OpenChurch 2x Plans and Drupal 8

NOTE: THREAD UPDATED

I am starting a thread to spell out my plans for the 2x build of OpenChurch. I would also like input from those of you who use OpenChurch so that I can make sure that this platform can meet your needs.

Introducing Panopoly

I finally put some time into reviewing Panopoly and I have been very impressed. So much so that I have begun work on OpenChurch 2x using Panopoly as my base. This really takes a lot of the maintenance burden off my shoulders as I am essentially delegating that burden to Panopoly.

Timeline

Drupal 8 is expected to be released some time this year. It won't be stable for a minimum of 6 months. My plan would be to release a bare-bones version of OpenChurch (homepage, theme, some blocks) some time after D8 is released. I would wait for Panopoly to get updated to 8x before I moved forward with the 2x port to D8.

Modules

There have been 2 persistent problems throughout this project.

1. Many users have difficulty with advanced site building modules.

Panopoly makes some things much easier on the editing site and uses Panels in place editor well (which we use on some pages now on OpenChurch). I am also scrapping Context for block placement and instead will use the normal Admin Block page for sidebar blocks (which isn't necessarily the 'Panopoly' way but this is better suited for my audience).

2. Maintenance challenges.

One of the big challenges with OpenChurch is module maintenance. My goal for 2x going forward is to delegate some of that work to Panopoly so that I only have to update the Panopoly version as opposed to needing to update and test a bunch of modules individually. I will also remove any modules that are not absolutely necessary from the OC package.

New Features

For 2x the biggest thing is going to be that the site building tools are going to be different and I would say easier to use. The tools I had for 1x were often too confusing (Context being one of the more challenging modules). The other big change is going to be in design.

Design

I would love to do a design refresh but I am also don't want to change things people like. The first dev iteration of 2x will look mostly the same with some smaller adjustments to make the site more naturally responsive. I am however still researching some ideas for a (modest) design update.

Theming

This will be the biggest change for 2x. The 7x version will use Responsive Bartik which emulates the Drupal 8 core theme (I am not sure which came first). While this theme is not as robust as Omega for instance it will suite the needs of 99% of my audience and really assist me greatly in the D8 port of Openchurch 2x. My goal is to make the theme fully responsive and beautiful on every page. I will be using Panopoly layouts for many of the pages which are easy to customize.

One big goal is to make OpenChurch more portable (see next paragraph). I would like to include a little bit of CSS in each module so that the page layouts will look good in other themes. I would love for people to be able to download and install other themes and for OpenChurch still to look beautiful.

For Drupal 8 my initial goal will be to set up the theme as a sub-theme of Bartik and add a small amount of code to the install profile so that we can at least port the theme + some blocks and some sample content to Drupal 8 without waiting a long time for Contrib modules to get ported. It will be barebones but pretty useful for many.

Portability

A big change going forward for 2x is I do plan to split off the core features of OpenChurch into a new module: openchurch_apps. This will contain the app store and features that you should be able to install on most existing Drupal sites, especially a Panopoly site. I would like the openchurch_apps module and the openchurch_theme to both be fully portable and not dependent on the main OpenChurch install profile.

Migration

I would plan to create an openchurch_migrate module which allows you to move content over from 1 site to the next. There will be no upgrade. The goal here would be to move content, users and taxonomy over from 7x to 8x. I also will try to create a migration path from 1x to 2x in Drupal 7.

Volunteers

1. First I would like a volunteer who has maintainer experience to perform security and other module updates for the D7 & 8 projects on a monthly basis. This would help me out a lot
2. Second, I would like to do a documentation sprint around the time of the initial release. All of my documentation is hosted at http://openchurchsite.com/documentation. We could knock out a lot of docs in a short time if we had volunteers who could help write instructions for each feature.
3. Issue queues, help in the issue queues are also always appreciated.