I'm looking to build a personal website. I only really want two areas:
1. Frontpage which also doubles as a blog. People can comment on new updates. I want to be able to possibly format my blog with HTML, such as adding in images. I assume this is fine?
2. I want an "Articles" section, whereby using a blog-type submission form it adds a new article to the database, and arranges them in a list by... date I guess. Must be able to support HTML for adding in images, and also need the articles to be easily editable. Ideally, I'd like to tie both the blog and the articles in so that I could tick a box or something so that it went both in the blog section *and* stored in the article section.
3. I'd also like an email submission form.
Is this all doable? If not, what are my alternatives?
Thanks :D
Comments
Drupal has multiple types of
Drupal has multiple types of content, all based on the concept of a node.
1. Any registered user can write their own blog. You can configure such that all items written to your blog automatically get promoted to the front page.
2. This "article" could be a story (a type of Drupal node). You can create your own categories to organize items however you like. By default, you can view items by date. There is also the article contributed module.
3. Email submission by other people? The feedback module (slightly outdated) allows people to send you/the site admin email. There is also the mailhandler module which can be used to create or edit nodes and comments via email.
Easy-peasy. My friend Evan runs his personal site from Drupal. My site has my personal blog, but the front page is reserved for more general interest.
Hope that helps,
-- Boris
Personal websites using Drupal
Some nice examples:
See the sites list for more examples.
Would Drupal be suitable for my website (group site)?
I will need to start developing a group learning community in april... and i'm looking now to play around with different tools.
I would like to play with Drupal, but the versioning worries me. A 'release' candidate stands on the verge- yet, the stable version and modules are not yet prepared for that version. All installation is manual... and I'm used to those handy upgrade scripts that take care of it all. The modules sound attractive, but the fact that they are not guaranteed 'core' components makes them seen a bit sketchy.
Q1- Can you tell me if I should start playing with the previous stable version, or the RC?
I am hoping to try accomplish this:
Q2- Could anyone recommend which modules I would need, and how compatible they would be for this particular development?
I need to spend more time on supporting the learning group, doing a literature review and writing an, albeit short, 8000wd paper on this than futzing with dodgy, to be quite honest. :/
BUT! I can offer that everything I learn about using the tool will be shared to the wider community- especially for those who want to use Drupal for learning collaborations (and might not be as technically skilled- like me!)
~h
learning community
Myself and a few other colleagues have taught a few courses using Drupal. I'm not teaching this semester, but writingfly has a distance ed short story writing course going right now using 4.3.
The core Drupal installation will do everything that you have mentioned except for uploading images. Members can use the collaborative book module to maintain a group bookmarking section and/or other collaborative texts. The other features you mention can easily be implemented by turning on, configuring and using the blog, profile, and comment modules included with the core installation.
I have not ever used the image or gallery modules, so I cannot tell you which one of them is best suited for your purposes, nor if they are ready for use with 4.4.0-rc. But I have just started using 4.4. For your purposes, I doubt that you would enjoy any significant advantage in using 4.4 instead of 4.4. It would be my suggestion, then, to work with 4.3 if you don't want to wait.
There are also some additional 4.3 contrib modules that can be of use to the learning community. Notify will allow users to select to receive emails of new content, either nodes and/or comments (as the administrator you set the frequency with which those emails are sent). Taxonomy_html or taxonomy_dhtml modules can be used to create an automatic generated listing of all categories, making it a little easier to browser the site topically. And the members module is useful for creating a one page listing of member usernames, links to blogs, and email addresses (4.3 allows you to make this available to members only using the permissions system).
And please feel free to drop by Kairosnews (although you'll have to wait until tonight or tomorrow; I just switched hosts, so DNS is propogating and the site may be unavailable for the next 24 hours or so). There are a number of us there that either use Drupal in our teaching or are interested in hearing what others have to say about it and would be glad to give feedback. You might also be interested in the previous comments block that Kairosnews uses (see the right hand menu). Very useful feature for promoting community since site members can see what comments have been posted recently from visiting whatever page they have bookmarked. Know that its not a core component, but just some php code which can be plugged in to create that function (let me know if you'd like the code).
