By neros on

I have a close friend of mine who I am doing a web site for. I do quite a bit of web development, but this is the first time I have really looked into a CMS. Essentially what my friend needs is a "reps only" section of her website. This section would be restricted to users whom she would enter into the CMS system. Anyone who does not have a user name or password will have access to nothing.

This reps only section would consist of several pieces that would be updated semi-regularly. I.E.- General information (with several sub pages), Tips and Tricks (which again would have several sub pages), FAQ, etc. Any of these pages would be viewable by any user with a valid username/password, but only editable by her. Preferably, the editor would have rich text editing, easily add bullets, colors, etc ala TinyMCE. She would also like to have sections that only specific users, or groups would have access to.

Finally, and this is what drew me to Drupal, she wants to have a forum for her reps, which it appears Drupal has built in. So the cliffs notes of what I need:

1) Only authorized users can VIEW pages.
2) These authorized user accounts set up by the administrator only.
3) Ability to create an easy to navigate hierarchy of somewhat static pages (not the article/date setup that most blogs use, but more like a standard website).
4) Rich text editor ala TinyMCE (not completely necessary, but would be very nice).
5) Specify read access for specific users or groups on certain pages.
6) Forum for authorized users.
7) Not mentioned above, but the ability to post downloadable files (pdf, word docs, etc) for authorized users (again, not necessary, but would be nice)

So, how much of this can Drupal do right out of the box? If it cant do some of these out of the box, are there modules that can? Is Drupal complete overkill for what I need? Any info or tips on what I would need to do this, would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

LaurenH’s picture

LaurenH commented

Hmm, right out of the box? Well...

1.) Yes.
2.) Yes.
3.) Yes.
4.) No, but there are many modules you could easily install (like, well, TinyMCE).
5.) Sorta, but I think what you're looking for would need a module. You can easily set access permissions based on the *type* of node, but to set access permissions on specific nodes you would need something like Nodeaccess or Simpleaccess... it's generally not too difficult to set up.
6.) Yes.
7.) Yes.

The nice thing about Drupal is that if you're aiming to bring a group of people together in one place (i.e. a community), which it sounds like you basically are, then it's not overkill at all. The only way I could see Drupal being overkill is if you just wanted a simple blog, but hey... there's nothing wrong with being a little overprepared!

styro’s picture

styro commented

and even though most of Drupals power comes from the addon modules, it should be able to handle most of that 'out of the box'.

1) Only authorized users can VIEW pages.

Yep that is built in and configurable.

2) These authorized user accounts set up by the administrator only.

Yep that is built in and configurable.

3) Ability to create an easy to navigate hierarchy of somewhat static pages (not the article/date setup that most blogs use, but more like a standard website).

Yep, use the built in menu system.

4) Rich text editor ala TinyMCE (not completely necessary, but would be very nice).

There is an addon module to integrate TinyMCE. Although I find TinyMCE is pretty painful unless you spend a long time tweaking the way it works.

There are also other modules to integrate other rich text editors.

5) Specify read access for specific users or groups on certain pages.

There are addon modules that give you fine grained access control over individual pages.

6) Forum for authorized users.

The built in forum is integrated into the main permissions system. Specifying different sets of permissions for different forums though will require other modules.

7) Not mentioned above, but the ability to post downloadable files (pdf, word docs, etc) for authorized users (again, not necessary, but would be nice)

Yep that is also built in.

Basically, Drupal can have any number of user roles that each get different combinations of permissions (and users can belong to more than one role). The core permissions mostly revolve around what type of actions users can do, but you can install addons that allow you to set content specific permissions so that different pages can have different permissions. It is very flexible.

--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example knowledge base built with Drupal

neros’s picture

neros commented

Lauren and Styro-

Thanks so much for the replies. It looked like Drupal could do everything I wanted, but just wanted to make sure before taking the plunge! I'll give it a whirl tonight. Thanks again!

-Mark