Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.
By Serenity-2 on
Hello Everyone! :)
I'm new here. Just installed Drupal 6 on my pc local host. I have very limited knowledge with writing any code or anything like that but am in the process of a lot of self-study. Here's my question to which I would apprecaite very much any help I can get in order to get moving forward.
I currently have a website up (I'm not sure what the rules are about posting website addresses here so I won't). It was created by my web designer and is a pretty simple one I guess writtn with php. It has a few pages and the only section resembling any entering of emails etc involves a) a contact page and b) a signup for newsletter. He created a seperate admin page for me to go access the emails for the people who signup for the newsletter.
The site has only been up fully about a month with hardly any traffic. So...
I got really excited when I came across drupal a couple of days ago and would like to know how to go about (the steps) moving or converting my existing php based website to the drupal platform. I'd obviously like to keep all my graphics and layout as it is. I have been searching around the net and the posts in drupal.org quite a bit. I have found some stuff but not anything that seems straight forward for a beginner like me.
So can anyone help please? If you would like to view my current website to get a better idea of what I'm trying to move over, I would be more than happy to share that with you.
thanks so much for the time..
Peace
Comments
_
welcome!
links to sites are ok-- spam is not. It's usually easy to spot the latter so don't worry about it.
As for your question-- there's not really a simple way to convert a site like that. From what you say it sounds pretty basic, so I would just rebuild it (you can copy and paste the text/html of the content).
Regarding your theme, any html/css layout can be converted to a drupal theme. See http://www.mustardseedmedia.com/podcast/episode24 for a good screen cast on how to do that.
Thks!
Hi WorldFallz, and thanks for the welcome! I tried the link to that site but can't connect to it. Can't even open mustardseedmedia.com.
Yeah, I thought about rebuilding it by copying and pasting the text but then when it come to the graphics, I got stuck.
So mine is written in php. Is that going to be no different from html/css?
Any other site you can point me to for a tutorial etc on how to convert my template/theme to a drupal theme.
Thanks a million for the quick reply! Oh, by the way, if it helps to see what I'm talking about, here is my current site. I think it's what would be called static pages etc. www.experienceserenity.com
Peace.
_
Maybe they're doing some maintenance or something-- I've never had a problem with the site before. Try again later or tomorrow.
And I took a look at the site-- I definitely don't see anything there that can't be done with drupal. You can always copy and paste the text directly from the browser as well.
A faster option might be to find an existing theme that you like, similar to yours, and just customize it with your graphics.
Saw your site...nice template
Hello dear,
Saw ur site . very nice template. I too dont think that porting to drupal willl be difficult task. I guess it will be more effective in drupal.
also managing will be more better, everytime u dont have to go to ur developer for minor changes.
Cheers
Thanks
Hi Rahul,
Thanks! And do you have any ideas or resources you can point me to to help with this?
I watched a couple of videos online that speaks about that conversion (like the one from mustardseed.com), tried to do it but didn't work. What else will I need in order to get this done?
Any help you can offer please?
Thanks. I just looked at your drupal site.
Peace
yes sure
Hello Dear ,
Tell me what exactly functioning u need in ur site and i will let u know the resources /modules available, that we can incorporate in our site.
Cheers
Thanks
Hi Rahul, thanks for the offer to help out.
The site as you see it now is what I want to keep. The only database in it right now is for the newsletter signup but I only got a few names so there's no importing of database to do.
What I would like to implement after I have converted to Drupal (ie created a theme for it and put in transfer the content) is to at some point in the future start a forum or serenity community site. I also will need to set up the module to be able to receive payment for any services I offer through my site. Probably a membership management software like Amember or there's a new one I found which is called Site Man Pro.
Also want to put in a nice looking calender for events.
And later in the future I'd also like to be able to install a chat function into the website.
Those are the plans for the immediate or near future but right now I just need to create a theme that matches what I have now. I was playing around with stuff the other day, watched a couple of vides about conversions and also about creating new themes. Managed to transfer the site frame but the problem is getting the tables structure and the css to be the same when I migrate it. I dunno enough code YET to understand how to move it around or adjust so it looks right. So...
What can you suggest? Are there any modules which help just import sections of my site into Drupal or something like that?
Thanks again.
Peace
In the same boat...
Hi!
I'm in the same boat as Serenity; I am helping a non-profit for the disabled convert a heavily graphics-based site to Drupal. They want to keep the exact look, feel and functionality of the current site. There are a few large and artistic drop-down menus, with links to 17 pages. All of the pages are very large graphics rather than tables; each page has 2 or more large graphics on it.
I have built a few Drupal 6 sites of my own and am comfortable with CCK, Views, Date, Devel, Event, Location, GMap, Token, CAPTCHA, Webform, Wysiwyg editors, etc. I looked at experienceserenity.com and it looks similar enough to most Drupal layouts that I am confident the conversion will not be complex. My suggestion is to look at the themes posted for download on drupal.org and select a few that most closely resemble the current serenity layout; then see which is the easiest to modify for your own needs. A word of caution: Be sure to test in as as many browsers as you can; I've found some great themes that just don't render in IE 6 and some that don't render properly in any version of IE.
The site I'm challnged with is based on html, css and javascript. There is no database, user registration or e-mail sign-up: the organization wants to convert to Drupal to make the site fully interactive. Since they just recently overhauled the site and are now getting tens of thousands of hits per month, they need the Drupal version to look and function almost exactly like the current one - otherwise they risk losing their audience. I agree with them on this issue. The plan is to add the interactive pieces a bit at a time and let the site evolve over time so their current audience will naturally progress to registering, creating profiles, etc.
Unfortunately my own project bears no resemblance at all to any Drupal site I've ever viewed. Ouch! That WorldFallz says it can be done is heartening as I know WorldFallz is very knowledgeable and a great contributor to Drupal on several fronts. I'm a bit unsure about the JavaScript elements. I'm just getting started and don't yet have access to the server to download the entire site and analyze it; once I do I'll have a better idea which way to go. With every page consisting almost entirely of graphics I am somewhat daunted. One of my first thoughts is to create a very basic theme from scratch following the methods in Emma Jane Hogbin's book "Front End Drupal" with only 3 or four sections. If anyone has any other suggestions as to how to create a graphics-based Drupal site I welcome them.
I will keep you updated on my progress, probably once or twice a week.
Hi wb54321
Hello, that's for the post and suggestions. If you read my reply to Rahul above you will get an idea of what I've experimented with with regards to the conversion process. You are definitely way ahead of me in the area of understanding all this and code and all that. II've just started learning some html (literally this week) and css but am no where near being able to read the code and understand how and where to move things so they look right on Drupal. Like I said, I watched a couple of videos from Lullabot which shows them taking a html/css template they have and creating a new drupal theme to match it. they literally copied over the html code into the page.tpl.php and then copied all the other css, images etc AND the new drupal theme already looked pretty decent. When I did that, I had a Drupal theme alright BUT it looked nothing like my original site, the table structure was all out and the css was just not right. That itself took a day, so I have not gotten back on it since.
Could you please offer any suggestions or help which could potentially make this easier for me to do? I am willing to learn what it takes and at the same time I'd just like to created a theme that matches my original site pretty quick.
Thanks for sharing your story too and I would like to hear the progress of it.
Peace