By iPlantz on

Hello Everyone, I'm a new member and am seeking development of a website to fit the following high level requirements.

Project overview
I have been pulling together requirements for an information website where users have access to information on plants suited to warm climates and where they can engage in discussion on these plants (growing and using them, etc.). Have already collected data on hundreds of plants and have classified this data in a database. The data on each plant ranges from plant names in various languages, plant attributes (tree, shrub, etc.), plant uses, (food, medicine, etc.), plant climate requirements (rainfall, temperature, etc.), the list goes on. Have also collected climate data on towns (rainfall, temperature, etc.) in selected warm climate countries, which has enabled the creation of climate zones to which towns and plants can be linked.

Functional Requirements
The requirements are for a website which at the front end users can search for plants by keyword search, plant name index or canned search (for example, user can select a search term "Clay Soil" which shall cause the system to return all plants for which there a match "Clay" in the Suitable_Soils field in the plant content object/plant record). Search results shall be returned in table format and user shall have the option to sort on fields in the table to refine the results. User can select a plant record returned in the table which shall cause the system to load a page publishing data (text and image content) for the plant selected.

Other features would include Featured Plant, Articles submitted by contributor users, What's My Zone (users can select a town to view the climate zone classification for that town), System Generated content (e.g. most viewed and discussed plant) and a discussion forum.

Users
The website would have visitor and registered users consuming content. Users targeted can be global, but are likely to be resident in warm climate country where English is the native language, or they may belong to the Diaspora for the country. A key requirement is for the system to capture the country a user is coming from on entry to the website. This data will be used in various processes including delivering targeted advertising, validating the country at member sign-up and to publish the country of origin for user-generated content published to the website.

The administrator side would have webmaster, editor and moderator users controlling user access and the publishing of content to the website.

Before discussing detailed requirements, please let me know if there is any functionality not described above, or you would need me to elaborate on which would assist you to better understand my vision / requirements

Looking forward to your reply

[Please do not remove, we wish to keep questions here for others to be able to reference]

Comments

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

There is nothing in your requirements that can not be done with Drupal. Some may require some customization. Note Drupal does not have separate front and back ends.

websesame’s picture

websesame commented

Backend probably means Administration page. There has been some confusion about roles and privileges however and the poster has probably mixed these up with the limitations of Joomla!

Alex Andrascu’s picture

Alex Andrascu commented

Do you want the developer to import the data from your database(s) to the website database or you'll handle that after the website's done?
Thanks

iPlantz’s picture

iPlantz commented

I'll be putting content in the CMS, no importing facility required. Assume uploading images and copy and past text to fields in the CMS is not considered importing. Am new to this game, so my please let me know if assumption incorrect.

tomthumb99’s picture

tomthumb99 commented

Folks,

Looking for any update progress on this effort (plant database). I am a DIY person on landscaping around the house. Tired of buying plants the do not make it in my zone 5 location. A Drupal tracking app for resarch tool would welcomed.

I have found that US states are listing whole native plants in access database for free. I was looking to import these free databases into MySql/Drupal. I have Punch! software, it has a great plant database (ie: planting zone, common name, scientific name, soil conditions and palnt pics). I found that the Punch! vendor will not let you read/extract from their db outside of their propriety application.

If somebody know how to screen scrape or crack the db files, please advise. Just looking for a one-time read of the file.

Thanks,

Tom H.