Hi everyone,
My first post, great forum... ! :)
I am looking for a CMS solution for my web site and Drupal is currently near the top of my list. I have looked at the various sites and have played around with the Demo site. However, I wasn't able to find answers to some of my questions. Therefore, I decided to ask for your help.
The web site in question is a portal for architects who sell stock house plans. Currently, it's powered by another solution, but it I am planning on expanding it and the current technology doesn't give me everything I need.
Here's a partial list of features, I would like to implement on my site. Basically, my question is: Can Drupal do all these?
1. The site is split into three main sections:
A. House Plans - providing a listing of stock house plans; each listing is served in an identical, pre-defined format (image, title, floor area, width, depth, # of bedrooms, # of bathrooms, description, etc.)
B. Architects - providing a listing of professionals; each listing is served in an identical, pre-defined format (name, logo, address, phone, fax, email, website URL, description, etc.)
C. News - blog-like news items contributed by individual users.
2. Each house plan listing has its architect assigned to it. Clicking on the architect's name would bring her/his profile, which should be standardized but with custom fields.
3. House plans data should be directly importable into the MySQL database. I own a software (separate from Drupal) that can do this. The question is: does Drupal allow it? (I've got 1,000's of existing house plan listings with new ones submitted to me continuously by architects; entering them one-by-one into the system is out of question for me).
4. House plans can be categorized into multiple categories (i.e.: one listing could belong to many categories, such as: Victorian, one-story, sloping lot, etc.).
5. House plan listings can be browsed AND searched by any of the pre-defined fields (by: category or multiple categories, floor area from/to, # of bedrooms from/to, etc.)
6. Architects can be browsed AND searched by location (country, state, city), where their services are available (i.e.: one architect could be listed under many different locations).
Can Drupal do these (ideally, without hacking the code)? If not, could anyone suggest an alternative?
THANK YOU very much in advance for your help! :)
Best wishes,
Miroslav
Comments
You can use the Flexinode
You can use the Flexinode module to create custom 'node' types with input fields that you choose. You could use this for the house plans etc.
Flexinode, Taxonomy and Location modules
Except for No.3 (I don't know the answer), Drupal can do everything else out of the box. I say this even as a non-programmer.
Flexinode will help you build pages with all those custom fields you want. Taxonomy module will be absolutely indispensable for your site. Please spend as much time as you can understanding this module- there are some great forum postings about it although I don't have a ready list of those urls.
Also look at the location module.
My guess is you don't need anything more than these three modules for the features you have listed.
I would think that No 3 is possible - but with a custom module
As the format of the files is unknown it would be hard to find a generic module that would import specific data.
Once the flexinode is used and the data layout fixed - I imagine that a custom module could be developed that loads a file from the PC, parses it and dumps it to the mysql database.
It may be worth you while to look at modules such as upload or attachment to see how they do file management. Also this would give you an idea as to the skills rquired to develop your own module.
Paddy.
http://deburca.org, and http://amadain.net
Paddy.
http://deburca.org
Don't think that would be a problem
As long as I will know the MySQL database/table structure, I will be able to re-group my data to fit that structure, create a CSV file or an Excel sheet, and use Navicat to import my data directly into the MySQL database... provided that Drupal allows this (although, I don't see why it shouldn't).
Sounds promising
That sounds promising. Thanks! :)
If anybody could point me to good resources/posts/manuals for those three modules, that would be wonderful!
How about complex searches (5.)?
For example:
a) All plans between 1,200 and 1,350 sq. ft.
b) All Victorian, plans between 1,200 and 1,350 sq. ft.
c) All Victorian, 2-story, plans between 1,200 and 1,350 sq. ft.
d) All Victorian, 2-story, plans with walk-out basement between 1,200 and 1,350 sq. ft.
This is one of the most important user-requested features for my site. Is this possible?
The trip_search module may
The trip_search module may be what you are looking for.
Customization is the key
You can easly customize trip_search module to fit these requirements.
--
Fehér János aka Aries
http://aries.mindworks.hu