How well can Drupal handle a large web site consisting of smaller sites (or sub sections)?
At the moment, I have a fairly large website. It consists of smaller separate yet interconnected sites. Each one having its own main menu, sub menus, templates, etc. It is currently written in Cold Fusion. Site maintenance is done through FTP + text editor. But I'm looking to move the site to a CMS so that new pages and news items can be added and edited through a web interface.
Is it possible to create a site like this using a single Drupal install? Basically what I need to be able to do is to create a main menu for each smaller site or section. When I create--or one of my site contributers creates--a new page, I need to be able to assign it to one of the sections and an appropriate template needs to be applied. (Templates are assigned on a page by page basis and done so by site contributers, not site readers.) I also need to be able to give out varying levels of access. For example, user 2 might have access to edit pages in sections A and B, but user 3 have access to sections B and C.
I realize this is a big task, I'm not looking for a quick way to do it, just to know if it's possible at all and if Drupal is a viable solution. I'm looking at various open source and commercial products to do this and thought you guys might be able to give me some good insight.
I do have Drupal installed on a local test server, but haven't done much with it yet. So I'm willing to test out any good suggestions.
the short answer is yes,
the short answer is yes, drupal can do this no problem. The first thing you'll need to decide is how you want to segment your "sites" with drupal. Are they truly independent sites? Do they share anything? users? content? permissions? If they are truly separate, you can use a multisite drupal setup. If they are really interconnected but visually appear as separate site you might want to go the organic groups route.
Thanks
The main thing being shared between the sites are users. Most users will only have permission to edit one site, but there are enough of them that need to edit on multiple sites that I don't want to make people get multiple accounts.
Thanks for the reply. I will have to look into the different approaches you mentioned.
if you go the multisite site
if you go the multisite site route, there's a couple of modules that might be useful: http://drupal.org/project/multisite_login and http://drupal.org/project/singlesignon. You might also consider an openid solution (d6 has this built in, d5 it's a contrib).