Someone drupal me.

[rudedog]

I've been playing with the idea of checking into all the drupal stuff.
I know there are several phpnuke and drupal people hanging around here, as well as us joomla jockys.

So I'm like a junky in need of a information fix here. Someone feed me the dope on drupal. how do you like it? Whats the best features that you like? cool community or not? stable?secure?
I need seo!! good seo??
how about forums? integrated or bridged?

go ahead let me have it, i can take it. put me on a opensource high.
btw. I know its alot of questions already, BUT does anyone have a suggestion for a ms vista compatible desktop server. my jsas wont work with vista.
( I know about the vista thing, i didn't really have a choice, machine came loaded already. ok, fine, lame excuse. Truth is im lazy,ok.)

[Kris10]

Open Source? SEO? I like the way you talk RudeDog!

I'll start this by saying I am not a programmer and I don't play one on TV. I also hate reading directions. I can design sites, work with PHP and SEO, but I can't sit down and write custom apps.

I've played with several CMS, including PHP-Nuke, Drupal and Joomla. I don't like Nuke at all, it has too many vulnerabilities and clunky code. I tried Drupal but I didn't really get how to use it. I figured out making pages and all that, but it seemed like something I'd need to read up on to use. Joomla is showing potential. It has a lot of different ways to create and organize content, and I picked up on its use pretty quickly. There's also a lot of nice templates out there.

I've built a couple sites off of WordPress and it has awesome plugins. I've found some for self-updating HTML and XML sitemaps, form creators, title tag optimizers and photo galleries. WordPress gets bashed a lot but I've found it the easiest to use for non-programmers.

I still lean towards creating a site from scratch and using select Open Source tools (i.e. Coppermine) for greater interactivity, but CMS have come a long way. I'm curious to hear from more advanced Drupal and Joomla users if you're out there!

[MichelleC]

[disclaimer: I'm a Drupal evangalist. ]

I was surprised to see Drupal mentioned in the new posts here. I live Drupal all day long when I'm not off with the kids but not normally on this site. LOL

how do you like it?

Love it! Been using it 3 years and would never go back to homegrown again.

Whats the best features that you like?
It's extremely customizable. In 3 years, I've never needed to hack the core. You can modify pretty much everything using the hook system and theming.

cool community or not?
Awesome community. Very helpful and friendly.

stable?
Depends what you mean by this. Once a major version is feature frozen, it's stable. APIs are only changed in minor versions if absolutely necessary. Each major version, though, does break backwards compatibility. That allows Drupal to move forward and always work on making the code the best it can be without worrying about breaking previous versions. Your data will always be able to be moved from version to version but custom code will likely need changes. You generally have about 2 years before a version is retired, though.

secure?
Yes, there's a security team and they keep on top of it. There's a mailing list to be informed of any security issues found.

I need seo!! good seo??
Drupal comes with SEF URLs in core. The path module lets you put in human readable paths instead of node/XX and pathauto automates the process.

how about forums? integrated or bridged?
There is a core forum module and you can use my advanced forum module to make it look more like stand alone forum software. There is also a bridge to VB and to PHPBB but I don't know anything about those.

Anything else?

Michelle

PS: Coulee Region ONLINE is a Drupal site.

[rudedog]

LOL @ michellec.
I created this topic thinking you wouldn't be able to resist. That's a good thing. lots of info to share, right.

I have created several sites with joomla, worked on geeklog for a while, and just thought i would try aether drupal or e107.
It seems that the joomla community thinks highly of drupal as well. while i really like joomla it seems drupal has some advantages or at least that what i heard. seo is one of them. templating is another. how does the templating work. can you use basic html template or do they have to be coded for the cms.
another thing im interested in is user management. rumor had it that drupal allows any amount of user levels with just core code, no need to do extensive hacks or bots.
joomla has a native hierarchy and then thats it. some attempts have been made to mod it so that you can change them.

@cris. Im no where near a programmer either, I just like to mess around modifying things. hacking the code when i can. with the lists of api's and modules out there for these cms's it usually not to hard to change things here and there to get what you need.
joomla is a really good cms, easyer to learn and administer then most. even though there are third party bots or modules to help with the seo end of things i find them hard to use.
drupal does look like it will take awhile to learn, thats ok i guess, my account for server space is closing the first so i will have time to tinker around till the next project comes along.

I stay away from the nuke variations mainly for one reason. the script kiddies like them, which means they already know more about the software then they should. Im not sure i can have confidence in the security of the software.
of course if i were to ever become a gamer, then i might think about it. gamers seem to love the nuke variations.

