Purpose of this document (see also [meta] What is Pushtape?)

  • Clarify the project mission statement, scope, and intended audience
  • Serve as a reference point for all design decisions including those related to identity, visual design, code development, user interface, and marketing copy
  • Create a roadmap to achieve a 1.0 release

Definitions

  • Mission: Why you do what you do; the organization’s reason for being, its purpose. Says what, in the end, you want to be remembered for.
  • Goals: A set of three to five aims that set the organization’s (or project’s) fundamental, long-range direction.
  • Tactics: Actionable tasks that get deployed to achieve the goals.
  • Results: Your organization’s bottom line. Defined in changed lives—people’s behavior, circumstances, health, hopes, competence, or capacity. Results are always outside the organization.
  • Customers: Those who must be satisfied in order for your organization to achieve results.
  • Deliverables: A tangible chunk of work that needs to be "delivered" by a deadline. Examples: piece of code, report, design document, server maintenance, any building blocks for the project.

Background

  • What type of project is this? What are you building? (examples: a web site, a Drupal product, a software service, a mobile app.)
  • This is a Drupal product.

  • What is the background and history of this project?
  • The goal is to create a Drupal product to meet the needs of solo artists, bands and individual musicians looking for a feature rich content management system for their band's website.

    Historical Pain Points include:

    • Inconsistent UI for music browsing/listening
    • Lack of user friendly organization of music on band sites
    • Technically challenging to build and maintain a CMS without being a web nerd
    • Dependence on third party services
  • Why should this project exist?
  • This project should exist because there are no easy to use open source software packages for putting your music out on the web. Presently, bands cobble together various parts of software packages bundled with third party widgets to build their band's website.

  • Why doesn't it exist already?
  • Time & money. It is fairly complicated and cost prohibitive for most musicians to build a discography and cataloging system for their music web site. Many choose to only spread their music through social networks or online music stores because it is simpler to manage and more cost effective. Additionally, people tend to choose platforms built for traditional blog publishing such as Wordpress over a custom system because it is quicker and easier (and cheaper).

  • When does this project need to be completed?
  • Stable 1.0 release: Summer 2012

Mission

  • What is your mission?
  • Empower musicians to create an online presence for their music that is functional as well as hackable.

  • Who is your customer?
    • Solo Artists
    • Bands
    • DJs & Producers
  • What are your results?
    • A Drupal product that looks similar to Bandcamp that can be hosted anywhere and is open source.
    • A product that serves as a media rich electronic press kit.
  • What are your business goals?
    • Attract new client work in this space
    • Create a product that people can use because I like free and open software
    • See a personal project through to completion and success

Plan

  • What does the development roadmap look like?
  • For 1.0 release:

    • custom base theme
    • ability to publish tracks
    • albums
    • photos
    • blog
    • static pages (about, press kit, tour, contact).
    • Media playback functionality
    • Simple admin interface with restricted permissions to improve the usability and simplicity of the product. (ex: user is not overwhelmed by options available to ROOT)
    • pushtape.com website gets built
      • brochure site that links to downloadable install profile
      • user forums
  • What tactics will you use?
    • Leverage energy of interested parties to create momentum
    • Use drupal.org infrastructure for hosting and development to minimize headaches and costs
    • Use pushtape.com for marketing and support
  • What does success look like?
    • People downloading and utilizing the software package to build their own sites.
    • Developers and designers contributing back their improvements
    • People contribute back a plethora of themes for musicians to choose from
    • A vibrant decentralized support system evolves to help n00bs customize their sites
    • Hosted versions of pushtape

