We are planning and developing a gaming site, and have been trying to do stuff on Xoops, and have not had much luck doing the things we really want to do. For example, these are some things we feel are necessary to our site:
1. We would like to keep track of user activity, and offer awards in the form of medals, badges, etc (first 500 to sign up, participated in this event, etc...). If possible, even have a ranking system, where users can level up based on their activities.
2. We want each game to have it's own dedicated page, which has a menu on it to different pages related to that game. For example, when someone searches for say Call of Duty 4, they can go to the Call of Duty 4 page, and then either read a review, watch a video, go to the forum for that game, etc...
3. We would like the user profile to be like the game page, in the sense that, there is a dedicated profile page, with links to other parts related to that profile (user's Blog, user's reviews and ratings, user's awards, etc...)
4. It would be nice to give users as much outlet as possible, with their own Blog section, opportunities to review and rate games, all the while keeping track of things. We would also like to have them be able to join groups, based on their own tastes and interests.
Are these things relatively accomplish-able? We are not afraid of the learning curve, and in a way, welcome it. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas on whether we should give drupal a shot? I feel like xoops is near impossible!
thanks
caponey
Comments
don't waste time anywhere else. drupal is what you want...
Caponey,
You won't find a better fit than Drupal.
First of all, the Views, Panels, and CCK modules should take care of a lot of what you're looking for. Check out those modules.
http://drupal.org/project/views
http://drupal.org/project/panels
http://drupal.org/project/cck
You would be able to leverage certain modules for some of the functionality here but to make it all work together you may have to write a custom module.
Very easily accomplished through the use of Panels and Menu Block (http://drupal.org/project/menu_block). Then, you could drop in some jQuery to make a nice menu - I suggest using Superfish with the horizontal feature.
;) You lucked out. The Advanced Profile Kit (http://drupal.org/project/advanced_profile), integrated with Panels, will make this feature extremely easy to accomplish.
Own blog sections are easily accomplished with the build-in blog module in core as well as some of the blog add-on modules. You would also want to use the WYSIWYG module (http://drupal.org/project/advanced_profile). Ratings can be accomplished with the excellent voting module (http://drupal.org/project/votingapi) combined with Views. Groups are a snap with the full-featured Organic Groups module (http://drupal.org/project/og).
You will not find a better framework to build your site on. Rest assured. With drupal, you will have over 95% of the code out-of-the-box for your site. Because of the features you outlined in #1 though - theres a good bit of custom code you'll need to write. But again, with such an incredicle API, with drupal it should be relatively easy.
I am just finishing up a few sites and I have time to provide consulting services and a jump start for you. I am a drupal theming ninja and have a 3 year background in drupal (since early 5.0).
Let me know if you're interested. Of course, I'd be happy to just answer a few of your questions here as well :)
Welcome to the community!
Cheers!
Snyder Technologies
More Modules you should check
More Modules you should check out:
These modules would help you accomplish #1
http://drupal.org/project/userpoints
http://drupal.org/project/userpoints_nc
http://drupal.org/project/user_stats
http://drupal.org/project/workflow_ng
http://drupal.org/project/rules
Also you would want to use the following module for the overall site:
http://drupal.org/project/content_access
If I think of any more I'll send them your way.
Snyder Technologies
wow, thanks lol that's really
wow, thanks lol
that's really good to hear. it definitely sounds promising. how user friendly is it? we are basically noobs, but like I said earlier, we are down to learn everything we need to learn.
thanks again, we really appreciate the response
Just wondering.
Is this more of a business venture or hobby site?
The learning curve - I'm not going to lie - is pretty steep at first. I had to teach myself everything through googling, forums, and helful how-tos. Having somebody with experience explain to you how it all works though will save you over 80% of your time over the next 3 to 5 months.
But, once you wrap your head around how drupal works... You will inevitably have to force yourself to put the laptop away at night and get some sleep. You'll be so amazed at how it works that you won't want to stop playing with it. At least, that was my experience.
The User friendliness all depends on you're approach. You need to add on certain modules to give it a polished interface.
Snyder Technologies
I would also like to ask if
I would also like to ask if it's possible to work on the site off line? We have a server, but we are not really in charge of it. Xoops is installed on it right now. Basically, can we run drupal on our computers to test it out, or does it have to be uploaded in order to work on it? Thanks!
Drupal can run on localhost
Drupal is a fantastic, really awesome. you do not require any server to prepare a test site. you can do the same on your local machine as wel, windows on linux.
I wud advise u to go for linux though, windows xampp has some issues and drupal might run slowly on it. You can fix all the issues but Linux provide a much much better envt to work on.
To run on local machine, u will need a server(apache preferably), mysql or pgsql database. Enuf to get you running...
Best of luck with site BTW. :)
actually, I run my production
actually, I run my production site (www.raceonedesign.com) on Linux but develop locally on Windows XP using the XAMPP stack, with SVN as my source code library (you get to use the awesome free TortoiseSVN on Windows) and FTP'ing from my local machine up to production server using FireFTP. Have had no trouble developing on localhost/XAMPP on windows except for some weirdness testing Facebook Connect.
Doug Stumberger
www.raceonedesign.com
dstumberger --AT-- hotmail --DOT-- com
eclipse
I actually use Eclipse with the Target Management plugin ;)
Check it out, you can develop directly on the server through FTP or SSH.
Snyder Technologies
Absolutely.
What I recommend is having a production site (site.com) and a development site (dev.site.com). You could run them both off your production server (one drupal install, two working sites.) See http://drupal.org/node/53705.
Also, if you are really serious about this site, I recommend moving from a shared hosting environment to a VPS. Lucky for you I've already narrowed down one of the best VPS providers you'll find: slicehost.net.
MediaTemple is another good one but they haven't released an Ubuntu build yet. It's under dev. Besides, Slicehost offers more bang for your buck.
Configuring a web server and PHP on a fresh linux install is -- literally -- a matter of entering a few commands which I wouldn't mind helping you with.
Snyder Technologies
Sounds intimidating
I bury my head in simple php from time to time, but atm I'm using wordpress for content sites.
This sounds intimidating! Can anyone explain to me the advantages of drupal?
For instance how would it be for a membership site?
Thanks
Shawn
Shawn C. Mason
http://shawncmason.com
http://search.internetintelligencereport.com
Oh boy...
I would go into detail but answers to that question can be found in hundreds of places on the net.
google "wordpress vs drupal" or "drupal vs wordpress"
Snyder Technologies
Drupal has advantage in SEO,
Drupal has advantage in SEO, you can choose model like: url list, xml sitemap, Meta tags,Page Title,Path
good luck
Drupal develop:
www.car-toy.cn
www.energyer.com
www.chinawhiteboards.com
Drupal does not have an
Drupal does not have an advantage or disadvantage in regards to SEO in comparision to Wordpress.
However, Drupal does have tremendous user controls that blow Wordpress into the weeds. Don't get me wrong, I love Wordpress and recommend it to friends and clients provided they are purely blogging or are creating a simple or hybrid site (blog & simple site). If you are developing a community site, Drupal is the way to go. I'm always amazed at what can be done in Drupal and it is highly extensible.
Also, if I run a dev site on a live server I put it in a subfolder. It makes moving it easer. Regardless of whether it's in a subdomain or subdirectory you should Disallow search bot access to it from the robots.txt file. This will (hopefully) restrict search engines from indexing the dev site so that you don't end up with duplicate content issues, misindexed URLs, and it will keep visitors from finding incomplete sites/pages. Be careful when you set the disallow so that you don't end up disallowing the live site too.
Also, the suggestions on local development are better than anything I can come up with but WampServer is another option for Windows.