Lodges and other Fraternal/Community Organizations
The steady decline of membership in community organizations has slowed in the last few years as a new wave of younger people gets involved. In many cases, however, these organizations are still lagging behind when it comes to communicating via the web; older members may not immediately recognize the value of a web site as a powerful recruiting and communication tool. Even if they do, they may not be fortunate enough to have a member who is willing and able to undertake the building and upkeep of a web site.
A "Drupal for Lodges" install profile developed by members of these organizations who also happen to know their way around Drupal could be a huge help, and would hopefully bring together some collective best practices that people have come up with in their individual efforts.
Massachusetts Freemasonry 2.0
The Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts is looking at ways to engage current and prospective members with social media: http://www.massfreemasonry.org/index.tpl?&ng_view=56&ng_id=217
It will be interesting to see what develops, and whether open source CMSes might come into play.
Install Profile feature/wish list
I'd like to brainstorm some of the typical features that would make sense to include on an "out of the box" lodge web site:
- WYSIWYG editor
- IMCE
- Calendar
- News page
- Officer profiles
- Photo galleries
- Private OG for committees and other internal discussion groups
- Access control for members-only content / downloads
- Roles for members, officers, content editors
- Contact form
- Path/Pathauto
- Stock top-level pages & primary links ("About/History/FAQ/Contact")
Who's already using Drupal for a Lodge/Chapter/Post website?
I met a few of you at Drupalcon DC, so I know there are some of us out there. Post a link to your site here, and maybe a few implementation details (Which version of Drupal, themes, modules, etc.)
I'll go first:
North Quabbin Lodge, A.F. & A.M. - Drupal 5. Nothing fancy yet; the theme is based on Barlow and the site is pretty straightforward, using CCK/views/Date/Calendar.
The steady decline of membership in community organizations has slowed in the last few years as a new wave of younger people gets involved. In many cases, however, these organizations are still lagging behind when it comes to communicating via the web; older members may not immediately recognize the value of a web site as a powerful recruiting and communication tool. Even if they do, they may not be fortunate enough to have a member who is willing and able to undertake the building and upkeep of a web site.
A "Drupal for Lodges" install profile developed by members of these organizations who also happen to know their way around Drupal could be a huge help, and would hopefully bring together some collective best practices that people have come up with in their individual efforts.
