The NGO Pulse portal was built using Drupal and makes extensive use of Organic Groups and Panels. Content from an existing Joomla website was converted to Drupal using custom PHP scripts which imported the data into the Drupal database. An image gallery carousel allows users to scroll through images associated with articles/groups. Users can register on the site to post comments, participate in discussions and create blogs.
The NGO Pulse Portal and the weekly NGO Pulse e-newsletter provide a gateway to the South African NGO sector. Its four main objectives are to develop the institutional capacity of the NGO sector through providing information that supports stronger management practises; map NGOs and their activities through Prodder , the most comprehensive database of its kind in Africa; create a community space for civil society exchange; and promote the benefits of ICTs in support of the work of civil society through the SANGOTeCH Technology Donation Portal . The portal provides NGOs with a mechanism to air their views, while also creating the opportunity for other stakeholders to critique and evaluate the sector. It has become a marketplace where services can be procured and exchanged. It also provides SANGONeT with a strategic mechanism to communicate its activities and services to the NGO sector and other development stakeholders.
Portfolio of websites
NGO Pulse (SANGONET)
Ikamva Youth
Ikamva is a South African non-profit organization focused on the empowerment of youth through education, e-literacy training and career guidance.
The Ikamva Youth & Ikamvanite Zone sites are both Drupal 6 sites run from a single multisite install on a Dreamhost VPS.
A notable feature of the Youth website is that it implements a home page slideshow which allows the client to add still images as well as videos to the slideshow. The main focus of the site is to provide information about the organisation and to recruit volunteers.
Cape Town Green Map
The Cape Town Green Map is a Drupal 6 website, incorporating Google maps, and dynamic home page photo slideshow. The client has the ability to add news items, blog posts, photos, events, tips, links and more. The home page is automatically populated with the latest news and events, while a random header image is displayed each time the page is loaded. Users can submit ‘Green Events’ and ‘Green Tips’ for publishing on the site once approved.
The Joburg Green Map website was duplicated from the Cape Town site and as such has mostly the same functionality.
There is talk of more sites for South Africa so I would like to move to a multisite setup or investigate using Aegir, or even a custom git-based solution.
Gauteng City-Region Observatory
The academic focused GCRO website allows the client to communicate their work to stakeholders and the public in general. The site was initially developed using Drupal 6, but upgraded to Drupal 7 in 2013. The Zen 7.x-5.4 theme was used as a basis for the Drupal 7 theme creation, and SASS and Compass (plus Zen Grids) were used too. A Responsive theme design is being planned for 2014.
The site makes use of the Lightbox 2 module for displaying image slideshows (for example: on the Gallery page and Vignettes page ), while the home page slideshow was set up using Nodequeue, Views Slideshow and Imagecache modules.
Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA)
The ERSA website was migrated from Joomla to Drupal 7. The Drupal version of the site enables the client to upload new research publications, news and events. Currently working on revamping the not so pretty gallery of awards pages inherited from the old Joomla site. The client can also easily create a MailChimp newsletter from the latest publications and send this to their subscribers from within MailChimp. Ongoing monthly maintenance, new features and support provided. Google Analytics reports and recommendations also provided twice yearly. The code for the site is managed using a private GIT repository.