[MichelleC]

It seems that the joomla community thinks highly of drupal as well.

While there's some friendly rivalries there, the communities mostly get along pretty good. Joomla is great for people who want to get up and running quickly and easily and want a lot of premade themes to choose from. Drupal is great for people who are willing to dig in and get past the high learning curve and be rewarded with an extremely versatile site that's easy to customize down to very small detail.

how does the templating work. can you use basic html template or do they have to be coded for the cms.

There are a few theme (template) engines for Drupal but, by far, the most popular is phptemplate. This is what comes with Drupal itself and most themes use it. Themes are basically HTML/CSS pages with bits of code in them to show the dynamic parts. For example, to print the main content of the page, you use <?php print $content ?> where you want it to go. There's a lot more to it and you can get very complex if you want to with theme override functions and such. But it all depends on how far you want to go with it.

rumor had it that drupal allows any amount of user levels with just core code, no need to do extensive hacks or bots.

I don't know how Joomla does it but Drupal uses roles. You can add as many as you like. You start with two roles: anonymous and authenticated and then you define whatever you need like admin, moderator, whatever. Each role has its own set of permissions and they are cumulative. So you set all the permissions that authenticated users have and then set the ones that want to add to moderator, asign the person to the moderator role, and they get all the permissions from autheniticated and moderator.

Whew... I'm writing a book here.

Michelle

[rudedog]

Sorry it took so long to reply. I was trying to get time to read up on drupal. looks like there is an editing battle going on over at wikipedia about the section dedicated to drupal. the comments section has 5 times more to read then the actual article. I did start to read some sort of start up document but the kids kept trying to get me to take a nap so they could use the computer for games.
they won. but i don't mind, I like naps.

so i still need a suggestion for a desktop development server. there was one i saw suggested in the part of the drupal site i did get to read but it was 150$. its probably real good software but if i had an extra 150 laying around i wouldnt need to let my hosting go.

so any other Ideas? msas or jsas wont work.

@Kriss, isnt wordpress for blogging? i have not used it before, sounds interesting though. I have a question then about wordpress, does it allow multiple blogs off of one database? joomla now has a mod that allows multiple sites off of one instalation, and jsas allows multiples on the desktop server.

I quess i should ask about drupal to, does it also allow you to operate multiple sites on one installation? these would be completely separate sites functioning with the same database and source, but yet modified seperatly.

while were at it, does anyone like e107?

man, so many questions and so little coffee. lifes not fair.

[MichelleC]

I don't know about the Windows server thing... I use WAMPserver to do dev work on my sites locally but I wouldn't try to run a live site from that. Charter blocks port 80 anyway. If you can't afford hosting, have a look at https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ as an option.

Drupal has some multi site options but I've found I like to keep my sites totally seperate. It's just easier to maintain that way. If you really want to, though, Drupal will let you share a codebase as well as a database. Both are pretty easy to do. It only gets complicated if you want to share tables between sites.

Wordpress is for blogging, yes. They have some sort of app that lets you host multiple blogs off one install. That's about the extent of my WP knowledge.

I know nothing about e107.

Michelle

[rudedog]

I will have to check out wampserver. I just need it for dev, i dont think you can run a site off of them can you? I will attemp setting up a webserver later when i get some funding.

[MichelleC]

It's Install PHP 5 Apache MySQL on Windows : WampServer . I don't know about Vista but it runs fine on XP. You could run a site off of it if your ISP doesn't block the port. WAMP just means Windows Apache Mysql PHP. It's all the bits you need to run a website all in one package.

Michelle (off to bed)

[rudedog]

thanks for the link.
its downloaded and installed. seems to be working fine so far.
now i need to learn all the server stuff to understand what this all does.
jsas was much more basic.
thats cool though i needed to learn all this stuff anyways.

Thanks again.

[rudedog]

well kris 10, Im moving right along here. Started a Wordpress blog today. so now I get to figure this all out too. Soooo much software, so little time.

Got any suggestions?

[Kris10]

Originally Posted by rudedog

isnt wordpress for blogging?

It's mostly used for blogging but you can make static pages with it. There's so many free templates; if you want it to look more like a traditional website and less "bloggy" you can use a template that puts emphasis on the "Pages" section.

[rudedog]

sounds good to me, I will have to figure out how to do that. I only have a small choice so far. I think Im like the first blogger on this new site, so im working with what I have access to so far.

[keith]

We did a value-added service for over a hundred sites. Started with Drupal. As soon as seven or more Drupal sites kicked in, it took the server down.

Not good for multiple installs. This was about 2-3 years ago.

Regards,
Keith