I'm currently migrating an existing website into Drupal and I need help to lay the basic architecture "Drupal-style" and plan the user interaction. I'm ideally looking for "the right way to do it" as opposed to "something that will work" and with the large amount of community sites running Drupal I'm finding it hard to find good guidance for a "no blog, no forum, no comments, business-style site".
We're talking about a fairly large site here, fully translated into 7 languages. I have designed a theme that replicates the basic layout of our existing site. That's great, but each individual page has plenty of additional formatting, pictures, etc, which necessitates plenty of HTML and CSS.
This leads to questions like:
- The general CSS is in the theme, but where do I put the CSS which is specific to a certain page?
- Should I (and the other web developers) program HTML by using the "full HTML" input filter and just typing it in directly?
The pages were designed by web designers with Dreamweaver etc. and we will continue to use the web designers for new major material, but non-technical users will do the new translations of pages and the small ongoing text changes. That's the main reason we chose Drupal, to allow this, plus it has a few other nice features.
As far as I can see, we should allow these non-technical users to use the "full HTML" input filter and tell them not to mess with the actual HTML code. This seems better than getting them to use a WYSIWYG editor that will insert all sorts of unwanted stuff into my code, and may not support the stuff the web developers have inserted anyway. Does this approach seem to make sense?
One question that is sort of bugging me: Is Drupal really the right tool for just allowing non-technical users to edit pages and simplifying internationalisation?. As said, it does have some other features we may leverage like taxonomy. To convince me that it's not the right tool, you would of course have to propose a better solution/tool.
If anyone has any experience with these kind of questions or can offer any help it would be much appreciated.
Comments
It sounds like Drupal is the
It sounds like Drupal is the perfect tool for what you need judging by the limited information you gave us.
You do have to understand that it is a BIG jump from Dreamweaver to Drupal. I am not knocking Dreamweaver, it is a fine tool and is a good tool for certain niche markets and use cases. They are very different tools and work in very different ways.
You are realizing that when you set up a Drupal site, there are a lot of things to consider and get your head wrapped around that can significantly affect how the site will function for years to come. I could try giving you advice, but you really need a Drupal developer to review what you have, your needs, and then to get things set up the way you need them to fit your workflow and suite your needs and even your future needs.
Alternatively, you could spend several months learning this yourself on some test sites or hobby sites before you start to work on the big boy.
In answer to your question, "Is Drupal really the right tool for just allowing non-technical users to edit pages and simplifying internationalisation?", the answer is almost certainly YES. Those are two of Drupal's strongest points, particularly in Drupal 6.
You shouldn't expect your Dreamweaver developers to understand Drupal. They aren't dumb or even necessarily behind the times, it is just a different paradigm. It would be sort of like asking a motorcycle repairman to fix a train. At this stage, you either need to dive into Drupal and understand it or get someone to work with you who does. It will probably take longer and cost more than you might anticipate (althought probably less than other solutions), but it will pay dividends later in easy of use and long term maintenance.
Aside from your Drupal backend developer, you may probably want to look for someone else to theme the site unless you are still comfortable with the theme you have even after you get the backend working.
Also, I suspect you won't be needed the service of the Dreamweaver developers anymore.