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By DanKD on
I am going to create a site for my grad program and want to know if drupal would be a good solution. I have experience working with php, but it's been a couple years and I don't have tremendous amounts of time to manage the site.
In general the my fellow students want something simple, There are 18 people in my year of the program and that will be the user to start with. Eventually, hopefully we will get the two others years (40 or so people) involved as well in a mentoring program.
There are a few things I want included. Forums of course with multiple user groups so I can have separateure there are other tools I may want to use as well, but those are some I can think of for now. groups for people in different years of the program. I want a download management system for our dozens to hundreds of presentations and other resources. A calendar system for upcoming dates and stuff. I'm sure that are other things I can't think of right now.
I also suppose if it works out well, it could evolve into a bigger resource, but it may or may not happen.
Would drupal fit my needs?
Are the following webhosts able to manage drupal and multiple modules?
HostMonster
WebHostingPad
HostGater
Thank you so much for your responses!
Comments
You can find...
You can find everything your looking for in either the core install or in contributed modules. Check around and see which modules work for you. I think Drupal will work for you. I personally use HostGator and they have been a great host so far. Great uptime and speed, no problems even with a large amount of extra modules enabled. Also their technical support staff is very helpful.
http://inletmedia.com
Drupal is certainly capable
Drupal is certainly capable of doing what you need, I would however, offer a few comments that might get you started in the right direction.
First, the largest overhead is getting everything setup. Once things are set up, managing and updating the site gets much, much easier. Don't be discouraged by a steep learning curve.
Second, the more time you spend planning and drafting out an outline of what you want on your site, the easier it will be to develop these features, and the less headache you'll get. Because drupal *can* do so much, people often run into the problem of making it do too much, and you won't like that. List out features, like calendar, user profiles, forums, organic groups, and messaging, (say) and build it out. Then theme it. Then start using it. If you want to add more or change things once the site's up, do it in an isolated development setup.
Figure out what features you really need from your Drupal site, and see if you can integrate with existing tools. Basically don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. Can you use or integrate with Google Calendar? Do users need to be able to blog on your site or can you just import/aggregate blogs from other sites? And so forth...
If you have programing experience, once you have all the head-work done, the rest is much more straight forward. Also, I don't know what your budget is like, but there are a number of Drupal development shops that might be able to more efficiently get the work done for you. It's worthwhile to consider such options, as everyone's time is valuable, and if you're not a web developer, your time may be more effectively spent on other kinds of projects.
Thanks, I mapped out a more
Thanks, I mapped out a more specific plan of what I want.
A calendar feature with upcoming events (tests, workshops, due dates, etc...) This doesn't necessarily need to be graphically based, whatever will display the data in the simplest way while still looking professional
Downloads which includes presentations and or papers in pdf format so that people can view through their browser instead of having to download and open a powerpoint file.
Forum with optional posting by unregistered members (to make it as simple as possible in case someone cant remember their user name/password.
Inclusion of multiple user groups. The program is 3 years, so I will define usergroups by graduation year. For the most part the usergroups are mostly used so that everyone can know what year of the program each person is in and to have potentially have different calanders set up for different classes
News posting on front page for any recent important information. This doesn't need to be done by users, are news con't update that often, so I can do this myself.
Resource page (this can have links/phone numbers, as well as contact numbers regarding fieldwork, internships, and other links or phone numbers we might need.
Glossary of common terms/abbreviations (things we should know, but might forget sometimes), I also noticed the module that lets you have a mouseover for abbreviations, so I will probably use that as well.
Ideally all of this will be as simple to use as possible. My budget is as low as possible. All of this is coming out of pocket to me at this point (I am student in the program who has been frustrated along with others by lack of communication about information and wanted this tool for myself and my classmates. As it is my wife and I aren't thrilled about the $120 or so out of pocket it costs for two years of web hosting, so I don't really want to pay more. I did work in web development, specifically fairly simple php sites for a couple years, but that was in my late teens/ early 20's and I am 25 now, so I'm a bit out of it
Wow, I finally got my host
Wow, I finally got my host and installed drupal and the modules I want. So far I am just playing a little, but I should be able to get everything I want in the site without having to edit/add code or spending days at a time. I'm very impressed so far. Hopefully I am right about getting my site set up not being too much trouble (though still taking a few days which is fine).
If you are open to
If you are open to variations in functionality and/or workflow, you can get quite far with drupal without having to write a single line code, no question.
If you are extremely particular about how you want things to work-- that's where the steep learning curve you hear so much about kicks in because you'll need to grok the 'drupal way' of doing something in order figure out how to change it for what you want (even if it's a seemingly 'small' change).
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