Peroration - Drupal Commons used - tested by newbies

 Why Peroration, I'm not speaking to a Conference ;-)  Well just as from school Latin "Per" mean "For"  and "Oration" is a public speaking, off course in favor of Drupal Commons further development.  The intent of Acquia Drupal Tech Ninjas to offer an out of the box Drupal distribution is a great idea and looking on the numbers of interested site subscriber it looks promising a next and better release.  I wish to supply here a resume of some points which in my opinion would make Drupal Commons more attractive and interesting for more CMS users and people who plan to build a Community out of the box.

 Because I already have spent some times reading and writing around here and also know that the number of request for support and contribution for signalize bugs or improvements are growing and growing and I suppose there are just few people looking at here, I will build some group of links list pointing to the main still open discussions.

 I will begin with modules which are in question for integrate in Drupal distribution package:

Modules:

• Drupal Commons module listing & discussion
• Is it possible to add extra modules to Drupal Commons?
• Add taxonomy access module to Commons distribution
• Drupal Commons and Display Suite
• Make Sweaver part of Drupal Commons
• Chat Module
• HomeBox : Feedback about community oriented
• About Organic Groups Mandatory Group homepage
• Case Tracker
• Private messaging
• Geo-Tagging & Maps
• More elegant user sidebar menu: Admin module
• Real Names with Drupal Commons
• Improved Forums

This first list I tried to build searching the site with the word "Module" I also tried the popular tag "Modules" but I got only 3 items as result which show me that not everybody care to tag their post for organizing content, to do that you may change the tagging configuration in Drupal in"Requested" ;-). So my list is for sure not complete. But you can view the link and provide your comments for supporting or not the ideas.

Themes:

I will not list here the many post that ask for support for theming, we all know that Drupal Commons have only 1 Theme at the moment: Acquia Commons. Instead I will list some post that try to open a discussion about some aspects about Theme and Layout:

•  start sharing "Orange Commons" on Drupal.org
• More themes for Drupal Commons 
• Style font-size for <pre> and <code> should be a bit greater by a Commons default install
• Modify/Delete Administration menu Module dependency from Commons_Core features
• Long usernames get cut off in Shout box
• CSS Modification

 Those links are just few and have only the purpose to underline that at this stage Aquia Commons (Theme) is not easy to custom even using Skinr what is surely most suited for advanced users.

 Installation:

 Well already many people have installed Drupal Commons using different approaches:

•  Installing a test version of Drupal Commons (Acquia Drupal Stack)
•  Installing Drupal Commons (Default advanced Drupal install)
•  How to activate Drupal Commons using the acquia drupal .deb packages for ubuntu/debian?

 The main raised difficulties with installation are System requirements , this because having so many contributed modules and a very long "Commons" custom configuration process that take a bit of time to proceed. I would suggest that for those people that do not have advanced hosting features thy could first made a local installation and then migrate the site using phpmyadmin for the database and the ftp client for upload the folder and files. In this way you will for sure avoid some issues with your host provider.

Ok thanks for reading and feel free to comment here and to the post listed for supporting or not some of the idea there.