Huuuge update, and join the team!
Written by AbsoluteCross
On September 19th, 2006 03:00 PM in Community News
Many of you guys have asked how you can lend a hand in getting the new Neverside completed. Since Neverside is on the path towards being powered by Drupal, if you'd like to help out and become part of the team, one of the main things you can do is start to become familiar with the Drupal system, or if you already are, lend your knowledge and experience to us puny humans... er Neverside developers. Personally, I've become very excited about the Drupal project the more I've gotten into it, and in addition to powering Neverside with it, I have aspirations that our community might even become a contributing force in furthering its future development (not just for us, but for everyone) 
Neverside is currently in development over at www.neverdev.com - it is currently locked up until everything's presentable, but I wanted to let you know that it's there.
Anyhow, here's a list of some ways you can get started and become a part of the Neverside team. If you would like to lend your talents to the project, you can email team@neverdev.com or send me a PM here at Neverside.
- If you have experience using Drupal in any respect, including theming, administering, customizing, security, module development, or any other area, I would be happy to have you on my team. Though I've poured as much info about Drupal into my mind as possible, there's absolutely no doubt that there's still tons I don't know - you on the other hand probably have the key 
- If you're a programmer, we could definitely use your assistance in potentially customizing some of the many available modules, or developing our own new ones.
- CSS/XHTML advisors.... I do alright, but I'm no Zeldman If standards compliant web design gives you a warm-n-fuzzy feeling inside, then your opinions and advice are just what we need.
- Idea guys (and girls!) for the Neverside Advisory Team. Even if you don't know a thing about programming, content management, etc, I'm willing to bet you have some truly great ideas about how this place could be better. You might not know the code to implement it (and hey, we probably don't either haha... yet), but your ideas are the key to making our site into the perfect home for yourself and your fellow designers and developers.
- Advisors or experts with vBulletin are also needed. We are using vbDrupal, which is a fork of the Drupal project which adds direct integration with vBulletin to Drupal's excellent content-management abilities. For Neverside, Drupal will provide many features such as the Studio (graphics, photos, music, text/poetry, and hopefully video!), user profiles, articles, user-submitted tutorials, and more, while vBulletin will power the forum and user database. A few examples of how you can contribute your vBulletin knowledge include suggestions for "must-have" plugins/hacks, or assistance with creating our vBulletin skin and icons/buttons to match the new Neverside layout's color scheme (vBulletin will be embedded within the rest of the layout, so the header, main menu, etc is already taken care of).
- If you have aspirations to help and become a part of Neverside development but do not currently have the knowledge in Drupal as of yet, you'll be pleased to know that there is a substantial supply of learning material on every aspect of Drupal's use and development. I've been amassing a great mountain of these in my own quest to learn, and would be happy to share my list if you're interested. For starters, here are a quick few:
http://drupal.org/handbooks
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/osource/index.html
http://devbee.com
http://www.bryght.com/tags/drupal
http://www.lullabot.com
http://dudertown.com/howto_classes (including screencasts)
For those who prefer books, there are 2 available (I've almost finished reading the one by David Mercer).
I've posted a list of some of the best sites I've found using Drupal at their core - feel free to check out the list... here are a few key ones for those of you in a hurry
http://www.mtv.co.uk
http://www.projectopus.com
http://www.songbirdnest.com
http://www.flock.com
http://www.socialtext.com
http://www.terminus1525.ca
http://www.theonion.com
http://www.evolt.org
As I'm sure it will be a question on at least a few minds, I wanted to mention the future of NeverAPI. While for the foreseeable future Neverside will no longer use it, Jeremie has expressed interest in continuing to develop it as a side project. If this custom project ever comes to the point of surpassing what we have built with Drupal and vBulletin, then consideration of its use for Neverside will be made. While the option is not on the table for the present, the possibility of NeverAPI becoming an open source project has been suggested.
Anyhow, I'll look forward hearing from all of you who would like to help. Any way at all you can contribute will be terrifically appreciated!
September 23rd, 2006 
