Online recording resources
Indicia
Indicia is a toolkit that simplifies the construction of new websites which allow data entry, mapping and reporting of wildlife records. It’s not a finished online survey website – think of Indicia as a kit car as opposed to a manufactured car. You get the wheels, engine and all the important tricky bits ready-made, but you still have to assemble the parts.
To find out more go to the Indicia Wiki or for help in setting up your site go to the NBN forum
Don't worry if you are not a web developer as we have tools that enable you to build your site within the website content management system - Drupal
Instant Indicia
Instant Indicia is a new product and is the quickest way to build websites using Indicia. Instant Indicia provides Indicia functionality already integrated into a content management system alongside the other tools needed to build online recording websites. You simply select from the list of “features” you want to enable on your website – input forms, reports, maps, verification etc – and Instant Indicia does the rest.
More specifically, Instant Indicia is an extension of the Drupal content management system for building online recording websites. Once installed, the basis of an online recording site can be built simply by selecting from a number of ready-made building blocks and performing a few configuration tasks.
Download Instant Indicia
A comprehensive tutorial on the use of Indicia is now available and can be downloaded here.
Once you are ready to create your own online recording site you can download Instant Indicia by clicking on the link below:
Instant Indicia Drupal installation kit
Instant Indicia tutorial
Already using Indicia?
Are you already using Indicia or do you plan to use it in the future?
We would like to gather feedback on your experiences of using Indicia, and highlight individual case studies. If you would like to participate and have your project highlighted in a forthcoming issue of eNews please do let us know.
Please email us information on:
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your organisation
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your project
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your comments on how easy or difficult Indicia is to use
Indicia and Instant Indicia are funded through the OPAL project
Drupal
Drupal is a content management system that greatly eases the task of managing a website. In particular many of the extensions that already exists for it make it very applicable to hosting biodiversity related sites (such as that for a National Scheme or Local Record Centre) and further extensions are expected to appear over the next year. There is quite a lot of interest in the system at the moment, particularly across the biodiversity community – for example it has been adopted by the highly publicised Encyclopedia of Life. JNCC are in the process of producing a couple of guides on applying Drupal 6 in this way and early drafts of these are available below. For more details on Drupal visit their website http://drupal.org/
Emerging Drupal bioinformatics group http://groups.drupal.org/bioinformatics
Scratchpads
Within the UK the Natural History Museum have led the development of an implementation of Drupal known as Scratchpads (link). This is particularly aimed at taxonomists but could also potentially be adopted by a national scheme to give an initial web presence with very little cost.
Scratchpad links:
Main Scratchpad Site (includes link to apply for a Scratchpad) http://scratchpads.eu
Scratchpad project modules http://home.scratchpads.eu/
Scratchpad SVN repository http://svn.scratchpads.eu/viewvc/scratchpads/
BMC Bioinformatics paper http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/S14/S6
Google group setup to share ideas and experience on applying Drupal http://groups.google.com/group/scratchpads
Drupal guides:
The tutorial on Instant Indicia is also an excellent starting point for learning Drupal.
Instant Indicia Tutorial
Indicia is an Open Source project funded by the National Biodiversity Network through the Big lottery funded project Open Air Laboratories Network (OPAL) and is managed by NBN and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.