I am looking to create a niche website that loosely follows the following model
- The frontpage is an updated collection of links to current news on the topic. Beside each link is a link to a forum topic where users can discuss the article.
- The news links are submitted by the users of the site. Our moderators get the chance to review and approve them, at which time they are published to the top of the frontpage (just the link to the external site, no teaser).
From what i've read so far, this is pretty simple to do in Drupal. My concern is while I am familiar with basic php, msql, css, and html, I am by no means a power user. Given that I already have a rough idea of how to implement this site from scratch if I use vbulletin to run the forum, what are the pros of using Drupal to develop the site? Specifically,
- How long is the learning curve for something like my site?
- What modules will I need to achieve the above?
- How do I define new content types (the link with no teaser) and the moderator approval process in Drupal?
- It appears that Drupal's forum module is somewhat limited. If I use vBulletin, is it possible to integrate the two so users have a single login? Can vbulletin forums be displayed nested in Drupal generated pages (i.e. with the forum in the middle and the drupal sidebars etc on the sides)
Any comments would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Comments
Why not VBulletin?
If you know that what you're looking for can be accomplished using VBulletin, I'm interested in what is holding you back from using it?
As for a Drupal recipe, I would think the following modules would help: http://drupal.org/project/cck, http://drupal.org/project/views, http://drupal.org/project/simplefeed, http://drupal.org/project/workflow-ng
Well vBulletin would be just
Well vBulletin would be just for the forums. I was looking at Drupal as a more 'complete' solution that the entire site could be run under. Thanks for the links.
Forum
If you decide to go for Drupal, you might want to check out http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum before settling on a vbulletin/Drupal-mix. And here's a brief description on the limitations of Advanced forum: http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com/node/1741
I agree on the fact that
I agree on the fact that drupal is a better solution for an overall project, even if the forums modules are not as advanced or feature rich as a dedicated forum application, they are moving towards that direction, and in the long term I think that using only drupal is a safer solution, the need to integrate applications is something that a cms should be able avoid.
The learning curve is hard to determine since we don't really know where you stand at the moment, but once you get the hang of drupal things start going really fast.
http://inTribu.com