By kylerboudreau on

This is my first Drupal post!!!! After reading the metaphor of the truck and boat, it sounds like this package could be perfect.

My college friend and I are trying to setup an online community that would act similar to a dating site, but be more business oriented. I'm skilled at website design and server administration, but NOT PHP programming.

We've got a spreadsheet with screen shots outlining what functions we are aiming for, and I'm wondering if any of you Drupal pros could take a glance and tell us if we are crazy or not. I'm not asking for hours of your time while you detail out every module to use - but any advice would be awesome.

We basically just need typical things like profiles, etc. but we want to integrate to PayPal and we want members to be able to post jobs to the community and also ads (like facebook's ad program).

Someone today told me Drupal wasn't the way to go because you need to plug in too many modules to make it do anything, but I kinda thought that was the exact idea - building blocks to do everything right?

Anyway - any advice would be freaking awesome. I can send the spreadsheet to anyone that wants to take a look. THANKS!

My email is kylerboudreau@gmail.com.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

building blocks is exactly right. Drupal is a toolbox with which you can build any type of site you wish. You're probably not going to get much response for your spreadsheet though-- you're probably better off just listing the features/functions you're looking to implement or posting the images to flickr or something.

You mention profiles-- for basic simple profiles there's the core profile module. For more full featured social networking type profiles you'll want to look into the http://drupal.org/project/content_profile and http://drupal.org/project/advanced_profile modules.

For paypal you'll want to checkout the http://drupal.org/project/lm_paypal module.

kylerboudreau’s picture

kylerboudreau commented

Okay thanks - here are more specifics:

Imagine a cross between facebook and Monster. We are after the following:

1) Sign up form that we can customize the heck out of. One that grows based on prior selections (all of them will be drop down choices). 2-4 pages long most likely with the ability to upload photos.

2) Profile page similar to Facebook that can also except embeded code from the user (for YouTube, etc.)

3) The profile page would also show group memberships, a place for saved profiles (favorites of others in the community)

4) Top banner and side banner ads like facebook. AND the ability for users to create their own ads and even target demographics within the site.

5) Detailed community searche ability - basically take the sign up for gathered info - that would also act as a search form to locate members with specific services, items, etc.

6) Paypal integration for monthly billing, etc.

7) Ability to post jobs are requests to the community.

8) Detailed admin reporting for Ad clicks, what people are searching for - basically anything happening on the site.

That list is kinda vague I know, but maybe that will help spark some feedback. I just need to find out if Drupal is even close to being right, or if I should pursure more of a dating specific package.

THANKS!!!!!

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Ok, based on that you'll want to look at the following modules:

You'll also want to browse the available ad modules and checkout Michelle's excellent social networking demo: http://socnet.shellmultimedia.com.

That should be more than enough to start with. Good luck.

kylerboudreau’s picture

kylerboudreau commented

Joanne - you rock the house. I'll start looking into this.

From what it sounds, Drupal is a solid solution that can grow well. Are there things to avoid - like are their legitimate mods and 'scary' mods?

THANKS!!! The social networking playground looks interesting.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Thanks-- i'm glad you found the info helpful!

drupal IS rock solid and most definitely expands very well-- far more than any other CMS from I can tell (though I only play with the others from time to time, i only build with drupal).

As for things to avoid-- try to avoid 'modulitis' as much as possible. With over 4k modules available, it's easy to just start adding modules rather than thinking through functionality. With the continued growth and amazing functionality of building block modules like cck, views, nodequeue, rules, and panels I try to build out a site as much as possible without adding monolithic vertical modules (with the single exception of ecommerce for which I use ubercart). You run less risk of becoming dependent on a module that may be abandoned that way. It may take a little more effort, but it will be worth it in the end and you'll learn a lot that way.

Good luck!