Proximity order of display for partners in the CiviCRM Partner list

[Mark Tompsett]

Currently, the list of partners on the CiviCRM web site... http://civicrm.org/providers/partners is given in alphabetical order by partner.  It would be nice if that list could be displayed in proximity order to that of the visitor, ie someone visits the site and they get to see the partners nearest to them.   

If the visitor was authenticated to the web site then they might have given their address in their contact record, but in general visitors will not be authenticated at all (or if they are then they might not have given a location address), so it would be good to try to use their IP address to geolocate them.
(We obviously know the location addresses of the partners.)

The CiviCRM web site is a Drupal site and there is at least one Drupal module for geolocating visitors from their IP address, such as https://drupal.org/project/smart_ip, so what about sorting the view of partners by proximity to the (apparent) location of the visitor (unless the visitor is a search engine spider, perhaps?).

What do we reckon?  Has anyone done anything similar on any other Drupal site, and have some pointers/tips to share on this point?

Mark   

[Hershel]

Seeing as how the majority of projects do not require face to face meetings, I don't know if this is necessary. The drawback of it of course is that if you are a provider from a place with more visitors, you will be more featured on that page than another provider. Would be discriminating against providers in Timbuktu.

I think the current site shows them in random order, which seems reasonable.

[Mark Tompsett]

Thanks Hershel

As you are in the hosting business then what you sell is pretty standard and intelligible, which explains why so many of your client engagements do not require any meetings.  However, that is not the rule for CiviCRM projects where an implementer needs to understand the specific needs of a client, in which case meetings are indispensable. 

The current site lists partners in alphabetical order... http://civicrm.org/providers/partners ... which gives undue prominence to companies whose names are early in the alphabet, and not very helpful to a potential user looking for a local implementer. 
A potential user in Timbuktu would find an implementer in southern Europe, I expect.   

[Donald Lobo]

Note that the partner stuff is still a work in progress and is being tweaked as we speak

Its using stock drupal modules, so if there are things / easy solutions that we can do to "localize" stuff for the end user, we'd be happy to consider it

lobo