By petersen on

I'm a Joomla developer, but I'm looking for some functionality that Joomla doesn't currently offer (certainly not in any great depth). Drupal seem svery much geared towards my end product but I need to check a few things before I start digging around:

I'm looking to create an overseas property website. To that extent, I'd like to create a flexible structure of Countries > Regions > Further Regions. It seems that Drupal is geared towards this and is sometime referred to as a Taxonomy. 1) Is this correct?

I'm looking to be able to deploy multiple sites on one codebase (to ensure my codebase is up to date). Joomla doesn't support this and the only way to get around this is by cloning sites and then altering the database connections. I wish to be able to deploy 'white label' sites of my main site which can them be deployed to multiple domains, and have different permissions for each domain. For instance one 'white label' site might have only Spanish properties and be adminsterable by only Spanish agents. 2) Is this possible and if so, in what way?

I want to be able to consume XML feeds from other property websites and merge them with my existing properties (probably using XML-RPC). 3) Is this something that Drupal can handle/has support for?

I'm also looking to create my own 'module' to allow searching of properties. 4) I'm assuming that this is something that's already out there?

What good resources are there for getting into Drupal? I've got a great Joomla book from Packt. 5)Is there something similar for Drupal?

Many thanks for your help.

Pete

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Sorry I can't answer all your questions, but just these ones :

1 - Taxonomy
That's right, taxonomy is what you might have to use. See it as a 'tagging' system that support hierarchy and relation between items.. roughly :)

2 - multi sites.
It is possible, have a look at this : http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/multi-site

3 - XML feed
... sure it's possible, but dunno how :)

4 - Custom module and search
Here you can find all the modules related to search in Drupal : http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/105

5 - Books
follow the white rabbit :)
http://drupal.org/books
and to find modules : http://drupalmodules.com/

______________________________

www.raincitystudios.com

property-in-spain’s picture

property-in-spain commented

XML feeds from other sites have to be purged through a reader.
I don´t think there is any software that just accepts property feeds.,
you should look at Argotic
http://www.codeplex.com/Argotic
this seems to be the most flexible option but again it must be customised.

You need to read the feed line by line as they come in many formats that will be seen as invalid.

Good luck
http://www.medhead.com

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

1) yes-- as the other poster pointed out taxonomy is the chief method for doing this. However, there are other methods available as well. The one I like uses nodereference / nodereferrer fields to create relationships between nodes (unit of content in drupal). There are also some node relationship modules as well: node2node, node hierarchy, node relativity, etc.

2) in addition to the multisite capability of drupal, there's also the http://drupal.org/project/domain module which has more features for the sites to interact. If they will truly be completely separate, then multisite is probably what you want.

3) I haven't tried it yet, but there's the http://drupal.org/project/feedme module for consuming xml (doesn't appear to have a d6 version yet though). You also have all the innate xml parsing capabilities of php available to you so you could create your own module if need be.

4) a basic search is built into core, however it's not very effective. There's also the http://drupal.org/project/faceted_search and http://drupal.org/project/cck_facets modules for added faceted search capabilities. Custom 'search' forms can also be created from http://drupal.org/project/views with 'exposed filters'. Also, there's the http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr module for replacing drupal's innate search.

5) there are several excellent books on drupal-- also from packt. I used "pro drupal development" (which is now in its second edition), but there's also another called "Learning Drupal 6 Module Development". Searching amazon with "drupal" should locate them all.

welcome to the community!

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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz