Scientific site using Drupal - possible or not?
Hello,
I am building a scientific website about nuclear science. These are my requests from the site:
1. Articles system:
1.a. Allow articles to be posted in several categories.
1.b. File attachments (PDF mostly).
1.c. PDF articles (IE an abstract and a link to the PDF article).
2. Editor:
2.a. Latex-like formula editing (scientific site, etc) or better.
2.b. Preferably WYSIWYG.
2.c. Ability to add images to the text.
3. Ease of use:
3.a. The website is based on people contributing content. It means that when someone wants to add an article, it should be simple and intuitive - almost no learning curve.
3.b. Searchable.
4. Forum:
4.a. Solid forum system, with a great number of features and flexibility.
5. News:
5.a. A flexible news system.
6. Dictionary (optional):
6.a. I want to create a dictionary. When a word from the dictionary appears in one of the articles, it should link to this word.
This is more or less. 1, 2,3 and 4 are an absolute must. 5 and 6 are a good bonus.
I have experience with XOOPS, and it failed me on several chapters.
Is Drupal right for my site?
Yes Drupal handles all these
Yes Drupal handles all these in excellent manner. Some of the features you looking like forum and search are available in Drupal core and some of the other in several contributed modules. In most of the cases there are more than one alternatives. Just check on module page under the appropriate category http://drupal.org/project/Modules.
Online Business
Wiki?
Do you think a wiki installation profile would suit my needs better?
- Eli Baskin.
For the WYSIWYG Editor, I
For the WYSIWYG Editor, I would recommend nicEdit. It's simple and wont bog your users down.
http://drupal.org/project/nicedit
As for the wiki, it might be hard to incorporate a forum into that. But it seems like a valid option.
Glossary
For 6 I use http://drupal.org/project/glossary which works very well. Can do tool-tips as well as links, and using taxonomy gives you synonyms etc. Flexible & powerful.
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On drupal 5 vs 6
I am new to Drupal, and I figured out that to me as an webmaster the main difference between Drupal 5 and 6 is the number of modules available. I am getting the impression that nowadays there are a whole more Drupal 5 than Drupal 6 modules. Am I correct? And, more important, from your experience - will Drupal 5 be outdated in a few months and the vast majority of the modules will be developed for Drupal 6?
- Eli Baskin.
Drupal can do everything you
Drupal can do everything you want.
For version thing I definitely recommend Drupal 6 since it allows more theming options. At Drupal 5 I needed advanced forum module to theme properly but at Drupal 6 I was able to create tableless forum only with theming. As you have already noticed only problem about Drupal 6 is number of modules. But this problem will be solved in a couple of months, thanks to Drupal community (you are #1). Drupal
Numbers game?
I don’t think so. As a webmaster, the main difference is surely the improvements in administration that D6 offers. The modules are catching up fast – CCK has a dev release for 6.x.
But numbers alone are not the best measure – a lot of 5.x modules do similar tasks, in a different way or with extra features, some are now part of core, and others provide fixes or features no longer needed: Thus modules are being consolidated as well as ported and developed.
Drupal 5 will be supported at least until D7 is released, probably about a year. People still using D4.7 (or even earlier!) are porting to D5.7 if they need a particular module, or D6.1. There is no rush for those with D5.7 sites.
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Time … flowing like a river.
Maths
For including Maths in your site see http://drupal.org/node/159031 (if you haven’t already found it).
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It’s in the detaιls…