Will Drupal provide better usability/features than MU?
dkean - October 29, 2009 - 15:14
Currently working to build a network revolving around users uploading text & images, all relevant on the same topic (but for different sub-sites/pages). Using wordpressMU at the moment, but considering Drupal after a bit of research.
Can drupal offer similar functions:
Auto Tweeting (to individual accounts, or one master account for site)
Newsletter subscription (each page can send out newsletter to email address "followers")
Main page "mainsite.com" can draw tags, keywords and title words to a sitewide widget/aggregator display
Paid memberships
These are the main ones I haven't heard much of, the other options are basic.
So... should I ditch MU and move to Drupal? Thanks everyone for any help!
-Derek
> Will Drupal provide better
> Will Drupal provide better usability/features than MU?
Yes, but at the same time can also be a pain, and comes with its own set of limitations.
> Auto Tweeting (to individual accounts, or one master account for site)
http://drupal.org/project/twitter
> Newsletter subscription (each page can send out newsletter to email address "followers")
Each page? That is not really a newsletter. A drupal newsletter is a publication that you subscribe to, and every so often the admin creates one and sends it out to all who subscribed. So, users receive a new publication once a week or month, or whenever. This would be done with the 'simplenews' module.
What you seem to be describing is a subscription to individual pages, with email notification when they are updated or edited: http://drupal.org/project/subscriptions
> Main page "mainsite.com" can draw tags, keywords and title words to a sitewide widget/aggregator display
There is a default 'frontpage' which displays an aggregated teaser-list constructed from content that has had a 'promote to frontpage' flag set. If you need something more powerful/flexible/automatic, then you'd build such a page with the Views module:
http://drupal.org/project/views
> Paid memberships
Not sure, but Ubercart probably: http://drupal.org/project/ubercart
LM PayPal for Paid Membership Subscriptions
UberCart can indeed do paid membership subscriptions, and you should use it if you also need a full-fledged shopping cart, but if you don’t otherwise need a full-fledged shopping, check out LM Paypal instead: http://drupal.org/project/lm_paypal
In addition to paid membership subscriptions (basically buying oneself into a Role either permanently or for a set amount of time [e.g. annual membership dues] with or without automatic re-subscription), it also supports donations, and even a simple form of paid advertisements (not as full-featured as, say, embedding OpenX into Drupal).
I think “LM” stands for “Lightweight Module,” and is suitable when you only need the basic features that it has and have no intention of branching out into full-fledged e-commerce (for which you should go with UberCart or even embedding Magento or some such). If you’re using shared hosting, you have to be frugal with modules, since each new module adds to the PHP code that has to be executed and shared hosting can only handle so much. UberCart is huge compared to LM Paypal, and embedding Magento and/or OpenX would be an even bigger server load. Use too many and/or too big/slow modules, and your shared hosting service will likely insist that you advance to their much more expensive virtual or dedicated hosting options, or else shut you down because your site would be dragging everyone else on that server down.
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Definitely agree-- lm_paypal is much smaller and easier for simple paid memberships/classifieds. Though ubercart can definitely do it, there's no sense in bothering with all that complexity if you're not planning on opening a store or some such ecommerce type site.
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> lm_paypal is much smaller
> lm_paypal is much smaller and easier for simple paid memberships/classifieds
Interesting. I can't work out from the project page....
Could this module be used to take a deposit from a user booking holiday accommodation?
Would the user receive a printed receipt of the transaction?
Thanks.
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Hmmm... interesting idea. You might be able to do the deposit thing with the donations or paid adverts functionality but you'd have to play around with it a bit.
The receipts would be handled via paypal settings i would think.
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