By samchok on

Do you think it is possible to make my users start to create content before the website development is finished without getting troubles?

I tend to separate the development phase into three stages:

  1. Defining content types
  2. Create views for displaying the relevant informations
  3. Styling the website

My customer can't wait until the end of the development, and is asking me to let him create contents as soon as stage 1 is finished.
I am not so sure to let users upload new nodes before I stop managing the system, and I am really worried that this way I could lose some users content.

Is there safe way to proceed?

Thank you.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

matt_harrold’s picture

matt_harrold commented

The Drupal theme system is nicely separated from the content.

Actually ... I find having "real world" content on the site makes Theme development easier ... as you don't need to worry about "placeholder" nodes ... you can get a feel for the layout of the site using actual content.

It's also a great time saver.

samchok’s picture

samchok commented

Thank you for your incitement,

my worry was that if I will need to install new modules or that I need to change some content type, I could break the all thing.

Anyway, I'll give it a try (with tons of backup)... ;-)

steve02476’s picture

steve02476 commented

I agree with matt_harold, you can go ahead and add content first, and in some ways its even beneficial.

However, I'd caution you to try and add the simplest content first, and don't let the users get all wrapped up in formatting it. You don't want them doing a lot of work trying to affect the appearance of the nodes before the theming is done.

seanray’s picture

seanray commented

For technology perspective, it should be fine to start creating content before the site is completely ready. But just need to make sure you do have very good relationship with them as you might meet some problems (or create some bugs) during the development, exposing all those issues during development to them will hurt their passion.

NickKN’s picture

NickKN commented

At some stage you have got to test the thing with real imput.

The sooner you find out how users are really going to use the site the better.

I would suggest that starting with a limited group of interested folk, you include them in the design process - feedback is good for design !

This would mean setting setting up a test site somewhere, but you wouldn't want bots and search engines crawling your site before it's ready...