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By geoffb on
We are looking to move our site from a Coldfusion/SQL Server to Drupal, but before I can get our existing articles (all 16,000 or so of them) moved over (you'll probably see more Forum questions from me on this later), I need to work out what will be the best way to structure the setup. Hopefully somebody has an idea or two.
We are a weekly newspaper and so the articles are produced outside the web workflow and come in for web input as text files. We cut and paste (for now) each article into our current content management system (CMS), specifying a section/subsection, the headline, the contributor, an abstract (generally the first paragraph of the body) and a body. We also 'attach' a thumbnail and a full size image to the story. Pretty standard CMS stuff.
As we are a weekly newspaper however, we only update the site as each Thursday as the new issue hits the streets. This means we have an Activation Date/Time and an Expiry Date/Time. The way it currently works is we just add a new Issue number to an Issue table in our database and give it an Activation Date/Time and an Expiry Date/Time. In practice, all this means is that when we go to enter a story, we already have default Activation and Expiry. Our site then relies on a SQL statement to present any current content by default and drop everything else in Archives. We can also change any Expiry Date/Time in case we want a story to remain 'current'. Hope that makes sense. Perhaps you can see what I mean if you visit our site: http://www.straight.com
To make Drupal work for us, we were looking at the eJournal module. However, I know it is still not ready for 4.7 plus I am not sure whether we need all that it has to offer. We don't need ISSN, we don't really need detailed Issue identification, Queue and article publication, Citation template, etc..
So, what I am wondering is, is there any better (read: simpler) way of going about this rather than getting into eJournal?
Any ideas/suggestions would be gratefully received.
Cheers,
Geoff
Comments
publishing tutorial
merlin wrote a tutorial on publishing
http://www.drupalecommerce.com/node/345
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Drupal ecommerce, at www.drupalecommerce.com is a new site written using language that Drupal beginners and intermediate users can understand. It has about 300 unfinished pages. 2 tutorials for views module under Modules
This may do the trick
Check out http://leovia.com/, it is a weekly newspaper. The site is managed with a module I wrote called issue, each piece of content belongs to an issue and issues are automatically published (assuming cron is enabled). Each issue is further broken into sections and each section in to subsections. Another aspect of the module is that old issues are archived and can still be accessed. If interested I can send you a copy of the module, though out of the box the page layout is dull (there is a whole lot of theming available/needed) Theming includes the ability to override the look for a particular issue.
Yes Please to Issues Module
If I could get a copt of your Issues module to take a look at, that would be great. Thanks for the offer, Nevets. My Drupal Personal contact form is on.
Cheers,
Geoff
p.s. And thanks Drupalec, I will also follow up on Merlin's tutorial on publishing.
Good to hear from someone from Vancouver!
Hey, i read the Georgia Straight every thursday! Congrats on your 2000 issues today!
Good luck.
tecito.com
Comunidad Latina en Canada, regístrate ya! Join the growing latin community in Canada.
We'll be Even Better With Drupal
Thanks for the kind words, Hector.
Geoff
I have a few questions
I have a few questions regarding this as I feel that what you describe is more along the lines of what I'm trying to do than eJournal. eJournal appears to be a bit too overbuilt for what I want. Basically I need the front page to be divided up into sections just like your site and for the content on that page to change every month. However, I still need those pages to be viewable in the archive, again just like your site.
I was planning on using dashboard to organize the front page but would love some insight from you on how you made it work. If you wouldn't mind offering up a quick synopsis of what makes leovia.com tick in terms of updating itself and organizing the front page that would be fantastic. And would it be too much to ask to get a copy of your issue module?
Thank you so much for your knowledge and experience!
issue module
Is this module available anywhere? Sounds just like what the doctor ordered...
rather late ;)
The basic concept you have to accept with ejournal is that articles are bound to something called issue (and that thing can mean anything, not only ordinary printed issues - think of it as a kind of basket for your apples). All the other things that are there with ejournal are optional and you can use them or not.
And concerning the automatic issue publication, the ejournal can do it too.