For 100+ years, the Jewish Publication Society has been a leading publisher of Jewish scholarly and general interest books including the Tanakh, the mostly widely read Jewish translation of the Bible. JPS is also becoming a leader in using new media to evolve its business model and provide greater impact and utility to its constituents. The JPS Interactive web site, originally called "Yavnet," has been a sandbox for experimenting with ways this can be done.
Launched in September of 2007, the then "Yavnet" web site implemented several concepts that would allow JPS to experiment at low cost before it knew exactly what it wanted. Drupal has proven an ideal platform for that kind of experimentation.
Most significant among these experiments have been:
- Online course enhancements for students participating in the creation of visual interpretations of biblical texts. Using Imagefield, Imagecache, Views, Views Bonus, and a bit of custom code, functionality was developed which allows users to select images from a gallery and then create a new node which displays those images and allows the users to compare them.
- Innovative blog styling using Taxonomy image for visual display of blog-bost themes.
- Smackdown voting using Advanced Poll and Voting API modules used for edgey The People of the Comic Book section.