I spent today working on setting up a basic version of the WhatTalent community website. It's early days, but I'm quite pleased with the day's work. My client, Olly, is too. In fact, he seems to be staying up all night populating his blog!

I think the neatest feature is the little "Shoutbox" I've made for him. I was going to install the Shoutbox module when it occurred to me a "shout" is just a short string of text.

So instead I created a content type called "shout" which only has a title and used the Views module to make a little block to expose my "Shoutbox" to the world. Then I used hook_form_alter to simplify the form and hook_nodeapi to take people to the home page after they posted.

And of course, because "shouts" are nodes, they can be categorised and benefit from all the other things which make node-based solutions cooler than other bespoke options.

Very simple, but the simplest solutions are usually the best.

Click here for Olly's Alpha site and watch the WhatTalent community take shape.