Improvements to the 'featured groups' feature

[seanh]

Collecting all the bugs and feature requests related to the "featured groups" on the front page together under a single issue. Even all together, I think this is small enough to be dealt with as a single issue.

Below are the things that have been suggested. Not saying we'll definitely implement all of these, maybe we won't do some of them, or maybe some will end up being split off into separate issues to do later.

• CKAN should be able to show organizations, as well as groups, on the front page. This has already been implemented in an extension: http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/ckan-dev/2013-March/004248.html
• Add a nice "Featured groups and organizations" feature page to the docs, documenting this feature.
• If no ckan.featured_groups is set in the config file, how does CKAN decide which groups are shown on the front page? Clarify this in the docs.
• If the user sets more than two featured groups using the ckan.featured_groups config file setting, show them all not just the first two.
• Control what datasets are shown for each group or org:
  • How many datasets are shown
  • What order the datasets are shown in
  • Set which datasets are shown by giving a specific list?
• Sysadmin users should be able to control all this from the site admin panel, not just by using the config file

When both organizations and groups are shown, should it be in two separate sections e.g. with the featured organizations on top and the featured groups below? Or are they mixed together? Do we have two config settings ckan.featured_groups and ckan.featured_organizations or do we simply allow organization names to be given in ckan.featured_groups?

Related: #860, #999

[tobes]

I'd like to move this into an extension and add the info via a template helper function or two so that it is more optional and could be added to any page if so desired.

It would help simplify the home controller too.

[kindly]

Closing this as it is referenced from #1126 and covers the same ground.