Idea-Box

Idea-Box is a django app for collecting and surfacing ideas from users, in the vein of IdeaScale, IdeaX, and Django Voice. Idea-Box differs from these projects in its minimal, easily integrate-able interface. Idea-Box also takes a strong stance on transparency, such that ideas, votes, etc. are tied to specific users.

Features

• Idea Submission
• Tagging (via taggit)
• Voting
• Comments
• Listing by trending, likes, and recently added
• Archive/hide ideas
• Customizable challenges for specific campaigns

Screen shot

Requirements

• django (1.5.4) - This is a django app, so you need django.
• django-taggit - A library for Tags within django
• mock - A library for creating mock objects for testing.
• south - A library for schema and data migrations.
• django-mptt - A library enabling nested/reply-to comments

Optional

• collab platform - Installing idea-box as an app inside a collab platform provides several convenience features:
  • Autocomplete when adding new tags (requires elasticsearch server)
  • User can delete tags he/she created
  • Email notifications

Installation

• Use pip to install the dependencies listed above
• If not using collab as the Django platform, you still need to install collab for custom_comments

pip install git+https://github.com/cfpb/collab.git#egg=collab

Settings File

Modify your settings file to add the following to your INSTALLED_APPS:

'django.contrib.comments',
'taggit',
'south',
'mptt',
'core.custom_comments',
'idea'

If using a newer version of django-taggit, add the following to your settings file:

SOUTH_MIGRATION_MODULES = {
    'taggit': 'taggit.south_migrations',
}

Folder Structure

You will need to get the contents of the src/idea directory into your django project. The simplest way to do this might be a symbolic link.

mydjango_project/
  |- idea/      (includes models.py, views.py, etc.)
  |- mydjango_project/ (settings.py, url.py, etc.)
  |- manage.py
  |- etc etc etc

URLs

Add the idea.urls and comments.urls to you url.py. For example:

from mydjango_project import settings

if 'idea' in settings.INSTALLED_APPS and \
        'django.contrib.comments' in settings.INSTALLED_APPS:
    urlpatterns.append(url(r'^comments/',
        include('django.contrib.comments.urls')))
    urlpatterns.append(url(r'^idea/', include('idea.urls', namespace='idea')))

Migrations

From your project root, synchronize and migrate the new apps. Make sure to set your database settings.

$ python ./manage.py syncdb --noinput --migrate

Templates

A basic set of templates has been provided. The 'base.html' template should probably be overwritten into something less basic for a better user experience.

If users in the system have a profile module specified our templates will use this to link users to a profile page. This is specified through the AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE setting. Your profile module will also have to specify a get_absolute_url() method.

CSS

The default CSS style for Idea-Box is not ready for production. This was done intentionally so that Idea-Box's style can match the style of the platform in which it resides (i.e. not everyone wants a green header). The simplest way to improve the styling is to source src/idea/static/idea/css/sample_style.css in the css_files block in the /src/idea/templates/idea/idea-base.html template:

{% block "css_files" %}
    # ... existing code ...
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}idea/css/sample_style.css">
{% endblock %}

Ideally, your Django platform will provide styles that can be sourced in the base.html template described in the section above so Idea-Box can match the look and feel of your system.

Buildout

An alternative way to install the software is to use the buildout configuration. To use buildout to create a working project, run the following:

$ pip install zc.buildout distribute
$ buildout

Then, run the django binary in the bin directory.

Campaign Banner

To create a challenge, use django's administrative page to add a Banner model object. The text field will be displayed at the right of the Idea-Box idea listing page. The banner will only be displayed between Start Date and End Date (or indefinitely after the Start Date if the End Date is empty.)