Modular Community System
Proposed by: Ingo Renner
Mentor: TBD
Student working on it: -
Level: Easy - Medium
Overview
TYPO3 has a fantastic developer community! However, it is hidden away on mailinglists, newsgroups and an IRC channel. Other than the community events like T3BOARD, T3DD, and T3CON it is hard to connect Names and email addresses to faces.
typo3.org really needs some kind of community system! That system should not only help people remember other people but also support them in collaborating and brainstorming.
Impact on TYPO3
A community system would enable TYPO3 to access the importance gaining area of social networks. The community system would also allow to make TYPO3's community become more visible by using it on typo3.org.
Issues
The issue basically boils down to the fact that typo3.org doesn't have a community system.
Goals / Deliverables
The goal is to create a set of extensions including frontend plugins and backend modules that work together to form a community system. The extensions should be modular in a way that one could build small communities for your local sports club or town or even large scale communities with thousands of users like typo3.org.
We would need a basic set of extensions like
- light-weight but extendable user registration
- user self maintenance
- user profile page
- private messaging
- user groups (think groups like on facebook)
- polls
- avatar support
- who's online
- whatever else you think is essential for a community
- bonus: openID support
Details
You should use PHP5 and good object oriented methods to implement the extensions. Keep the extensions small and modular. Also consider putting classes like for frontend user handling in separate extensions so that they can be reused in other extensions.
Required Skills / Background
Nothing besides the usual PHP programming skills. Understanding communities might be useful though.
Comments
This project will need to make good use of TYPO3's caching system.
