By ratna-1 on

We are a Free ans Open Source community group trying to advocate the use of FOSS in government and education. We have inherited a custom made CMS system. The problem is that the creators of that CMS is no more in the team and the current team find the system difficult to use.

I'm OK with Linux system administration but not familiar with CMSs. I'm doing an evaluation of our future CMS. This IMO what we need:

- one "administrator" and many "content creators"

- the adminstrator "creates" the site, theme, top-level menues, etc. in fact we want to "copy" the theme of the present CMS

- the content creators can work anywhere on the site

- the usual style of the pages are news-like, short articel, links, a picture, somewhat like slashdot

- "new ideas" must be easily added. Example, a poll, a seperate wiki on a specialized subject, etc.

- We already hava a mailinglist on mailman. Not planning to replace that. But special action pages may be useful with attached messages from the readers, say the EU patent fight

What do you people think?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

doka’s picture

doka commented

90% of your whish-list can be made by a simple drupal install.
Start here in the handbook: http://drupal.org/node/43767

Doka

Doka

dgorton’s picture

dgorton commented

Drupal core does all of what you are looking for with no extra modules needed. (I'm not sure what 10% is missing, actually - but perhaps I'm under-thinking some aspect here).

In any case, you should be good to go with minimal hassle. For additional reference, you might also want to check out IBM's series on Drupal -
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/osource/implement.html
Perts 5 - 12 are all about getting up and running in Drupal.

Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites

ratna-1’s picture

ratna-1 commented

Hi guys

Thanks for the replies and the ressources!

I installed the standard package Version 5 on LAMP. It went like a charm. Then added one third party theme and through the webinterface activated all the included "module".

My next question: Is there a good book for what I plan to do? I know the IBM-ressource is comprehensive. Still, I'm from the older generation, who still prefere something hard to hold on ;-)

nlindley’s picture

nlindley commented

You might look at Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. It's not exclusively Drupal, but it might have what you're looking for. You can read a description on this web page of the author of the Drupal section, Robert T. Douglass. I haven't read it, so I can't give a recommendation. I don't know if there are others out there, but this is the only one I know of.

dgorton’s picture

dgorton commented

No need to apologize -- 'real' books are great resources. I haven't had occasion to get one on Drupal, however, so no firsthand knowledge. A quick bit of Googling turned up a blog entry from Dries. He's a pretty good source on Drupal topics:
http://drupal.org/user/1 (that's Dries -- you may recognize the user id and it's associated significance)

He mentions a few Drupal books, including "Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites" here:
http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-books

And links to this site for more info:
http://www.packtpub.com/drupal/book/

Probably worth looking into and reading reviews / comments. Again - the source is pretty impeccable

Drew Gorton
Gorton Studios
Some of our Drupal Sites

ratna-1’s picture

ratna-1 commented

In the mean time I ordered the above book and got it yesterday. Will report back how it worked (or not ;-()