Competitive Landscape

  • Who are your direct or indirect competitors (name and URL)?
    • Bandcamp | Bandcamp.com
    • CASH | cashmusic.org
    • Sixtyone | thesixtyone.com
    • Acquia | Drupalgardens.com
    • Wordpress | wordpress.com
    • Tumblr | tumblr.com
    • CD Baby | hostbaby.com
    • Band Zoogle | bandzoogle.com
    • Topspin | topspinmedia.com
  • Do you particularly like or dislike any of your competitors' sites, or attributes of their sites? List pros and cons for each site.
    • Pro: Bandcamp does a great job of doing audio transcoding and hosting, and has a very simple user interface. Con: Restricted display options.
    • Pro: Tumblr has a variety of themes and easy to customize the theme. Con: No discography support.
    • Pro: CASH has a great open source initiative and are getting good field testing by having artists support and use the software. Con: Still in alpha, not a CMS.
    • Pro: Sixty One treats the browser as a media player and emphasizes music artwork with large, high res photos. Con: Confusing admin interface.
    • Misc Cons: The main objection to most of these sites (CASH excluded) is that they do not let you download or modify the software that runs the site. Most also do not let you export your data.
  • What differentiates you from your competitors?
    • No one has built a F/OSS CMS targeted specifically for musicians. Musicians often have to hire someone to build their site from scratch, or heavily depend on third party services not designed for music publishing (wordpress, tumblr, twitter, facebook etc). Often a musician site is a conglomeration of third party widgets embedded one page because it is quick and easy.
    • Powerful theme customization
    • 100% ownership of all content you publish, because it is hosted on your own server
    • Basic functionality out of the box, with advanced functionality possible
    • Leverages the Drupal community + modules + infrastructure

Research and Strategy

  • Where are you now?
    • Planning and design stage, alpha code
  • Where will you be in 1 year?
    • Release a 1.0 package and build out pushtape.com as a community hub.
  • Where will you be in 2 years?
    • Pushtape field tested by artists
    • Improved ease of use and installation
    • Better mobile support and growing user community
  • Where will you be in 5 years?
    • Decentralized user support
    • Data aggregation
    • Federated social web support
    • Commercial usage of pushtape

Metaphors

  • If your site were a famous person, who would it be and why.
    • Ian MacKaye of Fugazi & Minor Threat, for showing and inspiring musicians alternative methods for making music to the world and staying true to core principles & ideologies.
  • If your site were a car, what would it be and why.
    • A civic hatchback - a simple, dependable, no nonsense practical car for everyday use, but also one that spawned an entire subculture of customizations and modifications (because it was so simple and practical).

Theme & Site Design

  • Are there any design or brand guidelines to adhere to? (brand, identity or style guides for the intended audience?)
    • The design brand should be minimal, simple and functional, and appeal to the intended audience
  • Describe how you would like users to perceive the new site. What is the overall tone? Give adjectives. (e.g. fun, sleek, user friendly, etc. Feel free to include links to sites that you feel achieve these qualities)
    • Fun
    • Futuristic
    • Friendly
    • simple. tumblr.com, vimeo.com, redbullmusicacademy.com, noisey.com, cashmusic.org, bandcamp.com, thesixtyone.com
  • List 3–5 sites you love the visual design of and explain why.
    • giantsystem.tv :: simple navigation, use of large graphics and spacing
    • bandcamp.com :: consistent and information friendly layout
    • cashmusic.org :: use of typography and colors, spacing/layout emphasis
    • thesixtyone.com :: emphasis on large photos & visuals, webplayer feel
    • stonesthrow.com :: ability to show a large amount of information without being overwhelming.
  • List 3–5 sites you dislike the visual design of and explain why.
    • myspace.com :: too many popups, too many choices, confusing.
    • facebook.com :: navigation is buried, encourages wandering.
    • ubercart.org :: looks like drupal. extraneous gradients and rounded corners.
  • List the websites that are similar in nature to yours. Describe what you like and don't like both from a visual, functionality, and usability stand point.
    • bandcamp.com :: Great administration interface. Top navigation bar links directly to the pages you need. Limited number of pages. Quality over quantity, emphasis clearly on music. Dislike the index pages and browsing options. Good download options.
    • tumblr.com :: Can easily demo themes and customize the theme through the interface. Great archive page. Dislike the way content types are organized and limited ways to display content.
    • facebook.com :: The constant input field at the top of every page encourages quick posts. You are always one click away from adding new content. Searching and managing old posts is near impossible. Producer is also a consumer - logging in reveals updates from friends and encourages further use.

