Dear Drupal Community,
I've been thinking for a long time about switching some of my websites to drupal, but I don't want to spend a fortune to do it. So I will allow the readers of this forum to give me their observation about how this can be accomplished. First of all the websites are located at Black Conscious News.com http://www.bconnews.com and Black Conscious Network.com http://www.blackconnet.com
Black Conscious News.com is a content based website, while Black Conscious Network.com is an Online Community.
Black Conscious News.com
The website operates underneath a CMS (now defunct) and uses SSI language to syndicate content. It is one of the few sites you can copy syndicated code and embed it into your website. There is a lot of flexibility in how you can use this code. For instance, you can have headlines with or without pictures. You can make headlines bold, italic or regular. And the amount of formating that is used is endless.
Another interesting thing about this website is that anyone can register to become a writer or content distributor. All that is done is that a person register's and log into their account.
It is a basic CMS and it works very well. For instance, when a writer submits an article, they are confronted with a "Subject" box, "Summary" box and "BODY" of the story. Below is the category you will like to place your article and if you want it to have a picture. There is also a set of tools that makes putting pictures in your article easy.
Then if you want your article to be posted later, you can click the show more list.
There's more (on the homepage, syndication is from many other websites (blog/forum/third-party websites), but I'm sure you all get the point. It is a great CMS for posting articles. However, I will like to expand the functionality of the CMS and it will probably be too expensive. So I'm now at the point of considering DRUPAL as an option to this scenario.
First of all, if you notice, there is no advertisement embedded in any of the articles. I was thinking of an advertisement panel that will make it easy in put banners inside certain sections of the article. I should also be able to put google ads inside the article as well.
Second, the CMS is just slow. I need something that will pop up so my readers and writers don't get frustrated and leave.
Third, if you are registering to become a writer, there is no way to choose a category. This is still an administration function and I don't always remember to limit what category that writer's can submit articles to.
Any other suggestions regarding functionality, please let me know.
Black Conscious Network.com
This site has been lacking since I created. First of all, the forum is not attached to the cms. The forum that I'm using currently is a phpBB. It is syndicated on both the Black Conscious News.com and this websites. Although it provide a valid function, if it was part of the Black Conscious Network.com it will draw more interests.
The biggest obstacle is the inability for members to create their own webpages. I also will like to see a live chat incorporated into the structure (similar to ebonyvoices).
Other aspects of the site includes uploading pictures, a calendar scheduler, a module for events, weather and other features. Black Conscious News.com is syndicated on the Black Conscious Network website. Soon or later, I will like to syndicate my myspace accounts onto the website (since this is a major traffic generator).
So as I close this chapter, I hope you can all give me some suggestion on how to incorporate DRUPAL with my website goals.
Thanks for reading and I hope I hear from you soon.
Chris/Qolspony
