247 Townhall | OpenSourcery – Technology for Good

247 Townhall is a community forum that allows visitors to post videos, stories, audio, and more. A custom Drupal site powered by a combination of contributed and custom modules.

Key Features:

Site visitors can maintain custom lists of their favorite content

Avatar images are automatically resized and given rounded corners and orange borders

Site contributers can submit custom background images for article postings

Site contributers can submit videos on node/add and node/edit forms that are automatically, and silently, uploaded directly to youTube for processing and display

Site administrators can aggregate interesting user-generated content into a "series" or online publication

Story:

247 Townhall is a community forum dedicated to change. Users sign in to share videos, stories, events, trends, and audio. We love this site because it's functional and nice to look at, and, really, how can you not love a site that boasts Mos Def as a contributor?

Users can interact with the site on several levels, from observers to participating members. Members track their favorite content and comment on shared items. We also like that the process begins with new members submitting their personal stories.

We developed 247 Townhall with Drupal, which allows users and site administrators to easily upload video, text and audio. The difficult work happens below the surface so most people don't even have to think about what's happening: upload an image and VOILA! It's cropped into form and displayed exactly where and how you imagined. And by incorporating social networking, content organizing, and user-friendly site editing tools, 247 Townhall is able to maintain a vibrant site that boasts fresh content daily.

Development Process:

The key to the successful deployment of this site was the Agile software development approach that OpenSourcery took with One Economy (the corporation behind 247 Townhall). This was a complex development project with tight internal deadlines, numerous stakeholders, and significant functional requirements. OpenSourcery has partnered with One Economy on a number of projects (including One-Economy.com) and both organizations approached this project with a strong commitment to consistent communication and a tight, organized feedback loop. Solid project management tools and processes, as well as short development iterations and frequent, automated code pushes and database migration scripts, allowed us to manage the complex scope and timeline for this launch.

http://247townhall.org