GoalGorilla build with Open Social one of the biggest Distributions in Drupal. This distribution builds the foundation for over 1000 communities world wide. We build ourselfs some big communities for clients like the UN, Greenpeace, the Dutch Government and others. All of this clients have a very specific profile and very specific needs. All of them are from different sectors: From NGOs, to Goverment organizations, Voluntary platforms, learning platforms and much more. As well all of our clients have at core a community the goals of the community and the key features for them to reach those goals are different every time. As much as we can rely on the distribution to cover the basics and a even more, every client is different and most bigger communities needs customizations to make the step from a good to a great community.
With every new client new challenges arise. With this talk I want to share some of the insights we gathered over the last 3 years, talk about how to navigate the pitfalls of customizing a Distribution and show how we fit different platforms to the specific requirements of different clients.
This talk is for:
- Developers who use or want to use Open Social (We will discuss some modules we use and technical choices, but it will not be primarily a technical talk)
- Professionals working with online communities
- Project managers or Designers that need to conceptualize projects that are based on a Distribution