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

Four high-level requirements

• Use case 1: A simple, hosted web site• Use case 2: A collaborative web development

platform• Use case 3: Access to processed GBIF data• Use case 4: Access to local, raw data

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/