An other "does it fill the bill" Question for a large Medical Health Association site.....
Good evening. I've read a few reviews and discussions during the last two days. I installed Joomla a few years ago, wich I found a bit confusing and weak regarding lay out and creating submenus. After a few days I left it alone and didn't return to it sunce then. So I'm still considering myself to be a Newbee with CMS.
I'm still a bit confused and insecure about which CMs to use.
The site that I'm probably going to build up from scratch is currently maintained by a single person, but since the gentleman is going to be retired soon, there's probably the need to include a bunch of people and even those of other institutions to edit all those sections. The site is a super tanker full of links and articles that are totally awful to navigate, a real mess to say so. The content needs to be wrapped up into the right order and put together into the right categories.
It will need a highly sophisticated navigation that serves the visitor with a clear visual lay out of a navigation tree.
So far, being new to Drupal, I have noticed that, navigation wise, most Drupal sites figure out confusing to me.
Klicking a navi link does not reveal a sub menu, and in many cases won't even have a hover effect. Instead, there's often some kind of navi or sub navi box that doesn't show a visited or active color and allways seems to be very static without any obvious change in style and color. Breadcrumbs seem not to be very common either with Drupal sites
Not does the CMS of my dreams needs to be user friendly, it's importamt that it enables me to organize and create sections and subsections fast and with a clean overview over the whole labyrinth.
I know a little about HTML and I have created a few sites w. rapid weaver. Also learned a bit about how to fiddle with the css files. I prefer easy and intuitive ways of designing a site and would describe my skills as being more a graphically oriented designer than a coding lover.
From what I read and so far have seen on the web, Drupal is interesting although it makes me hesitating. I haven't quit the idea to use Joomla as a fast and o.k. eye candy site out of the box. But from what I read, Joomla isn't really going to compete on the long run.
What do you guy thinx?
Drupal (plus a initially a developer)
Drupal sounds like possibly a good candidate based on requirement for:-
- Structured site content
- Content navigation options
- Scalability of content organisation
But to get the benefits, that would probably not exist in other CMS, needs someone with experience of structuring site content in Drupal (e.g. setting up taxonomies for different topics and creating new node types for different types of information content). Once the information structure is in place then you can simple add content as a site editor and with very little effort the new content should follow the site structure.
This means hiring a drupal site designer - like myself ;¬) - who should discuss the nature of your content, design a site structure for it and provide short to medium term support. But their design should be such that the content can be added by you and even the structure expanded by you, without their involvement once you have had some practise with the supplied design.
Drupal's strength is that it can treat content as information to be structured, combined, categorised and navigated etc. rather than as just a series of pages. But if you are trying to make use of this without prior Drupal knowledge and experience then get a developer in (not one that just does pretty-stuff but one that can design the site structure). If this is a site that does not warrant the expense then you could still try Drupal with a simple design at first and add taxonomy etc. afterwards.
NOTE: Drupal 5 or Drupal 6?
DRUPAL 6 is first choice for security and forward compatabiliy. But if you want a wider range of modules available, such as more MENU/navigation modules, then consider Drupal 5. Or do without the ideal menu module (if it does not already exist for v6) in the short term and wait a couple of months for the module developers to bring out a v6 version.
Regards
John Bryan
www.ALT2.com
Application Integration Specialists
Tel: +44 (0)1235 847040
Well,..
first of all, thank you for your reply. If setting up taxonomies is nothing other than creating a content box with its' corresponding navi link, then hopefully things should not get too complicated. Creating a structure is a concept which needs to make its'way into the site. That is something that I'm willing to learn with Drupal if it should become my choice.
My main concern is more a question of how it will look like visually.There's this "Telecoms" Link in your site. The way it expands and reveals its' sub menus is very close to exactly what I'm looking for.
A good visual overview is what I'm mainly shooting for.
Here's a good example of a good navi bar. It's one of my favourites.
1. What's needed for an expanding navi like on your "Telcoms" link. Is it a module or doe it come with native Drupal? Is it theme related?
2. Is there s.th. similar like this navigation http://www.spiegel.de in Drupal world?
You're welcome
1: That particular example uses a module add-on :- http://drupal.org/project/dhtml_menu
2: See a customer site (under construction so please escuse) www.AC2DAY.co.uk which uses http://drupal.org/project/nice_menus
With both of these you create your menu using built in mechanism and the modules convert the normal menu into dynamic menus. The modules create the interaction behaviour and the look of the menus can be drastically altered by your own CSS manipulations.
Regards
John Bryan
www.ALT2.com
Application Integration Specialists
Tel: UK 08700 3456-31
That's the one, Thanx
That's the one,
Thanx bunches.
Nice menu
Another module for menus is "Nice menu". I use it in two sites and find it quite easy to use and customize simple thinks like colors etc. Another advantage is that the text in the buttons can be read by search engines robots, which helps your SEO.
Good luck!