Online Community - Drupal opinions needed
Hi, everybody. I could use a few opinions please.
The powers that be, Management, have given me until the end of September to come up with an online community website that will allow the university's alumni to register and stay in contact with each other - something along the lines of Friends Reunited (http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/) with a forum, private messaging, user searching and the ability for users to create and join their own groups.
Management would also like the website to be pre-populated with the details of nearly 7,000 past students - allowing them to log in (I've no idea how they are supposed to know their passwords) and update their contact details. The ability to send newsletters and emails to the users (and possibly targeted user groups) is also needed.
Maybe I'm thinking a little too complicated. Is this something that you think Drupal could handle? Any advice and opinions would be much appreciated.
Sorry
Sorry, apparently I've posted this support request to the wrong section. Its a shame that you don't have the ability to move or delete a message until somebody adds the first reply.
Drupal can do everything...
... but you'll have to come up with your own strategy for the data import and authenticating users for the first time.
Check out the simplenews (for newsletters) module, og (organic groups) module, the privatemsg (private message) module, and user search module from the contributions repository. The rest is in Drupal core.
- Robert Douglass
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My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress
Thanks
Thanks for the reassurance. With such a limited deadline, any time I spend experimenting and trying out various CMS solutions eats away at my design/development/testing time. I shall plough in and give Drupal a shot.
I'd much rather attempt to use Drupal for the purpose than have to build a whole solution from scratch.
Go with Drupal
Go with Drupal
1. Username - only Drupal enables between 2-56 character&numerals usernames! And this the TOP #1 Reason Drupal is the way to go for a huge user portal (memberships, registered users)
"to be pre-populated with the details of nearly 7,000 past students - allowing them to log in (I've no idea how they are supposed to know their passwords) and update their contact details."
Yep, Drupal already has that. user and profile modules are out of box solutions to handle your thousand users and more. Profile module to enter each user's info and categories (type of users).
*(I've no idea how they are supposed to know their passwords)* - Drupal system will email the password which is randomly generated but must be activated within 1 day. The registered user has to activate the link by opening the provided link. Oh, that's old Drupal. The new Drupal user.module ensures more security by emailing the password, and the user has to copy and paste that - he has to login and then change the password, and on the same page, set his/her profile and theme and preferences.
So you might want to have a system to register username and valid email.
user_search - add this module
ability for users to create and join their own groups - the module is `og' stands for Organic Groups
So I suggest you can actually start working with Drupal 4.7.3 (start getting the user and profile working).
Additional modules can always be selected and installed later.
Theming and the layout can be done later - or maybe hire a Drupal expert on this.
Oh, and database.module is also important - this enables you to backup your DATABASE - wouldnt want to go mad if your site crash and lose your work eh! The backup database is .sql file which is emailed to you.
Past students
I know it's often hard to get management to use common sense, but, really, do you need to put all 7000 in there? Why not send an email out to everyone and, if they are interested, they will sign up. Having 7000 users when only 100 use the site seems rather silly to me.
Michelle
Well, as you said, the are
Well, as you said, the are ALUMNIS - and alumnis are valuable to an educational institution.
I was Purdue student - grad 97 but there was no such thing as a fine Drupal portal to manage alumnis.
If there was, I'd be interested to register myself so that many benefits and contribute ideas and $ to the school and students.
I propose that you use the conventional snail-mail postcard to get them to register.
Otherwise, I understand that alumnis are valuable, but dont ever let this whole registration drive or alumni call-out become disastrous or making bad impression to the institution - maybe something like being too pushy, or too complicated, or the frontpage of the site is not what they thought (that's the job of theme designers).
At least a nice logo greeting the alumnis - make the registration exercise a smooth and memorable experience.
**And remember that many people have Internet access from home - and emails - and might be a regular MySpace or Bloggers or anything significant that they use Internet a lot.
And some of them EXPECT perfection - either as just a reader, or he/she wants to participate actively in the alumni portal
So it is worth the massive alumni user registration - the Drupal portal (alumni site) can deliver emails and contents, and send contribution campaign etc etc
**The cost of registering 7000 users - phew, I'd say equivalent to my service fee for 50 separate Drupal websites
I don't get your point...
You say:
And then you say:
If you feel, as an alumus, that you would be willing to register yourself, why do you think it's worth it for him to go through the hassle of doing the registrations for 7K people? What's wrong with letting them register themselves?
Michelle
Can both ways
But not all people are smart enough, or care enough to register himself.
My point is: Drupal membership system (user and profile.module) are the way to go if this needs to be done.
By registering on behalf - a user might be interested (or not) to follow the link in his/her email.
Drupal 4.7.3 has changed user.module so that instead of clicking on the link to activate the username, he has to copy and paste the name and the password. This I nderstand to prevent scripting manipulation.
Nothing wrong to let them register themselves, and nothing wrong as well to register for them - this is what I call the `CALL OUT or Registration Drive'.
If I were a President of the Institution, and I have in my hand the list of 7000 of my alumnis, I believe in the benefit of the registration drive, and I would not wait for them to discover the portal / website themselves.
At least, I would do the email campaign to tell them of the new website and the alumnis can benefit from the membership system. But I would not be so direct and blatant so as to ask for donations or fees or dues in the early stage.
And yes, the financial cotribution is what I look forward to.
Normally this is done by snail mail campaign - but many postcards from the alumni association is either lost or buried in junk mail. Drupal can help to save the cost of physical printing, and do the email campaign elegantly.
...
I guess it's a difference of opinion, then. Personally, I feel that if a college graduate can't figure out how to register on a Drupal site that's pretty sad. And if they can't figure that out, they aren't going to figure out how to post or anything else on the site. So the only reason I would bother pre-registering people is if you need the people who are using the site to be able to see the whole list. But, then, you run into privacy issues of showing information about people who haven't consented to it by joining the site.
The rest of your post has nothing to do with my point, so I don't really have any comment.
Michelle
Advice
Thanks for all the comments, guys.
I am slightly dubious about bulk importing nearly 7,000 records - 90% of which may never log in. But thats Management ideas for you.
I shall try to promote the idea of bulk emails notifying alumni of the new website and leave it up to them if they wish to register or not. Probably a lot less hassel.
Hmm....bulk email...should
Hmm....bulk email...should be carefully crafted - dont want to look like a spam email :)
Anyway, login or not, a registered user (on behalf), if the email is valid, you can subscribe them or set `notify' or `simplenews' or `mail (4.6.x).
But inside every article sent, there should be link to set `if you dont want to receive this anymore, log in to the site and change the settings in my account'.
Plus, ethically, you should not ever expose their emails to spammers, public, or third party even if they are willing to pay heftily for the emails
*This post made me check out my Purdue Alumni
http://www.purduealum.org - Nice site, ASP based
https://awc.alumni.purdue.edu
The registration form is secured https:// (that must also be taken into consideration)
*Now the only non-ASP solution would be a Drupal-powered site, I'd match them