Who's who site (a variation of resumé, CV and Facebook)
I'm currently trying to create a site where I list politicians, their current elected positions and their history. This would on the surface seem to be something which fits existing modules, and it probably is. I've been trying to solve this in several different ways, but how I want it is hard to do it.
First I was thinking each person is a member of a group (a political party, a government etc), so organic groups might be what I need. No, b/c I need to create a user for each person I'm modelling, and they will never log in, and they all require e-mail addresses. Of course, coupled with Node Profile and CCK might be the way to go.
I'm fairly certain I need to use CCK. But I have two problems, one is with views, and one with CCK.
The CCK problem is the most pertinent. I'd like to add functionality which lets an administrator add a kind of resume. Ie. there will be a table/list of things happening in the life of the person:
June 5, 1995 -- CEO of ACME Inc.
April 6, 1995 - June4, 1995 CEO of ACME Inc. subsidiary ACME Paint.
etc.
The number of entries can be from 0 to unlimited. This is my first stumble block, what do I need for CCK to have a field which can expand like that?
The second stumble block is how can I make a field which requires both a date and a node and/or taxonomy reference.
Furthermore for some resume entries the "what happened" part will have to link to a taxonomy term. Except that according to some postings views aren't good at creating views from taxonomy terms. I'd like a view where I could have a vocabulary named "Political Parties" and then with all the parties as terms in that vocabulary.
Then a view should be created which can show all persons whoose resume points to the political party.
On the surface of it, it is a kind of facebook, or monster.com, except the people are content, not users.
So, any ideas on how to solve this?
Best regards,
Paul
Ah, I forgot....
I've tried to solve this with a kind of "role" content type. except there will be a lot of small nodes to keep track of. But, this is a kind of role thing, it could be the role of "President", "Vice President", "CEO", "CTO", "CIO" etc. The person also belongs to different groups, "the party, earlier party affilliations". And most are time limited.
Paul
leave users as users
Haven't had experience w/ a project like that myself, but on first glance I would suggest sorta "don't fight Drupal" for this one... meaning since Drupal already does everything you need *if* each politician was actually a user, why not just do that-- make each politician a user?
I think, as admin, you can pretty easily create new users behind-the-scenes from teh admin control panel. Then you could
Anyway kinda rough description on my part, but the idea is that since Drupal does a good job of supporting users, just go that route; would prob be easier now and, I think the best part, it would be most future-proof since most future Drupal mods you might wanna use later will want to see users-as-users (Drupal's default) vs. your suggestion of users-as-content. All YMMV 'course.
There is a good "How-To" on how to create a facebook-like site.
http://shellmultimedia.com/tutorials/user-profiles
Under known issues it says: Admin created accounts don't work right.
I'll have to try it, and see what I can do for automated import of data.
Paul K Egell-Johnsen
I will do that
I will use usernode and nodeprofiles and use userimport to import csv files with all the politicians. The names of the politicians will be culled from public sites.
Then I use nodeformpopup and nodereference to integrate functions like n-to-n (party affiliations) and 1-to-1 (spouses) and 1-to-n relationships.
The only thing is that I have a full time position and doing full time studies at the same time, not to mention the most important a family to take care of. But the last few days I've been clocking in quite a few hours of webdevelopment ;)
Paul K Egell-Johnsen