ProYoga.nl: informative site on yoga and meditation in Dutch

By ProYoga.NL on 6 Mar 2014 at 09:25 UTC

Introduction

ProYoga.nl is a website to inform beginners and advanced practitioners about yoga, meditation and mindfulness. It shows pictures of yoga poses and yoga series with step-by-step instructions and instructional videos. Not only the physical and mental benefits are mentioned, but also the contraindications and risk of certain yoga postures. Furthermore, the website includes a listing of studios for yoga, mindfulness and meditation in major cities of The Netherlands.

Most Valued Modules, Theming and Hidden Gems

It took me 2 months to build, but the website would not have looked the way it does without the prior work of the contributors to the following modules. The most valued modules, in alphabetical order:

Administration Menu: https://drupal.org/project/admin_menu
Display Suite: https://drupal.org/project/ds
Entity Reference: https://drupal.org/project/entityreference
Field Group: https://drupal.org/project/field_group
GMap Module: https://drupal.org/project/gmap
Location: https://drupal.org/project/location
Module Filter: https://drupal.org/project/module_filter
Nucleus Base Theme by ThemeBrain: http://www.themebrain.com/about-nucleus
PathAutho: https://drupal.org/project/pathauto
Superfish: https://drupal.org/project/superfish
Taxonomy Manager: https://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_manager
Taxonomy Views Integrator (TVI): https://drupal.org/project/tvi
Token: https://drupal.org/project/token

Lessons Learned and Challenges

ProYoga.nl is my first attempt at building a website in Drupal 7. I had some prior experience in Drupal 6 and Drupal has definitely improved a lot in user interface and friendliness for a non-coder/assembler like me. Especially, the multitude of modules and forum threads is impressive. At first, Drupal is confusing and it remains complex to navigate the multiple solutions and opinions hidden in various threads and websites. For example, should I go for Display Suite, Views and/or Panels? I decided to skip Panels and I’m quite content with my decision. Yet, still coming to grips with Contextual filters in Views and I definitely wished I had found TVI a lot earlier. Getting GMap to work with filters and Views also posed a challenge. Finally, I fixed out of memory errors that caused URL Alias Patterns to malfunction by disabling Statistics and unnecessary logging. However, Drupal gave me the opportunity to leverage its strength in taxonomy and customization.

What’s Next?

Adding content and tweaking Views is my first priority to improve my SEO. Protecting email addresses in an Email field is a next. Furthermore, I’m considering to add a webshop in the future. Not sure whether it will by Drupal Commerce or something else. Finally, I’m still pondering about a way to give back to the Drupal community once I’ve resolved most of my challenges. I already became an association member and probably, as a non-coder, I’m going to contribute to a few forum threads and translate some modules.