Rapidly Growing Site, do we drupalize?

slinky - April 23, 2009 - 15:30

I've got a professional site that is growing by leaps and bounds. Primarily it consists of a large vbulletin forum. Secondary to this is a growing magazine section that currently uses Wordpress to get the job done. Third are several other scripts that aren't necessarily integrated although I will eventually have them share the same user account database.

I'm presented with the challenge of integrating a content management system that will allow me with different profiling on a going forward basis. Having such a large vbulletin forum with over 100,000 posts makes me think that switching to drupal forums is not a good idea, for seo and practically. I don't find the drupal forums that much fun to use or as simple to view content, although it's certainly functional.

The question really is in one of merging vBulletin and creating the other items I need around it, e.g. a business directory, a jobs database and resume upload, a resources directory (currently part of vBulletin), and an area for contributors to write articles. I don't know how many of you are using the script but, for me, my users won't be blogging too much although they may. Picture galleries and videos will probably not be a large part of my site. Being able to expand profiles for other user definable categories might be useful.

Here was the thought - vBulletin only provides limited user profiles and is only useful for forum activity. I can redirect users to their "Drupal Profile" which is the main one. I can have a link on every profile to view a users forum statistics as well as a link to VB from the drupal profile and that's fine.

The issue really is with regard to (1) integration of the two for seeding user name/passwords, (2) the way the two play together, and (3) if anyone has really been able to create a useful community environment with drupal without too much pain. Yes, it's powerful. The reason I stayed away is because many of the best projects here involved months of time an specialized programmers to get things done that seemed relatively simple and provided as more tweakable standard plugins with other packages. Additionally, the challenge of integration vbulletin this far and fun with designing templates also led me to use wordpress for the CMS portion for launch. It has served its purpose remarkably well thus far.

Thanks for all comments and opinions.

i'm not familiar with it, but

mradcliffe - April 23, 2009 - 16:58

i'm not familiar with it, but Drupal VB module seems to integrate login information between vb and drupal.

I can't find anyone who

slinky - April 23, 2009 - 17:42

I can't find anyone who recommends drupalvb and the numbers of users looks like it's dropping. Comments suggest it's not stable. I don't see many using vB and trying to get their forums to work from scratch.

Bridges are a pain

Michelle - April 25, 2009 - 21:01

There's probably not many people using it because bridging two software packages is a pain. Most people using Drupal can do just fine using Drupal for the forums. vBulletin is a powerful forum system and has far more features than Drupal's forum but the average person just wanting to add a forum to their site doesn't need all that power.

That said, the person maintaining the module is a solid maintainer. If you do decide to bridge Drupal and vBulletin, that's your best bet for it.

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. :)

views and cck

infoscience1 - April 24, 2009 - 04:59

I know this sounds basic, but would views and cck help for your lists?

I'm not sure of a site that's as big as yours, I mean with as many lists...

I know Stanford University's library and/or Cornell University's library uses drupal...

Those are good examples but

slinky - April 24, 2009 - 19:07

Those are good examples but I'm sure their use is a factor of (a) a developer who is a drupal fan, and (b) someone who donates their time to the university or is paid some sum to maintain it and is a drupal fan. In addition, I'm not sure how widespread their uses are.

From what I saw, I wasn't impressed with those parts of the library using Drupal. The CMS was not being used in any manner that couldn't be easily managed by Wordpress, Joomla or others.

I guess my point was that there is no need to complicate things unless there are significant benefits to be obtained. Right now I'm not quite sure whether Drupal will give me so much more than Wordpress will for what I'm trying to accomplish. I was wondering if someone else can share their experience going through the same.

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WorldFallz - April 25, 2009 - 18:06

Ive read your post a couple of times, but i'm still not really sure what you're asking. You seem satisfied with your current solution, so I'm not sure what you're looking to accomplish.

Drupal is far more flexible and powerful than wordpress, vb, or joomla but if you're current solution works, what's the point of looking elsewhere? imo adding drupal to a vb/wp site is not a good idea. personally, i always recommend against integrations-- they never add up to the value of the parts and always result in complications and maintenance nightmares. In this particular case, if it were me, i'd aim to replace vb/wp with one single drupal solution. I have a feeling one of the reasons that the vb integration module is not widely used is because with drupal + advanced_forum you can now get close enough in functionality that maintaining two separate scripts just isn't worth it.

For me, I found drupal because wp and joomla were not meeting my needs. Drupal has a learning curve, and it was definitely as struggle at first, but now (1.5+ years later) I'm so glad I stuck with it. The time I invested in learning drupal is far out weighed by the time I save now when creating sites or adding functionality. Rather then wasting untold hours trying to bend wp and/or joomla to do what they don't do natively and still be less than what i need, I can have a drupal site, with exactly the functionality i need, up and running in no time and tweaking it as desired is completely pain free. I'll never need to waste time learning another framework again.

For some great examples of what can be built with drupal see http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites

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