November 2006
FiSScNät is a social networking site for swedish speaking scouts in Finland, where people can collaborate and exchange ideas and information. Features include blogs, forums, event calendar, contact information derived from the external member database, and pdf-archive of publications including the member magazine issued every second month. Soon-to-be introduced features are Google Maps integration for all sorts of geographic locations, as well as ability to read email lists through the website.
The platform used is Drupal, with quite a lot of custom code added. I have done most of the coding and graphical design. The project started in November 2006 and we opened up for a test group of 30 in December. The site was launched concurrently with the rebranding of www.scout.fi.
Integration with our external member database is one of the heavier parts. By checking a code found on the member cards and using some hooks into the Drupal account creation routines, we automatically disallow access by non-members. This also allows us to map each user against his/her member data, to be used in various ways. Another custom coded feature worth mentioning is the .mbox parser, which allows us to display various mailing lists, using the Mailman archive files as source.
