August 12th, 2008

250k nodes working to save our habitat

I had the privilege of working with Srijan Technologies this spring on Drupal and Agile Development trainings for their team and helping them get Apache Solr kicking for the India Environmental Portal which just launched last week to much fanfare.

The site is based on Drupal 5 and features:

What is an environmental portal?

India Environmental Portal is an initiative of the Center for Society and the Environment, one of India’s oldest and most revered environmental NGOs. Here is an excerpt from their about page:

This is the age of environment. And to make a difference, in our lifestyle, in policy and in practice we need information, which is accessible, well categorized and easy to use. The India Environment Portal is our effort to put together a one-stop shop of all that you want to know about environment and development issues. Its politics is overt: to build open, networked and informed societies, who can use knowledge to make change…..

This is a people’s portal. It will actively collate and exchange data, research and information from people working in the field, in campaigns, in scientific institutions, in research and in industry.

I recommend checking out the about page to find out more about this exciting resource:
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/about-us

Congratulations to Ipsita, Rahul, Syed, Shashank, and all the rest of the excellent team at Srijan!

And a special thanks to drunken monkey and Robert Douglass for their work to integrate Drupal and Apache Solr.

Some press about the launch

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/National-portal-on-environment/347761/

http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20080811/812/tnl-national-online-portal-on-environmen.html

http://www.thehindu.com/holnus/002200808112067.htm

http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=104697&keybold=climate%20forest%20environment%20warming

http://www.indiaprwire.com/businessnews/20080811/32685.htm

http://alootechie.net/content/indiaenvironmentportalorgin-launched-provide-environmental-information

6 Responses to “250k nodes working to save our habitat”

  1. venkat-rk says:

    As someone familiar with CSE’s work in India, I am thrilled that they chose to do this in drupal. This has huge significance for the adoption of drupal, especially by the larger NPOs in India. And, it’s about time too.

  2. venkat-rk says:

    One thing that surprises me, though, is the total lack of pathauto use. Not much of SEO either.

  3. Robert Douglass says:

    And thanks to you, too, for your help in the ApacheSolr issue queue!

  4. Rahul Dewan says:

    Thanks very much Jacob for blogging about us on your site. It’s been a privilege to have you associated with us - and it shows in the results of the India Environment Portal, and the enthusiasm of the team you’ve been mentoring. Ofcourse there’s a lot of clean up that still needs to be done, which is going to happen through the next week, including the Mailers for their Daily-News-Bulletin (ofcourse this is one area we would need extensive work in the weeks to come - probably using CiviCRM or similar).

  5. ipsita says:

    Hi venkat-rk,
    Thanks for your remark. I know there are some missing things regarding pathauto and breadcrumb as well. Will fix them soon.

    Ipsita

  6. Erika Hogan says:

    9lx6ftcry47l1aoc

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