Case Study: Davis Applied Technology College
amariotti - September 6, 2008 - 05:51
I finished our year-long project of a brand new website using Drupal. My case study is here and here if anyone is interested (the latter being my research starting with CMSs to site completion).
And here's a link to the site: http://www.datc.edu
Feedback is welcome! (design, usability, content, etc.)
amariotti
Good write-up, great job
That's really astounding to have got such a cohesive-looking result as a first-ever Drupal site.
I like the history you provided, it reads straightforward, but probably involved a lot of trial-and-error to make your way to those results. Especially interesting was your ability to make the decision to outsource a certain bit of custom functionality. It's important to know when you are reaching the limits of what you can do yourself (without lots of extra study) and when it's more practical to just enlist real help.
The theme is tidy, and looks like really good code. I see you've stayed Drupally for most of the functions and not hacked too much custom stuff into the theme - which is an early temptation untul you find the right hooks :-)
The site browses well, and looks like it will serve its purpose really well. FYI, here's something very similar I assisted on last month (just consulting, not my build)
I also like the way you've been blogging a few Drupal topics... It shows good methods.
Just to avoid being overly positive ;-) the css you used for formatting on http://www.datc.edu/continuing-ed is an ... interesting ... way of getting the job done!
.dan.
if you are asking a question you think should be documented, please provide a link to the handbook where you think the answer should be found.
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Thanks for your comments. I
Thanks for your comments. I don't see myself as a good writer, unfortunately, but I'm working on it. Especially in the blog setting...
As far as the CSS on the continuing-ed page, what would you recommend? I think I worked on it for a few minutes then got frustrated (due to lack of time) and just went and made it work for all browsers. I will be going through looking at all pages of the site and fine tuning the css.
I'm not worried about the
I'm not worried about the css itself, and don't care about tables - just the selector.
#node-60 table, #node-132 table {style.css (line 1085)background:transparent url(images/page_bground.jpg) no-repeat scroll left top;
border-bottom:1px solid #CBC2B1;
margin-bottom:10px;
margin-top:0pt;
width:600px;
}
... all tables in just those two nodes get formatted as a feature block.
vs the more natural (?) idea of just adding a class to those two tables and theming that.
I always realize there's something wrong if there is something as content-specific as node-numbers showing up in my css. Plus you can re-use that concept later in a new page just using the CMS (WYSIWYG notwithstanding).
And gods help anyone who comes in a year later and tries to actually add a table - eg in a global block?
But it does just work, so I'll give you that. It was just an "o rly?" moment when I looked at the code.
There are dozens of dialects of css selection methods - each to their own.
.dan.
if you are asking a question you think should be documented, please provide a link to the handbook where you think the answer should be found.
| http://www.coders.co.nz/ |
Thanks. I appreciate that. I
Thanks. I appreciate that. I will definitely take a look at it. I'm supposed to be adding that table to a few other pages so I will take a look at that.