Community Development of Portals within the GBIF Network
A primer
Joint collaboration demonstrates strength of GBIF network
• Nodes require national/regional portals to engage their local communities
• Collaboration is cost-efficient• Common platform supports re-use of
components
The NPT is
• A website construction platform• Extensible to accommodate custom needs– New features added by Nodes community– Shared with other Nodes
• Flexible in regard to hosting– May be installed and run at the Node– May be hosted by another Node
NPT Platform
A website construction platform
• NPT is a website building tool• Provides a foundation for extending features and
capabilities
= NPT
NPT is built on an open source platform
• A “content management system” called Drupal• Drupal is the basis of millions of websites
worldwide• Actively maintained by over 12,000 developers
Drupal is widely used in biodiversity informatics
The basic NPT platform provides everything needed to start a web site
Non-technical staff canjust start adding content!
The NPT provides hosting options so that Nodes who can’t host a web site can still have one
NPT Startup
Described as NPT 1 at the 11th Global Nodes Meeting and in some documents
NPT can be extended by creating and installing Modules
One module might display a calendar on your site
We will kick-start the NPT process by developing two modules that access data
from the GBIF portal
These modules are directed towardsNodes with little web development
capacity
One module will display a species checklist based on occurrence data in the GBIF portal
A second module will display a GBIF data map for each taxon in the species list
NPT Startup Summary
This configuration is a starting point for further development• Provides a customizable website / portal• Provides foundation for further modules to be added• Displays GBIF portal data as data maps for your
country or region
NPT Advanced
To drive the development of your own portal
Next: Kick-start the community-development process
• GBIF funds support development of core NPT component modules
• These modules are– identified & prioritized by Nodes community– developed by Nodes community
Nodes Investment in new functionality
• Nodes extend the platform with new modules
A module I needA module we all need
Promote the community-driven development of NPT
• GBIF promotes training and use of NPT
Different nodes may implement different sets of modules to meet their specific needs
Nodes Portal Toolkit
More information at: http://community.gbif.org/pg/groups/3507/nodes-portal-toolkit-npt/