Scratchpad 2011 Planning Decisions

On Wednesday the Scratchpad team as part of the ViBRANT project had a planning meeting to discuss development priorities for the coming year. More detail will be provided in the coming days once the meeting report is finalised, but in the mean time here are the key decisions:

• All Scratchpad modules will be ported to Drupal version 7 by the end of 2011. This is quite a task as there are over 60 Scratchpad modules to port, and we use a similar number of contributed modules.
• Data from all Scratchpad sites will be fully ported to Drupal 7 by end of 2011, with many months of user testing before we switch over
• Ben Scott in coordination with the rest of the Scratchpad team will be leading the development of a more consistent user interface for editing and viewing data across all Scratchpad content types
• We will develop a new default theme for all sites as part of the user interface upgrade
• We will add data services (possibly via Darwin Core Archive & extensions) on all Scratchpad content types for all sites
• We will put together a service register cataloguing all data services available across all the Scratchpads
• We will develop a portal integrating access to Scratchpad content from all sites
• We will add video support as part of a new multimedia module

We aim to make the transition to Drupal 7 much smoother that the Drupal 6 conversion of 2009. To this end we will put provisions in place for users and communities not wanting to change their sites immediately.

Thanks for your support over 2010

Vince Smith, Project Coordinator
On behalf of the Scratchpad / ViBRANT team