A challenge for Drupal 6.x experts. Trust me, this IS a challenge.
I'm a Drupal newbie, and a former Joomla user, and I may have somewhat of a challenge for you Drupal experts out there.
Bear with me . . . this will be a rather long posting, but I need to explain a concept that none of the geeks on the Joomla forum seemed to even understand. So here we go:
It is my understanding that both Joomla and Drupal can be used to create social communities like Facebook and MySpace.
These communities however, do not include a feature found in a popular social community found in my country,-Norway.
Instead of explaining by typing myself to death, I could have given you all a link to this site, but since you would not benefit much from trying to dechiffer norwegian, I'll have no choice but to try to explain by continuing typing.
This site is immensly popular because of its user profiles. Now, most of you will say that user profiles can be had with Drupal, but hold your horses until you know exactly what I mean by the term "user profile".
First, let's take a look at how Facebook obviously defines the term user profile:
-A page with your name on it, an avatar, a wall that people can send a lot of rubbish onto, and that's pretty much it.
The point is that you,-the user, has no say in decorating your own profile.
Joomla has an even worse understanding of what a profile is supposed to be: -A page with the users age, gender, location etc. and not much else.
The above mentioned Norwegian community is different from anything else that I've seen, due to the fact that it gives the user (owner) of the profile more or less full freedom to do whatever they like with their profile page.
This is in addition to the usual stuff like age, gender, avatar, location etc.
(A smart move, since people like to see, but love to be seen).
The way they enable this feature of updating profiles with content is by letting the user click on a link that leads to a WYSIWYG-editor (TinyMCE). Here you can add text, html, images and pretty much anything you like. Some people have an almost empty page with white background, while others write their life's story along with images, links, borders and anything else you can think of.
These sites also have the usual guestbook, personal messaging system, member search and photo galleries etc. - but the ability to add content to your profile page is what makes this site so popular. Furthermore, when you search for members, you end up on their profile page.
Facebook has only managed to attract 8% of the american population by using its concept. How many members do you think the Norwegian community has managed to attract? -A staggering 25% of the population.
So, all you Drupal wizards out there, could this be done with Drupal and its existing modules?
Short answer is yes, though
Short answer is yes, though not exactly the way you describe (at least out of the box).
Some things that help is this regard My Site (only 5.x) and Advanced Profile Kit modules.
Thanks a lot. If I can get
Thanks a lot. If I can get one step closer I'll switch to 5.x and have a go at it.
.
Sounds more like MySpace than Facebook.
APK doesn't give the user any customization control at this time. You can change the content but not the design or layout. I'd like to get there someday but it's a very slow process.
Michelle
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I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
I've made a copy of my own
Michelle:
I'm not sure what you mean by layout and contents.
I've made a copy of my own profile on the above mentioned social community, so you can get a better idea of the concept, and what I mean by the terms layout and contents.
I've removed the original contents for better clarity. Note: The links have been translated, and they do NOT work, so please resist the temptation to click them.
http://emtor.byethost2.com/temp/vargas.htm
If both of us have the same definition of layout and contents, then it seems to me that APK could be used for making profile pages like the one in the above link. -Or am I wrong?
One additional question: With AKP,-can you add html into the content, or is plain text the only option?
Content vs layout
You can change the content as in what's in the node fields. You can't move things around or change the CSS or anything. Adding HTML to the content depends on the input format for the field just like any other node.
You can make the profile pages look however you want as the site admin. The issue is that users have no control at this point.
Michelle
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I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
content profile module?
There are various WYSIWYG editors that can be used to edit node content. So, if you could use a node for a profile page, you could use the WYSIWYG editors to allow people to do whatever they want with their profile. And you can use a node for a profile page with the Content Profile module. I haven't used the module, so I don't know exactly how it works, but I think it will do the trick.
I'm new to Drupal, and I find
I'm new to Drupal, and I find it similar to Joomla in some ways and very different in others. The term node is alien to me, and I understand I need to get a grasp of the Drupal basics before being able to use the full power of it.
I guess I could use a node for a profile page, but do users need to create their profile pages themselves, or could I as the admin create an empty page that acts as a profile page for them?
My idea of this is that when a user registers and logs on, he/she is presented with an empty page and a user-menu in the right-hand column with a link, saying: Edit My Profilepage, or whatever, and end up on another page with a WYSIWYG-editor on it.
After some updating, and by saving, the user is directed back to the profile page, which now should have contents in it.
Right, sorry. 'Node' is one
Right, sorry. 'Node' is one of the more confusing terms of Drupalese when you're just starting with the system. It's a generic term for "a unit of content," like a page, a news article, etc.
I'll try again without using the term 'node': You can create a new "content type" through the Administration menu. You could call it Profilepage. By default, it would have a title and a "body"—i.e., a space for whatever your users want to put in their profile. I think you could use the Content Profile page to give every user a Profilepage when they sign up, which they could then edit as they see fit using a WYSIWYG editor. (I say "I think" you could do this because I haven't actually used the Content Profile; I found it after reading your post because I was pretty sure that there was a module that would help you do what you want.)
Here's what I'd suggest: Download and install the Content Profile module. Create a new content type called Profilepage and experiment with the module a bit to try to use Profilepages for user profiles.
I'll play around with the
I'll play around with the Content Profile Module then . . .
I'm not a php-expert, but I do know how a "regular" php/mysql social community works, and it seems different from Drupalese.
A regular site would have a profile.php file. User info, avatar, contents etc. would then be fetched from the database by the aid of the user's ID, and then echoed on the profile page. I guess nodes work in the same way, and the only alien thing about it, is probably only the use of the term node. I have come to understand that contents can be plain text, a limited version of html, full html or even php-code.
If php code could be added to the profile page by the admin, but not changed or removed by the user, then you could exploit the users session data (id or username) to fetch things belonging to that particular user from the database. That would really open a few doors as to what could be done.
What you suggest about
What you suggest about fetching user related data is already possible. The Advanced Profile Kit is one approach. Since we are using a node we can override the template and further more we can add a hook_preprocess_node() function that populates various information for the template to use.
I've done some searching, and
I've done some searching, and this is what I came up with:
http://shellmultimedia.com/misc/user-profiles
There may be even better tutorials on the subject out there, but this one looks like it's as good as it gets when it comes to creating profiles. It's for Drupal 5x, and for me it's OK to use it, since 5x has another module I need for my project that 6x doesn't have yet;-the Red5 flash video module.
There are several pages in this tutorial, so just follow the links.
edit: I read nevets' suggestion after posting this. It seems like Drupal has loads of possibilities that Joomla doesn't have.
Another difference between Joomla and Drupal: -People seem a lot more helpful here as well as having better knowledge too.
subscribing :)
subscribing :)
Some more on profiles
There is one feature that goes along with user profiles;-a decent member-search.
If site-members are given the chance to enter personal information, other members could easily search for members based on this information. Let's take a community created for motorbike-owners as an example.
You could create fields for gender, age, location, which brand and model of bike you own etc.
In addition to the member-search you could also have a more universal search-function to search for keywords in profile contents.
A community like this could become useful. Let's say you want to ride your bike from Canada to Mexico. Search for "Canada+Mexico", and find users who have done the trip before you. -Or, you need parts for an old and obsolete bike. Search for "parts" and find members who can sell or trade parts. Facebook and MySpace are general purpose social communities, while our motorbike site is more specialized, but the more useful for it's members.
So, a useful profile-feature and search-feature is important for these kind of sites.
Views
This can be done with views. There's a view included in APK that can be used as a starter.
Michelle
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I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)