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By bassa on
Hello!
I wasn't sure where to put this, so I thought I'd post it here as it seemed appropriate enough. I'm looking for some good advice on how to approach this assignment I've gotten my hands on.
So, here's the deal!
My case is that I need to create a new website for a small company that I'm working for. I'm skilled enough with (X)HTML, CSS, graphics design and all that, but the website needs a Newsletter as well as a discussion Forum and an associated Blog.
Also, some other functionality will be added to mostly improve commercialization/marketing of the website as well as Accessibility, Usability and some Social Bookmarking and stuff.
Now, adding a PHP forum and a WordPress blog is sorta straightforward enough since I plan on just linking to both of them from the main website unto their own separate sub-domains (ie., forum.mywebsite.com and blog.mywebsite.com) and simply installing WordPress and phpBB, respectively.
My problem will likely be how to add the Newsletter feature?
Right now, they have a website done with TYPO3 (an OpenSource CMS) and a newsletter module associated with their template (a default template that doesn't show off their company brand, whatsoever, which is what we also want to change, of course) and it seems to work fine.
However, I'm fairly certain that using TYPO3 is far too much "over-the-top", and I also don't believe I even have the time to get to learn how to use TYPO3 as it's pretty huge.
Right now, though, I'm digging into Drupal to see how it works.
Up until now, I've been using Dreamweaver and hand-crafted designs and CSS which works like a breeze for me, but I'd like to have a decent Newsletter implemented, and I need some kinda database stuff added for that.
Is it possible to get decent and free Open Source newsletters somewhere? I've tried searching, but haven't found much yet.
Anyway, hoping to hear some thoughts!
Thank you!
Cheers,
Bassa
Comments
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I would just use drupal for the whole thing. Integrations are a lot more work then you might think. The thought of one app for a forum, one app for a blog, and another for a newsletter makes my brain bleed. The upgrade and maintenance cycle alone will be horrible-- not to mention 3 separate packages to learn and resources to find when you need to troubleshoot something.
Drupal can do it all-- blog, forum, and newsletter. Blog and forum are builtin to core (though you'll want to add the advanced_forum module as well) and the simplenews module can do a basic newsletter.
However, drupal does have a learning curve and some do complain about the forum not being robust enough (though I find core forum + advanced_forum to be excellent 99% of the time). It might be worth looking if wordpress and joomla with their respective plugins can handle what you want as well.
No matter what you choose, my biggest word of advice is don't use 3 separate products, lol.