By nube on

Okay, so I have used Joomla and even Mambo in the past. I am proficient with HTML, CSS, XML, and I can look at other people's PHP and tweak it. Yet now that I have an instance of Drupal up and running on the web, I can't seem to figure out how to make it do anything.

Here's what I would like to do, for now (I want much more out of the site later, but... baby steps!);

A) A registration/login system
B) A user forum
C) User profiles (that can be viewed by all)

How hard is that? Apparently too hard for me to do, right now!

Just in case it bears relevance to how I set things up now, here's some of what I aim to have in the future;

a) multiple user types (2-4, not sure yet), with differing access to the forums (some users can post in some areas but not others, some users get read only access to other areas, etc.)
b) different types of profiles for different user types (paid users get more bells and whistles than free users, etc.)
c) live chat rooms

So... how do I get started with the baby steps for now? Unless it directly affects how I set up the basics, don't worry about any of the stuff I have planned for the future; I need a good foundation in a basic setup before I can move on to more advanced stuff!

Thanks!!!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

guidot’s picture

guidot commented

Looks like you got lost in Drupal 6's admin menus. Drupal 7 is out. Use that. It's UI has much improved and will make it way easier to get you started.

But to answer your questions:

A) This is already a working part of the basic install. You can set it up at /admin/user/settings. The login-page is /user. The default-install of drupal should provide a login-form on every page, but if it's not there, you can enable it at /admin/build/block.

B) A basic forum comes with drupal core. You need to enable the module at /admin/build/modules. Alternatively you can use the content-type "story" (that's the name in D6, might have changed in D7) which has already comments enabled and use taxonomy for organizing the content.

C) D6: There's a profile-module in core too. For different types of users you might prefer the contributed module Content Profile.
D7: You can use fields to create profiles and with the Field Permissions-module you can control witch fields different user-types (roles) can use.

nube’s picture

nube commented

Okay, I will give Drupal 7 a try, and hopefully come back with different/more advance questions!

Thanks!