Family Website on Drupal?
json2001 - October 2, 2006 - 03:51
Hello, I have set up websites on other CMS solutions but I have heard really good things about Drupal and it seems slick and I would love to try it out. But the real question is will it work for what I want. My objective is to have a website with all my family registered where everyone can upload photos (Gallery will do this in drupal?) and have permission to post blog-like posts to the main page as sort of family updates, and clearly post in forums.
The question i guess is: Is drupal the right CMS for managing 30+ users and sharing content amongst them?
Thanks so much!
You'll have the multi-user
You'll have the multi-user blog functionality right out of the box. You're correct that the Gallery2 module is one way to take care of photo part of it. There are other options available to you as well.
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www.whatwoulddrupaldo.org
oh yes
http://www.familytimes.com :this is Drupal
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
Drupal is a good choice
There is an initial effort learning how to get the installation correct. Once it's in place the evolution and maintenance is really straightforward. I use the Acidfree module for images on my drupal site and it works well.
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www.galwaycityharriers.com
Definitely :)
I run my family web site on drupal. I chose the image module over gallery, largely because my non-techie family members found it easier to use.
I also highly recommend the taxonomy_access and robotstxt modules. taxonomy_access lets you decide who can see which content (important to me because I really don't like the idea of the world having unrestricted access to pictures of my kid, etc). robotstxt makes it slightly easier to tell web crawlers like the Wayback Machine and google what they should and shouldn't index.
Susan
Family Website
Anyone else create something like this? I am going to start today on a personal family site, and would love some good advice on modules. Thanks.
Me Too!
I'm also thinking of making a family website. We had one on myfamily_dot_com which was nice, but once you decide not to use it you can't back it up and take it with you. So you have to start all over again. But I would like something similar to that.
Some things I need off the top of my head are:
Password protected.
easy upload and organizing of photos.
Easy way for users to post comments, updates, news, etc.
Easy way for users to respond to comments.
email notification when something new is added to web site.
Automatic notification of upcoming birthdays, anniversaries, important events.
Family tree.
Oh, and it has to be relatively easy for everyone to use.
Can Drupal provide this? What modules/themes would you recommend?
> Password protected. Yes >
> Password protected.
Yes
> easy upload and organizing of photos.
No, especially for streamed media or upload of more than one photo at a time.
Not rocket science exactly, but training will be required.
> Easy way for users to post comments, updates, news, etc.
Yes (text)
> Easy way for users to respond to comments.
Yes (text)
> email notification when something new is added to web site.
Notifications/subscriptions are not ready (stable) for D6, but coming.
> Automatic notification of upcoming birthdays, anniversaries, important events.
The event and calendar modules have many criticisms
> Family tree
No idea what you mean by this, but I doubt there is a module for it though.
You'll probably need to join a genealogy service.
> Oh, and it has to be relatively easy for everyone to use
I've been banging my head against this for months, especially regarding media.
The more easy you try to make a site, the more difficult it is to develop.
If you've got brain-dead users, there is nothing you can do to make a site easy for them
unless you've got a few thousand dollars to spend on developers and have very specific aims.
Ooops!
Sorry, I didn't realize this post was so old until after I posted. Oh well, maybe it will be resurrected!
Oh well...
Email, photos and notification look like a downer then for my particular purpose. I have family spread out all over and uploading multiple photos and being notified that there is new content are important to me.
However, I can't think of a
However, I can't think of a good alternative to drupal either. I'd spend a month (yes it will take a month at least; once you've made a decision, it is very, very difficult to change over to another system) testing joomla, drupal and wordpress, and see which one you have an affinity with, which one gets you closest to your goal with regard to support and extensions (add-ons/modules), and which one looks best for the future.
The subscription module is still in beta, but won't be forever:
http://drupal.org/project/subscriptions
And at some point drupal will get it's act together regarding media. At the moment there are three main ways to get media into content, but IMO they are all totally crap - I've heard wordpress is much better/easier with regard to handling media.
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You may want to factor the http://drupal.org/project/tngintegrate module when making your decision. It was the single deciding factor for me choosing something for a family/genealogy type site.
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If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
I did come accross that...
I did come across that before and it looks like something I could use. How do you handle uploading photos and email notifications? Or is that something you don't do on your family site? I know everybody has a different idea of a family site but I would like mine to be somewhat interactive.
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I use the imagefield, imagecache, and lightbox2 modules to create image galleries (based on the Creating Multiple Maintainable Image Galleries video). Another good gallery tutorial is Multiple galleries and taxonomy. I've not tried it yet, but a lot of people seem to like the http://drupal.org/project/photos module. Another one that caught my attention is the http://drupal.org/project/galleria module.
For notifications I use the http://drupal.org/project/notifications module-- mostly because it integrates with OG and that's what i use on my intranet site so I was already familiar with it. I plan to evaluate the http://drupal.org/project/subscriptions module. There's also the http://drupal.org/project/comment_notify module (which is on track for being added to core) for simple comment emails. Those are for opt in communication. For simple outgoing emails (no opt in) I like the http://drupal.org/project/rules module.
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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.