By Dihi on

Hello,

I have downloaded and had a play with Drupal 5.7 and I like what I see. What I really want to know now is whether Drupal can fulfil the needs of the website I am planning to build. I am looking specifically for modules, which I might need to look into installing. I don't mind doing a *little* bit of PHP coding if required, but I am looking at Drupal to replace a home-brew PHP solution I have written due to lack of time to write tonnes of code extending it.

The key features of the website are:

  • WYSIWYG text editor for posting news items (must be usable by people who do not know HTML)
  • Uploading of largish (10-20MB) audio files by members
  • Categorisation of uploaded audio files (e.g by subject)
  • Some nodes must only be viewable by logged-in members
  • Members list/contact details only viewable by members

Is this possible with Drupal, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Regards

Jon

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

joe4’s picture

joe4 commented

* WYSIWYG text editor for posting news items (must be usable by people who do not know HTML)
fckeditor or tinymce

* Uploading of largish (10-20MB) audio files by members
Size depends on your server settings. Look at the media modules

* Categorisation of uploaded audio files (e.g by subject)
Taxonomy, tagging

* Some nodes must only be viewable by logged-in members
User access menu. Create a role that has proper access.

* Members list/contact details only viewable by members
Contact module with proper settings in user access. Also there is a default for new users contact form off or on.

-------------
Adoption Agency Reviews http://www.adoptionagencyratings.com

marcvangend’s picture

marcvangend
he/him
Primary language Dutch
Location Amsterdam
commented

Hi jon,
Welcome to the Drupal community.
Drupal is definately capable of doing what you ask for.
Personally, I would advice you to use Drupal 5.7. Drupal 6 is just around the corner, and is has some very promising features, but many modules still have to be updated. You don't want your project to grind to a hold when you realise you need just one more module, which happens to be D5 only.

Two of the most used modules are CCK and Views. I think the majority of Drupal sites has those installed and they are probably integrated into core by Drupal 7.
CCK allows you to define your own content types. Read more about it here: http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/cck. Reading your features, you are definately going to need it.
With Views you can select specific data from your content and present it in a number of ways. (see http://drupal.org/node/109604) If you need views will depend on the interaction design of your website.

There are different options to help people without HTML knowledge to enter content. A wysiwyg editor is one option. You could choose a complex one, like TinyMCE of FCKeditor, or a simple one like Widgeditor. You can look them up on the modules page: http://drupal.org/project/Modules. A risk of wysiwyg editors is that they can be too complex, while you are trying to provide simplicity. Also, it might allow your users to produce code which breaks your design. Sometimes it's better to create a thought-out content type which allows users to enter all information (title, text, images, audio, date, whatever) step by step. The presentation is handled completely by your template, leaving less margin for user generated errors.

Personally I do not have much experience with sites that need authorisation for certain content, but I am 100% sure it can be done in Drupal. The categorisation is really easy with the core module called taxonomy. (http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy)

I hope this helps!

Muslim guy’s picture

Muslim guy commented

http://drupal.org/project/nodeaccess

*Less complicated than taxonomy_access

Dihi’s picture

Dihi commented

Thank you for all the replies. I will look into all the modules mentioned and start developing my site further with Drupal.

I have run into some problems with my host and Drupal (limits on mysql commands, htaccess commands and php upload size), so I am going to have a play locally until I get the site working, then look for a new drupal-compatible host.

Thanks again for the help - I'm sure I will be back here again before long ;)

Jon

rernst’s picture

rernst commented

Those are common problems with cheap shared web hosts: they're all things that they are unwilling or unwelcome to change. I would advise against going with shared hosting at all. A purpose Drupal host, or general VPS with sufficient resources is a better bet.

Dihi’s picture

Dihi commented

I intend to cancel my current shared host account and move to a hosting provided that explicitly supports Drupal, as soon as I get a local version of the site up to scratch.