Functionality

  • Will your site require workflow? If so, briefly describe these stories and actions. (i.e. update a blog post, rearrange a playlist)
    • Upload track (organize tracks into albums)
    • Upload photos (put em in a gallery)
    • Short, quick status updates
    • Longer blog posts
    • Update a static page
    • Mobile administration (mobile theme for admin experience (responsive admin theme?)
  • What site reporting is required? (i.e. google analytics, site statistics)
    • Phase 1
      • Google Analytics
    • Phase 2
      • General site statistics
      • page visits
      • playback
      • referrals
      • downloads

Installation & Setup

  • Where does the user go to download this project?
    • Pushtape.com, code is hosted on Drupal.org
  • What does the installation process look like?
    • User downloads the zip file
    • Unpack to local computer
    • Upload files to web server
    • Navigate to /install.php and follow directions
  • What does the setup process look like? Is there a default sitemap or demo content?
    • Install wizard asks for basic info like site name, site email, etc
    • When installation is complete, user lands on the homepage which has help text to get started. There will be a default sitemap with dummy content in place that can be easily modified or removed by the user.
  • Common user stories for installation & setup
  1. Download Pushtape
  2. Install Pushtape
  3. Set up site install
  4. How to create or modify the site structure (sitemap)
  5. Upload a new track
  6. Create/modify an album
  7. Create/modify a blog
  8. Create/modify a basic page
  9. Upload a photo
  10. Setup music player
  11. Change the theme

Hosting

  • Where will the site be hosted?
    • Self hosted.
      • Provide users with a list of suggested hosting solutions
      • Add any tips on setting up
  • Any special requirements?
    • Same as Drupal's hosting requirements (Host must be able to run PHP, SQLite/MySQL support).
    • Browser/User Client requirements (browser, mobile compatibility)
    • List bandwidth requirements?
    • Contrib module library requirements?

Content types

  • What are your content types? (examples: basic page, event, blog, press release)
    • Basic Page
    • Blog/News
    • Album
    • Track
    • Photo Set

Template Pages

  • Do you know what template pages need to be designed? (i.e. node pages, landing pages, admin pages, etc)
  1. Header, Footer, 2 column responsive layout
  2. Node templates
    • album
    • track
    • page
    • photo set
    • blog
  3. releases landing page
  4. albums landing page
  5. tracks landing page
  6. photos landing page
  7. blog landing page
  8. about page
  9. contact page
  10. shows/events page
  11. administration pages for:
    • album
    • track
    • page
    • photo
    • blog
    • dashboard
  12. Administration form widget for quick publishing (minimize the number of clicks)

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1.0 Roadmap

[tasks] Deliverables and next steps

  1. Provide a sitemap of all the pages for the default site (simple text outline or flowchart)
  2. List of all template pages (i.e., node templates, list templates, landing page templates, admin templates, etc)
  3. Show key content blocks for each template
  4. Wireframes of all template pages (hand drawn, omnigraffle, or fireworks [960gs plugins available])
  5. Explicitly define all content types & their fields
  6. User stories & workflow stories
  7. Style guide
  8. PDF or HTML comps of all wireframes
  9. Go back to step 1 and review everything above. Revise and repeat as needed.
  10. Build out the theme and site based on HTML/PDF comps
  11. Test and commit code to git and release to community (continuous)

Comments

zirafa’s picture

Issue summary: View changes

Linking to subissues

zirafa’s picture

Issue summary: View changes

mark [tasks] for readability

drupaljohngo’s picture

What about incorporating DDblock preprocess functions into pushtape for a frontpage block with images of say 900x400
with links to album content? Add a field with images to specific releases or content. Maybe use modest-grey as a theme.
Standardize it as part of a Views_slideshow ddblock content type.

I kinda think your reinventing something already functional in Ubercart if you think of audio as
a product item with a SKU.

Try Quickstart 1.0 premade development and create 10-20 sites with different configurations. Install a primative
module configuration to advanced module clutter with Views and Panels templates with different versions of drupal. I think a production
site similar to OpenAtirum for online collaboration isn't too far from realization either. An audio site should have a a frontend discography with a backend technical production area for authorized file sharing for band members and/or audio engineers. A plupload configured dialog with specific user role permissions may foot the bill. Eventually, Organic groups may solve other issues. Export it all in features and share it!!!

I've found Drupal 6.2 is easier to work with when developing than 7.1 for certain functionality. For example,
if a non-drupal solution is available in wordpress how do you migrate it. Modules like importHTML can solve
these issues in 6.2. In 7.1 it isn't an option.

drupaljohngo’s picture

Issue summary: View changes

Updating the competition differentiation paragraph