IOM contact person. Next to that a content type "iomteam" was created to describe a team. These two types are related. Every iomcontact is a member of an iomteam.
Website visitors can use these types as shown on the contact page:
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/contact/iomcontact/list.html

To build the site we used the following extensions:

Acajoom: newsletters
Content Templater: easy content templates
CQI Custom Quick Icons: to have extra icons in the Control Panel
JCal Pro: events management
Linkr: easy creation of internal links
ninjaXplorer: file management
PDF Index: create searchable PDF's
RSForm!Pro: electronic forms
Nooku: multilingual content
Xmap: sitemap
One: tailormade related content types
Simple Image Gallery Pro: Photo galleries
Tabs & Slides: slides in content
AllVideos: video and audio in content
Modules Anywhere: easy add modules inside content
Cache Cleaner: clean joonla's caches quickly
Better Preview: the name says it all ;-)

Design:
We hired an external design agency who have created a tailor made design for this AVRR website. We build two templates for it: a homepage template and a default template.

We've used the YooTheme template overrides and a large set of our own overrides to create specific pages like for example the FAQ pages:
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/for-migrants/faq.html
This is actually a standard category blog page with Page Class Suffix = "faq". That's all a content editor needs to set!

We built this website and added the content in 3 languages (english, dutch, french) in just 4 weeks. We started at september 2nd and finished on september 30th.
Much of the website couldn't have been built in such a short period without the extensive help of Paul Delbar from Delius.
Paul does real magic with his one|content framework. Some of the great examples:
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/contact/iomcontact/list.html
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/about-reab/statistics/chart/list.html
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/for-migrants/contact/reab-partners/p...
But we also threw in some tricks of our own. I know now a little bit more on howto create templates for JCal Pro for example:
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/events.html
And we've managed to integrate Simple Image Gallery pro in a multilingual way:
http://avrr.belgium.iom.int/en/resources/photo-gallery/escort-missi...

All together it was a fun project that we had to work very very hard for to get it ready on time.
If you have any questions on how we did things, just ask :-)

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Comment by Amy Stephen on October 1, 2009 at 11:21am: Wow! That's amazing.

I did some quick searches and found this slideshow.

So, the question I am afraid to ask....All GPL?

Do you have a link for one|content from Delius that I can look at?

This is glossy stuff. VERY much appreciate you sharing this. Thank you very much.

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 1, 2009 at 12:03pm: I added links for that list of extensions for those who want to take a closer look. It looks like every single Extension is GPL, with the exception of one.

- Acajoom
- Content Templater
- CQI Custom Quick Icons
- JCal Pro
- Linkr
- ninjaXplorer
- PDF Index
- RSForm!Pro
- Nooku
- Xmap
One: tailormade related content types
- Simple Image Gallery Pro: Photo galleries
- Tabs & Slides
- AllVideos
- Modules Anywhere
- Cache Cleaner
- Better Preview

Out of that list, it looks to me like the only one that is not GPL is Simple Image Gallery Pro.

I wish Fotis were here because I'd like to talk about that one. Joomlaworks has a Simple Image Gallery that is GPL. I do not know what the differences are between the two products. But, if it's CSS and JS, then, those elements are not subject to the viral effect of Joomla!'s GPL.

The problem becomes one of getting the GPL piece installed, and then without a lot of fuss, helping the user get the premium enhancements. I wonder if using Sam Moffatt's Package Manager and an ecommerce gateway or passkey to obtain the premium CSS and JS might work? That would assume all the PHP elements are available in Simple Image Gallery, If so, that should bring full compliance and still provide for the revenue stream and customer option.

Also, worth pointing out, Rene notes that tailor made related content types and templates, so, good sources of income for developers. I'm guessing there is a stockpile of code handy that gets reused, but simply isn't a fully formed extension and distributed broadly. I think that type of business model is what would be found in a healthy Drupal shop, as well.

Rene - thanks for taking the time on this. There is a lot of value here for others and I know it's not simple to pull it together. Thanks!

Comment by Rene Kreijveld on October 1, 2009 at 4:36pm: @Amy: One|Content is a framework that can run inside Joomla but separare as well. Too me it's a Zoo/K2 kinda thing buth then on steroids because it has relations. So it's not a stockpile of code handy that gets reused. Here are some of the features one|content offers:
- define any number of content types using schemes
- map schemes to multiple existing data stores
- include publisher control, versioning and multi-language support by adding behaviors to schemes
- define relationships between schemes, even across stores
- define scheme-specific list and detail pages using nanoScript
- extend the standard joomla! user model with the powerful rule-based permissions model
- define vocabularies to tag content across types
- manage all content types from a single administrator view

@Leo: WebCreatives is also a Nooku partner but we're still listed under our previous company name (OneCompany). I prefer Nooku because you can swith between any language wherever your editing content. For example you're editing an article in English; hit Apply, swith to Dutch (editor stays active and open!) and you immediately enter your dutch content. You can do this on menu items, sections, categories, articles, modules etc. And any extensions that uses the Joomla database API's works with Nooku.

Comment by Paul Delbar on October 2, 2009 at 6:33am: Just a note on one|content and Amy's remark on 'income for developers'. There is preciously little custom code involved in the one|content part of this site - at least if you do not count the view templates (no PHP in those). There's a total of 50 lines to create some custom tags such as one allowing the authors to include contact details for someone based on an alias, instead of writing the full email and phone numbers.

The objective of one|content is to *avoid* coding for pure structured content.

Comment by Amy Stephen on October 2, 2009 at 12:45pm: OK, Rene and Paul - I am *very* interested so how do I learn more?

Amazing what you can build in just 4 weeks

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