[super] Groups UI and UX improvements in v1.6 from Cygri

[shevski]

Various UX and UI improvements to groups.

Etherpad: ​http://ckan.okfnpad.org/feature-1521-groups-ux

Improved groups

From Richard Cyganiak.

This is a set of proposals to make the groups feature more powerful. As a result, currently separate CKAN instances such as ​http://ie.ckan.net/ could be turned into a simple group on the ​Data Hub without losing their separate identity.

• Group homepages: Make the group pages more attractive and welcoming as homepages. The main Data Hub homepage does a great job at this now – can the group pages be made more like that? They're quite uninformative and bland right now.
• Subdomains for groups: Enable subdomains such as ie.thedatahub.org as aliases for thedatahub.org/group/ireland
• Search within the group: Have a big search box that searches just within the group on the group page, with a look like on ​http://thedatahub.org/dataset
• Have an Add a dataset to this group link on the group page, perhaps in the sidebar.
• Navigation within the group: Have some more navigation starting points on the group page, e.g., the Tags + Resource Format sidebar from ​http://thedatahub.org/dataset
• Group documentation: Add the ability to add more “About this group” text, or pages like “FAQ” and “Extra field conventions”.
  • The only place where one can currently put group-specific text is before the dataset list. Putting much text there is bad as it moves the datasets below the fold.
  • Can the top-level sections of a group's description be automatically turned into separate pages that are linked from the sidebar? With headlines About, Frequently Asked Questions and How to get involved, we'd then get three links in the sidebar that point to datahub.org/group/ireland/about, datahub.org/group/ireland/frequently-asked-questions, datahub.org/group/ireland/how-to-get-involved
    • RP: WONTFIX this is being considered for future (generally useful) but cost/benefit here was low particularly as it wasn't clear what optimal implementation was.

Additional

• Display members of a group as well as admins (if less than 10? If more than 10 display count only ...?)
• Better group index page (sort by number of dataset, allow searching ...) - #1403
  • Add search to groups: ​http://thedatahub.org/group
  • Way to filter by activity, number of datasets
• #1597 Tag search, filtered by group
  • RP: not worth it in terms of benefit/cost IMO

Steps

• "Add Dataset" button on action bar
  • Make it a dropdown? -> New Dataset / Existing Dataset
  • Redirect Add Existing -> Edit
  • Check permissions
• Expandable "about this group" box
• Implement simplest search-this-group box
  • turn the list of datasets into a dynamic list of search results
    • pagination
  • Matching set of facets in the sidebar (matches 'real' search page)
    • Deleteable, displayed facets

Nice-To-Have

• Get rid of the old group_package_show action (confirm with team)
• Tabbed "about this group" box (extract headers?)
• Scrollable group members widget in the sidebar

[thejimmyg]

It would be nice if the new UX also made it clearer that a user has to login, before they click the "Add a group" link which currently takes them to the login page with the message "Unauthorized to create a group".

[zephod]

This function can be deprecated, as groups will use Solr searching to list their packages.

​https://github.com/okfn/ckan/blob/master/ckan/logic/action/get.py#L398

[zephod]

Resolved in this merge:

​https://github.com/okfn/ckan/commit/2337424dd4ebe3b81b6da454f2305031922d3d5c

[dread]

This went into CKAN 1.6