Resource: Web Development

Guides

J-Learning is a Web site designed specifically to help citizen news sites get started. It offers a four-step site development process: 1. Plan It, 2. Build It, 3. Present It, 4. Promote It.

Tools

Content management systems are a core component of Web site development. A number of systems are open source, which means the underlying code and instructions are public and developers can modify them to suit a particular project. Open-source products often have robust support communities that share information and development advice.  These are widely used tools:

• Drupal.org. Knight Pulse is built with Drupal. Knight is supporting improvements to this platform with the Knight Drupal Initiative. In addition, a subscription package that includes key Drupal features including blogs, wik, community form, social networks, ratings and voting is available from Acquia. Drupal will in 2010 evolve into a content management system on top of a multipurpose development platform for games, transactions and complex applications that supports graphics, shared databases, and all languages and alphabets.
• WordPress.org. This site is built with WordPress, a tool that has grown from a rich blogging tool to a full featured content management system.
• Ruby on Rails. The Knight News Challenge project Spot.Us is built with Ruby.
• Django. The Knight News Challenge project News Mixer is built with Django.
• Populous Project. This Knight News Challenge project has created an open-source platform that features calendar, photo and video uploads and blogging. It is tailored to collegiate and small town news organizations. The project envisions improvements that will help editors and reporters communicate and organize content from remote locations.