Tech-Wanderings of Greg Holsclaw

I have written up the complete case study/showcase description at http://drupal.org/node/224003. Here is the intro quote:

Dog Park USA is a testament to the leverage Drupal as a Content Management Framework (CMF) gives web site developers. With the large array of core and contributed modules, and a bit of experience, the short time it takes to get a functioning site up and ready for content contribution can be astonishing.

Since my wife and I are developing this site in our spare time, our limiting factor is time. Re-inventing the wheel is not something we want to do, and with the speed, breadth and depth of Drupal, its contributed modules and its great community, we didn't need to.

The article contains brief descriptions of how we created the desired functionality through Drupal's module, links to all the pertinent module, themes and support documents, followed by some points of customization that really made the site our own.

Highlights

• How to make an image gallery with imagefield, imagecache, thickbox and views.
• How to use gmap, location and views to create regional map representations
• A new contributed module, Link to us
• A thumbnail sketch on how to make an exportable google map widget
• Some pointers on theme overriding (to customize the Gmap markers and general look of the marker bubbles

Once we update to Drupal 6, we will look to add organic groups for dog owner groups, which will integrate nicely with the dog park pages (linking the dog parks and the groups in a way that MeetUp never will be able to).

But really, the whole article is a testament to Drupal really speeds up the act of web site creation.

Or course the site has also been submitted to the Showcase content for the Boston `08 DrupalCon, http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/showcase/dog-park-usa.