[GeoNode-users] Geonode and Django Content Management System

[David Kennewell]

Hi there Geonode users,

I wanted to share a few developments we've made with Geonode and DjangoCMS,
and learn if there are others in the community headed in this direction.

For those not familiar with django-cms <http://django-cms.org> it's a tool
that allows users to edit and publish content directly to a website through
their browser. No coding or web developer required. A typical usecase would
be a reporting publishing an article to her newspaper website.

I've been working with an NGO in Chennai,India to improve the accessibility
of their work around flood management, and have found the CMS a really
useful tool to merge reports and Geonode spatial data together in a way
that readers can engage with. Here's an example:
http://chennaifloodmanagement.org/en/projects/cag-flood-inundation-mapping/

To achieve this outcome, there's basically two steps. I'd be interested in
collaborating with anyone who would like to get involved in either of
these.

*1. Integrating Geonode with DjangoCMS*
Current status:
I've bolted these two together with sticky tape and paper glue to
demonstrate what might be possible on the Chennai project :) Currently I'm
running two separate servers & databases, with hardcoded links in each
project to make it look like it's all talking to each other. Apart from the
dev headache, major drawback here is that users need two django accounts,
one for editing reports in CMS and another for geonode. Yuk.

Desired status:
Integrate DjangoCMS as an app under geonode. Now that geonode is running on
Django 1.8 this is should be possible. If I do go down this path (we still
need some decent traction here to justify it) I'd really appreciate some
guidance on how to do this in a manner that allows both easy integration
for other projects, but acknowledges that this isn't the core use-case for
geonode, so should be an optional extra (in my opinion).

*2. Authoring geonode maps within DjangoCMS content editor. *
Once you're geonode/CMS webapp is up and running, your users still need to
be able to publish geonode maps from the CMS editor. I've written a plugin
to enable this. Once again, it's bare-bones, but it works and we find it
useful. I've pushed the code to github here:
https://github.com/Hydrata/geonode_cms_map
I'd be happy to write an install doc for this, but that's probably not
useful until I resolve the above integration issues. Until then it's a
manual deploy - feel free to reach out if you would like guidance and we
can work through together - I'm sure I'd learn something from this too.

That's it from me for now, I'd love to hear any similar stories or
use-cases that might help guide this development in a way that's useful for
all.

thanks

David Kennewell
Water Resources Engineer
Hydrata.com
+971 55 409 7378
david.kennewell at hydrata.com
https://ae.linkedin.com/in/davekennewell
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