Hello All,
I've been digging through all the modules, on and off, for a few months now. I went through every page by hand three times, then chose hundreds that sounded of interest. From there I have been tearing through them, knocking them off by the hundreds and getting down to the ones I deem best for the sites I plan to build. Through this, I have gotten a much better understanding of Drupal and the power it has to offer.
The thing is, I'm not a programmer or an expert in any of this. I just didn't think that Joomla or Wordpress were good enough. I didn't want to end up having to pay out hundreds of dollars for a few modules or use just a bunch of hacks that were never properly tested and might not be upgradeable down the road.
Now, with that said, I notice myself running into a few problems. I am at the point of a crossroads with a few approaches and I hope it is alright to ask you guys some questions that might better aide me in the direction that I plan to go for each feature. I am aware that this information may be available somewhere, but I have gone through every issue queue, usage statistic, forum post, or post from another site that I could find, not to mention a lot of local server testing to see what would work best. I simply don't have the skills, knowledge, or the luck to find that information that I am looking for.
If I may, I would like to ask the following questions about the approach I should take now, so I don't waste weeks or months trying to go in the wrong direction. The questions are:
#1. What is the best approach to take with a single user blog with categories. Reading through various documentation on the Drupal.org site, I found ways to create single user blogs, but I never saw it tied into categories. Would this be as simple as tying it into top level Taxonomy terms? Is there a module that is better to use for this?
#2. Is ImageField limited to just attaching to fields? What I mean is, if I wanted to have the occasional photo inline with the post, say to show someone's picture when talking about them, would I have to use Image instead of ImageField or is there an option for Imagefield? When I say option, I mean could another module handle this if I had the images on the server or something? I know Image and Imagefield don't work well together. My preference is Imagefield though. If I end up limited by this, for certain sites, I think I will have to go to Image and I really don't like the whole Node thing.
#3. This is a tricky question for me to try to explain. Basically, I plan to do my own reviews of say movies or tv shows. I would like to either have it be able to tally a review of multiple ratings (Like say you rate the cast, the screenplay, etc) or just have a single rating (With my hand tallying). Either way, I wanted to do something a little more than just type the rating into the body field. I looked around, but I couldn't find any modules to cover this. There were some options for many users reviewing the same thing, but nothing for what I was looking for. Is there a review module that I am just not seeing? I kind of wanted to be able to use Views with it, for obvious reasons. Now... I don't know how to program really, but the thought I had would be to create a seperate field for each or maybe just one field for the final rating. I might not know what I am talking about, but if I did, I think it would be a last ditch effort if finding a module to handle it all falls through.
#4. As a non programmer, I was wondering what would be the best way to approach a category icon or a post icon. Basically those little things you see next to each post. Would I just create a field and stick it up there, then choose it. If I wanted to do that, but ended up having to use Image instead of Imagefield, what could I do then? I was thinking Taxonomy Image, but is that a good choice? What do you guys do to handle your icons?
Thank you in advance for any help. As you can see, I'm not a programmer and I have an interest in some blogs. They aren't the only sites that I am making, but Drupal isn't all that hard for the other stuff. It just seems to be single user blog unfriendly. Thank you again.
Comments
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In the future, it's best to post your questions one in each thread. Many may not take the time to read the entirety of this post. One question per thread with a simple form of the question as the title gets you more eyes from those surfing the lists looking for questions to answer in their area of expertise.
#1 a taxonomy would have to be attached to the blog content type
you could also disable the core blog.module and create your own blog content type if you so preferred.
#2 image field allows the image to be viewed in the node. It doesn't just attach the file. Using imagecache.module allows you to have derivative images for use elsewhere. ie: thumbnail for the teaser / original for the node view
#3) not sure how you would go about rating fields rather than the node itself.
#4) icons should be handled at the theme level.