As Cel4145 mentioned, everyth
As Cel4145 mentioned, everything you mentioned can be accomplished with the core Drupal install. Specifically:
Blog module (core) takes care of all the blog-related items you mention. You set up a taxonomy (a.k.a. set of categories), and require one or more categories to be selected when posting to a blog. Every member's blog postings can be viewed by member, category, or on the front page if promoted there (or you could set blog to be the default front page module).
Weblink module will do bookmarks.
Profile module (core) handles member profiles. The Members module is a nice addition for listing members.
Visitors (a.k.a. anonymous users) can be given different sets of permissions. You may want to leave membership open, and require users to contact the admin to be promoted to "Blog Writer". This is all built in.
However, I would encourage you to use 4.4, mainly because there are a bunch of significant usability changes that occurred between 4.3 and 4.4. All the most stable and useful modules will go to 4.4.
Please contact me if you would like help in setting up your site. I'm in the process of promoting my work with Drupal, and will be offering a limited number of free setups.
more on weblink module
My experience with the weblink module with both 4.2 and 4.3 is that it has some drawbacks. For instance, the most obvious is the way that the summary display lists all taxonomy terms in a vocabulary even if they do not have any links (a problem for very large vocabularies). It also lists them, I think, by taxonomy id rather than alphabetically by term. Members on the site I host have also been confused about when/why to use the weblink module rather than just submitting a blog or story post, as well as vice versa. For me this rasises the question of whether the weblink module is effective since it is largely just another node type like a blog or story with some different display options. One could easily create a taxonomy term called "weblinks" and achieve some similar results with less user confusion.
Thus, unless you plan on collecting hundreds of links, I would think that the collaborative book could work better if members of the community know enough HTML to create a link in a post. And where a learning community might want to collaboratively add to and modify existing annotations, the collaborative book has the permissions structure to enable this sort of group work, as well as providing the opportunity to create a larger collaborative text of which a webliography can be one part. For instance, check out Do You Blog? Weblogs for Educators, a collaborative book which has many links pages (this link may be unavailable until tomorrow due to new DNS hosting).
That being said, I have not tried the weblinks module that I understand is underdevelopment which includes some of the functions of the now deprecated cloud module. It may or may not have improvements that make the weblinks module a better choice.
On the whole taxonomy being l
On the whole taxonomy being listed, you can fix that in administer > configuration > modules > weblink and choosing the right taxonomy for the "Navigation vocabulary". As to the sorting - open up weblink.module, and go to line 835. It has an SQL statement in it. Look for "ORDER BY" in that line and add " lower(n.title), " after it. That should order your weblinks in alpha order (case-insensitive).
alpha order works great!
Thank you Keven.. that helps so much and was so easy.
thanks very much
thanks to Cel4145 and bmann, that was very helpful.
i think i'll could try it with the RC version, knowing i'll have to make an incremental upgrade rather than a larger one.
i think image uploading is rather crucial. i've read a bit and it sounds like the image module uploads seperatly. not sure how users would be able to 'place' images in their profile or in entries.
bmann, i (hopefully) probably could manage the installation just fine, but if you have any skills in module hackery, do you have advice on how to make an image module become *one* with the posting function or profile module?
and to Cel4145, that kaironews site is great. i've had that bookmarked for a while now. great stuff!
the site i'll be working on will be a meta-topic site as well, supporting people who work with learning and technology (i think, but still not 100% sure on the participants yet!) we'll see how it goes. i need to work with a community with shared practice, and that seemed like a good choice.
can users track entries in taxonomy?
this is what i was thinking of, just a *rough* sketch of functionality:
http://nearlythere.com/mite03/meta/layout-sketch.gif (50k)
it would be nice for users to be able to track topics, and be notified when 'new' posts filed under that topic appear. 'new' meaning unread... does anyone know if this is possible?
this would be akin to tribe.net's tribes... but link people's blog posts instead.
in movabletype-speak this would simply be entries per category (but MT does not have user login, hence no 'new' notification.
subscription module
yes, users may affiliate their blog entries with taxonomy terms. They cannot (yet) create their own terms though.
the subscription.module enables users to receive notification when nodes are posted to selected taxonomy terms.