Needed: Task list for Drupal installation which equals standard installs of WordPress or Joomla
Hi,
I'd like to get a list of tasks I need to complete in order to create a Drupal installation which contains all of the features of WordPress and a magazine-style theme. I started looking into this and it appears daunting. Is there an installation profile which will accomplish this? I tried two installation profiles available on this site and couldn't get either working.
So far I have:
1) Drupal - standard installation
2) WYSIWYG - FCK
3) Panels (? - not so sure about this - this module seems to obscure my control over the page layout)
4) Something to help with Image management
5) Implement Drupal Theme to meet basic magazine-style site layout requirements
This may be completely wrong and/or may be missing several other needed modules.
One particular area that I am stumped on is with formatting the main content of the page. In wordpress the templates are easily identifiable and easily edited. In Drupal I can find $content and I have no idea how to control how this main content is displayed. I discovered that the Panels module helps but it also had limitations in that I couldn't find a plain old php file to edit in order to modify output.
For reference the WP theme I have used looks like this:
http://branfordmagazine.com/
Also, I have heard that Economist.com and TheOnion.com are both using Drupal. Installation, modules and themes which will allow these types of layouts and content editing is what I am looking for. I have reviewed many Drupal themes and none of them approach the sophistication of these sites (Economist, TheOnion).
About me:
I am somewhat new to Drupal in that I have spent about 10 hours working in Drupal. I feel that I have made absolutely no significant progress in this 10 hours. My installation works, I understand the admin interface but I have no idea how to produce a new website (i.e. a website which differs from the crude "blog" style themes available for Drupal). I am an intermediate PHP developer and additionally I have significant experience with WordPress and RedDot CMS. By comparison, my first 10 hours spent with WordPress resulted in a completed intranet magazine-style website which launched to rave reviews.
Any and all help is appreciated. On a side note I met Dries last week and saw some screenshots of Drupal 7 - I am optimistic about Drupal's future (despite my current frustration).
Thanks,
David
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Have you tried http://www.opensourceopenminds.com/openpublish? It's a drupal distribution optimized for publishing. Might be worth a look.
Regarding themes-- sites like the economist and the onion probably spent thousands on a custom theme, it's not likely you'll find one of that caliber for free.
Otherwise currently my 'standard' publishing type install usually includes:
For an excellent screencast of how to do image handling with these modules see http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast/episode29.
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If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Thanks for the module list.
Thanks for the module list. Openpublish is the one I tried but couldn't get working. Maybe I'll try again.
That's all?
I hoped for a few more suggestions, or at least someone telling I am dumb for mentioning WP and Joomla. Anyone?
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My guess is it's because this post is really just a variation on the drupal learning curve theme-- which, though new for you, is quite a tired subject in these forums.
Yes drupal has a learning curve, even for experienced developers, and 10 hours is, I'm sad to say, not even a drop in the bucket. It's also really not feasible to grok drupal without cracking the documentation (something most developers take for granted).
The 'plain old php file' you mention is called 'page.tpl.php' and it's located in the subdirectory of your theme. There's also one for nodes, blocks, views, and all sorts of things. See the http://drupal.org/theme-guide/6 for more info.
And you're not dumb for mentioning wp or joomla-- if they meet your needs by all means use them. In the end it's all about the right tool for the job imo.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Thanks
Thanks for your responses. I was able to set up the OpenPublish Installation Profile and theme. It is good, but possibly too complex for a 1-person Dev Team to conquer in a short time frame. Does anyone know of an OpenPublish lite? I think it would take me a week to remove and clean up all of the modules and add-ons that I won't use from this profile. Oddly, it came preconfigured with about 30 different modules and gadgets but somehow FCK was not configured correctly. I fixed it but it took me a few hours. This seems like an example of effort not prioritized to best effect.
Regarding my learning Drupal - I just posted a new message on this if you're curious - http://drupal.org/node/635206 - its about my desire to have a visual representation of the site's structure.
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I just answered it, lol. ;-)
EDIT: fyi the new ckeditor support of the wysiwyg module is outstanding. If you don't need the advanced configuration a ckeditor specific module would provide (like the fckeditor module does for the previous version), its an excellent choice-- the best by far imo. Combined with the better_formats module it's kickin!
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.