Setting up a database of upcoming concerts?
Hi. I've been playing with Drupal for a week or two now but ever since 6.0 came out I've been distracted trying to decide which version I should use. I've read a few tutorials and I've tried my best to figure out if Drupal can work for me, but some things aren't clicking so I'm just going to come out and say my needs and hopefully somebody can tell me that its possible:
- Users can submit and edit a venue/location. Very basic, just the city, street address and name. This is all going to be in 1 state.
- Users can submit concert information. Date & time, venue (from a dropdown menu of previously mentioned venues would be superb), list of bands playing, and cost is all I really need. Bonus points if they can upload a flyer.
- A page showing a list of upcoming concert. Since this is statewide there might be multiple events happening on one night, so a regular calendar might get confusing. The link or title of each link would need to be the band names and then under that mention the venue or city.
That much seems like its easily possible based on my experience so far, but what I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is how to theme it. I played around with Views and CCK before but the results were very ugly. Is it easy for me to create a template for the concert listings, and then another template for the page showing the actual concert information (embed a google maps api perhaps)? I'd say figuring out how themes work is my biggest area of confusion, so if this is possible please let me know so I can really start focusing my attention on Drupal!
Oh, another thing. Is it easy for me to create a template that changes how the forum and thread pages look? I don't think I need any extra functions or anything, but having a forum post look exactly like any other page on the website seems very confusing to me. I suppose thats what the node-forum.tpl.php pages I see in theme folders are?
Theming
I am still very new to drupal... and loving it!
One of the best resources I have found for learning theming are...
DrupalDojo: http://drupaldojo.com/lesson/theming-like-a-pro
Another path I have taken is to edit existing themes like Zen. I edited the heck out of hunchbaque and learned quite a bit... http://drupal.org/project/hunchbaque.
I also took my own HTML/CSS layout and hacked in the php code... which at first I had NO IDEA what it was doing, but through some trial and error, I picked up a bunch.
Hope that gives you a start
thanks for the reply. i
thanks for the reply. i actually went and ordered the apress book right after seeing the drupal install over at http://hamptonroads.com/
its almost exactly what i want and from what i read on groups.drupal.org its a lot of customized modules. thats exactly what i was hoping for. i like coding my own things, but other CMS projects seem like you need to hack the core to customize anything. i'm not afraid of php.. i have actually been developing the site i talked about above on and off for the past 2 months but i think going with drupal will help me streamline the process. maybe i'll even be able to contribute a few modules in the process.
the project is basically a database of diy shows at small venues/basements, which are notorious for being ill-planned and badly advertised. i would love to make the right combination of modules to be able to port the project over to other states.
Cool for Drupal
That's really cool.
I am new to php, apache, drupal, mysql... the whole nine yards... I was WYSIWYG for years and years... I have done html & css for a few years and when I started playing with Drupal (for a site I am doing for work) I found the theming capabilities so exciting. I am hoping to one day contribute back a template.
Ask me 3 months ago if I would be writing php code and templates I would have laughed in your face... but with drupaldojo and some other videos I found... I am actually doing it. Tho the theming part still comes faster and easier :) to me.
If you have skills like that, you're excited to use the Drupal backbone, and want to give back... that's what I am learning Drupal is all about... community!
Rock On!
(intended pun alluding to your concert site)