Hi, I have spent days agonising over which CMS to choose. Tried demos Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, saw sites created by each. I want to make a news site... something of the form of http://information.dk That site is made by drupal. Of course, that site took months of development and probably customizing of drupal code... but if someone could outline what steps I need to take with drupal to get something similar in structure to that, it would be awesome Thank you in advance.
I am right where you are at clinkngo. I have looked at Joomla, Mambo and Drupal. I am leaning toward either Joomla or Drupal. It seems like people prefer Drupal, but I don't know. It does seem that you can create static pages with Drupal, which would be great for my established site. Anyway, I am interested in the same information. Hopefully someone can point us in the right direction. Good luck. -Gene
Well, if you're a Drupal newbie you won't be able to just jump in and start making a site like that. Drupal is so customizable there really is no set outline to create any type of site. You have to understand the software and use your own creativity to make your vision come true. First you should probably read the Drupal cookbook to get familiar with terminology and how it works in general. Once you have a basic understanding, you should read into and play around with the taxonomy module. It's a very powerful categorization system that this site looks like it uses heavily. Another module I can tell this site uses a lot is Views. You should get to know that module intimately. There's definitely a lot of theming going on with this site as well.
Ok thanx archard i will look at the drupal cookbook. Someone could probably have ideas about how to customize drupal into something other then the generic theme. Maybe there are some tutorials out there? Anyone?
just install it and start playing around with it. I got used to it in a couple of days. Of course I'm still a beginner and there's probably a lot more to drupal, but i know enough to be dangerous now so in the almighty words of nike- just do it
Hi clickngo, First of all thanks for the link.. I've messed with drupal a lot these days and I must say that's one heck of a site they made there. It inspires me a lot. Anyway.. first of all as archard says get used to the terminology of drupal with drupal cook book. That will help a whole lot. The front information.dk "page" managed by the file "page.tpl.php" and it is made of several regions. Header, upper main, middle. lower main, footer. (see http://drupal.org/node/11812) One declares those custom "regions" in the "template.php" file. (see http://drupal.org/phptemplate) Next is to customize the "nodes". A node is the default content creation tool where you can define the stories and news you want to make. And teasers are made of nodes too. When you click on the teaser the full "node" will be displayed. One can have multiple nodes for various purposes or layout. Customize them in "node.tpl.php" file. (see http://drupal.org/node/11816) Las but not least are "blocks (see http://drupal.org/node/11813)" customizable by hacking block.tpl.php file are those things like tag clouds, links to article categories, and you can also place nodes on blocks too like what they do. And blocks can be placed in regions that has been defined on template.php and on "page.tpl.php" Last but not least. You will definitely need several important "modules": http://drupal.org/project/Modules 1) "pathauto" for making URL aliases. http://drupal.org/project/pathauto 2) "admin menu" for easy navigation. http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu 3) "Content Construction Kit (CCK)" for creating custom content http://drupal.org/project/cck 4) "Views" for displaying your content the way you want it. http://drupal.org/project/views Hope it helps.. and if it doesn't make you dizzy... I wish you the best of luck ^________^ Ed
You're most welcome clickngo. and should you manage to create something good please let me know.. ^_______^
excellent post Ass45sin.. i which more people here at DP would actually answer the OP's questions as well as you did.. Green for you!