Community-driven online service
Jarkko Tuunanen · Theseus (Ammattikorkeakoulujen) · 2014
The purpose of this thesis was to implement a community-driven online service for a fashion magazine. The aim was to create the number one fashion and beauty related online service in Finland. The online service consists of two platforms. The core of the service is built on top of Drupal content management system. Wordpress was selected as the platform for the blogs. The user interfaces for both were designed and implemented to be responsive. Layout management in Drupal is challenging due to the limitations in the core Region and Block system. Utilizing Panels and Chaos Tools Suite’s Views Content panes modules for layout management and site building was found to be beneficial. The seeming ease-of-use of the Views module tends to result in difficulties formatting and maintaining content listings. Using entity-based Views listings proved to be practical in order to avoid common pitfalls related to maintainability, and processing and formatting the output. As a result of the comparison, utilizing a minimal base theme as a foundation for a customized theme turned out to be a good decision. The online service was launched on schedule the same day as the first issue of the paper magazine was published. The average unique visitors target was exceeded during the first 12 months since the launch. The implemented theme and the front-end build were seen satisfactory on the whole.