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By lilon on
Hi,
I am a developer with no Drupal/PhP knowledge (only java, c#, vb). I was asked to develop a site for a group of academics (genocide prevention). Site requirements are mainly:
1. Access: should allow fine-granularity administration, restricted anonymous access to a few nodes, and control of VIEW, EDIT, DELETE to authenticated users by role (likely three or four different roles: group members, and third party casual users such as NGOs or governments reps)
2. Forums: this will be the core of the site so it will be good if it could have similar look and functionality to other existing forums. Some forums should be viewable (but not updatable) by anonymous users, others viewable/updatable by authenticated users only. Some roles should be able to view but not to update.
3. Document management/archive: relatively simple, but needs to group documents and allow authenticated users to upload and download. (in the more distant future maybe collaborate on writing too)
4. Mail: allow intercommunication among authenticated users, both one to one and one to many.
I need to have the site running in a month or two. I've had a bit of a read and from first look, unless I am mistaken, it looks like Drupal is currently not in an ideal position for these requirements:
1. + 2. Advanced forum which seems to be ideal is not expected in months.
Forum_access is not ready for version 6.
ACL is having problems with version 6.
Most other access versions are also either not ready for 6 (TAC, TACLite) or do not seem to be granular enough for Forums (Content_Access, Node_Access, Simple_Access, Node_Privacy by Role, Menu_Per_Role)
3. The only DMS I could find was FM_Manager which is in alpha2 for version 6. (Is it suitable for my needs in version 5.x?)
4. Could not find a module that handles 1:1 and 1:M based on user profiles and roles. Does it exist?
I am not trying to sound critical as I fully understand and appreciate the nature of open source voluntarism.
I would very much appreciate, however, advices on whether I should go Drupal or some other open source (I would go DNN which I am familiar with but the site must be hosted on Linux with MySql as backend).
Also, if Drupal is still recommended, then should I go ver. 5 or 6?
thanks so very much.
Comments
Hi Eyal
Hi Eyal -
If you know java, c#, vb, fortunately PHP should be a walk in the park for you :) (not that you need much programming to work with Drupal usually, but if you wanted to customize a module or write your own).
Advanced Forum is solid enough for use... many sites use it, you just need to be careful with upgrades (test first). I saw it on this site today: http://www.worshipcentral.org/forum
There are a lot of modules that are in non-final release stages for D6, but they aren't necessarily "broken". I would hesitate to launch a mission critical site with some of them, but for a less intensive site I would probably go ahead, assuming no bugs pop up during testing.
ACL appears to be having problems with D6 (at least according to the project page) with Event module, but not overall.
2. If Forum Access is insufficient, try out the dev of TAC or TACLite... if they function without bugs in the areas you need, then I'd go with it. Final releases shouldn't be much further out. Also "sometimes" unfortunately some modules take a long time to release a full version even though it's ready to go... some never get past dev. I'd suggest downloading all the modules you're interested in and trying them out on a WAMP/MAMP/LAMP setup and if it works, great - if it's close/almost there, see if you can suggest a fix or write a patch to get it to 100%.
Not sure about 4. Look into Organic Groups (OG). Privatemsg 2 might be able to do this but it's not as ready as you'd need (HEAD version is D6).
5. Personally I'd do this with something like FileField (added to CCK). Categorize/organize them then with Taxonomy. Make a View to display them and if you want, expose filters or other controls to allow users to filter down the results, search, etc. I tried out WebFM and it worked with no issues on D6 so far, so worth considering if you like what it offers. Also IMCE module is not just an image manager but a general file manager. The UI leaves a lot to be desired though, but it has various merits overall.
Hope this helps.
-- David
absolutecross.com
[new guide/lesson in progress: Creating a CCK and Views powered Drupal site - feedback welcome]
Thanks David for a thorough and well-written answer
Situation is looking better. Just a few clarifications:
1. I am actually an ex developer. I was chosen because I am currently writing a PhD on genocide prevention and they wanted someone from the field. This means that unfortunately I don't have much time to pick up PhP or to engage in heavy duty customizing.
2. Although the website is not going to be a mission-critical one, it will host discussions on quite a high level of people who are used to reliable means of communications.(senior academics, senior diplomats, etc) . Therefore I would prefer a relatively bug-free environment.
3. Any more insights are welcomed.
thanks very much
Working On A Similar Project...
I am currently working on something similar, at www.issacharnetwork.org. My plan is to create a collaborative framework to encourage greater communication and interaction between Christian congregations around the world, within an interface that is easy to use even for the non-techie.
I look forward to hearing how this project goes for you.
Thanks Daniel
I had a look at your site. Looks impressive and promising. I'll try to keep you posted as I go along.
Keep up the good work.
I use D6 on a daily basis
I use D6 on a daily basis and rarely run into any bugs, other than in bleeding edge releases I try out on my local development server. Though if you're uncomfortable with it I'd say consider Drupal 5. It will continue to be supported until Drupal 7 is released, which is probably in the ballpark of 1 year away. If you do choose D5, then my main advice is to ensure that any module you select "will" have an upgrade path - it should currently have at the very least a 6.x dev version or better, or else I would recommend you do not use the module. If a module is going to get upgraded at all, it likely has a dev version by now at the very least. If you go this route you will be able to upgrade to Drupal 6 at some point within the next year without too much hassle, before it becomes unsupported, and then on version 6 have another 1.5 to 2+ years of support (whenever Drupal 8 comes out). There are still many many websites running D5.
If you stick with modules which are supported by Acquia, you should have no problems with Drupal 6 (and if the rest of your modules are well-chosen, you'll be fine). I wrote about this to CentOS.org who are considering Drupal: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2008-October/003498.html
Here is a "recipe" of modules I put together for them (including details about the maintainers of each module): http://www.davidnewkerk.com/module-recipes/r-centos
My site runs most of the listed modules as well under D6, with no errors/bugs. Your site would not need some of these and would need a few different ones. Those you probably wouldn't need from that list include: FAQ, Forward, Nice Menus, Nodequeue, Panels, and Quick Tabs. Depending on how you choose to handle images (e.g. IMCE, Asset, etc) you might not need ImageField, ImageAPI, and ImageCache. If the site is to be "private" (not open to public comments, registration, etc) you could eliminate CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA. Alternately you can use Mollom (by Acquia) for spam prevention.
Thoughts on forum... most CMSes do not come with a forum... they tie in with other external forums. If Drupal's forum will be insufficient, then there are various "bridge" modules, as there are with other CMSes. For instance http://drupal.org/project/phpbbforum (looks like this one "can" work with D5 if you need it to) and http://drupal.org/project/phpbb (Drupal 5 only, click View all releases). There are others as well for various other forum software.
You might consider Joomla 1.5 as well, but only if it has functionality you must have and is not available in at least Drupal 5 (I work with both Joomla and Drupal, and really do not recommend Joomla). If you choose Joomla I'd advise even greater care in module selection (they call them components), since it is even less controlled than on Drupal.org and most components are each hosted on separate off-site 3rd party websites, which makes security/updates and community-assisted bug fixes harder to manage compared to Drupal (see my above CentOS post as well for details).
Hope this helps.
-- David
absolutecross.com
[new guide/lesson in progress: Creating a CCK and Views powered Drupal site - feedback welcome]
Thanks again David
Very impressive answer indeed. I'll test the advanced_forum and the Access_forum and also try my luck with FileField, ImageField and again with WebFM. If anyone knows of an internal email system for drupal that can use roles for 1:M correspondence, please let me know.
thanks very much