Although I still feel I have a lot of tweaking to do, I'm ready to get some peer feedback on my first Drupal website.
Bikes on Show (http://bikesonshow.com) has been around for 4-5 years as a PHPBB Plus portal/forum website, but I got stuck trying to upgrade to PHPBB3 so I decided to look for another platform - and Drupal looked like a good choice.
At first I thought I'd just integrate PHPBB3 into Drupal, but there were too many things I could not do using that model. So I converted the forums from PHPPB2 to PHPBB3 first, then used the 6.x version of the PHPBB conversion module to move them across to Drupal forums. I am still tidying up things like BBCODE and broken links in the forum topics, but mostly they are OK. I found that the forum redirection module did nothing for me, so I am writing my own redirections for each major PHPBB function.
The theme is a variation on FeverUltra, which was developed for the World Cup. I liked the way it uses views to rotate featured content on the home page, and it was also one of the very few themes I could find that has advanced forum support.
The site direction is changing from a general biker-to-biker community website to more of an e-zine for bikers with a knowledgebase for new riders and riders getting back on motorbikes after a long break. Still a lot of work to be put into content, but the basic direction for the site is starting to emerge.
I've boxed myself into a number of corners because I was in a hurry to launch the new site and I keep fiddling with new modules. I really need to version control it now and set up a pre-prod sandbox for this kind of work. I might have to do a ground-up rebuild of the site first to get it clean and functioning efficiently, as there are a number of modules I can't currently run without big error or memory issues.
My (new) webhost has been very generous with PHP memory, script execution times, etc, which makes me wonder how people get on with shared hosting environments where nothing can be changed. I moved to find a host who'd support me in Drupal as my previous webhost manager said it was terrible and I shouldn't use it.
Modules used in the site so far include:
- Administration Menu
- Plugin Manager (currently disabled due to problems)
- Rotor Banner (even though I have only one banner advertiser right now)
- CCK
- Chaos Tool Suite (although I may ditch this soon)
- Content analysis (which I am finding too complex to use)
- From core optional modules: Aggregator, Blog, Comment, Contact, Database Logging, Forum, Help, Menu, Path, PHP Filter, Profile, Search, Statistics, Taxonomy, Tracker, Trigger, Status Update (disabled due to bugs) and Upload
- Date/Time
- Development
- Drupal Tweaks (life saver!)
- Drupal for Facebook (still not sure if it will stay in the long run)
- Event
- ImageCache
- Pathologic
- Mail
- Meta Tags
- Node Gallery
- Advanced Forum
- Advanced Help
- Advanced User Management
- Author Pane
- Backup and Migrate
- Block Class
- Buy me a beer (I need it by now)
- CKEditor
- Custom Error
- Custom Pagers
- Frequently Asked Questions
- GetID3()
- Global Redirect
- Google Friend Connect
- Image resize filter
- IMCE
- Lightbox2
- Menu Block
- News Page
- Node Picker (but can't get it to work)
- Page Title
- Path redirect
- Pathauto
- Paypal donation page
- Quick tabs
- Read More link
- Secure Password Hash
- Thickbox
- Token
- User Badges
- User Stats
- Video Filter
- Panels
- Registration
- Rules
- SEO
- Signup
- Spam Control
- Statistics
- JQuery Update
- JQuery Plugins
- Wysiwyg
- Userpoints
- Views
- JCarousel Lite
Are there any modules I haven't added? Yes, but not so many I think. Hence my thinking that I might start again from scratch to reduce my reliance on so many modules.
Comments welcome.
Tony
Comments
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Looks good. I'd be interested in hearing what your users think of the switch. By the way, you can use AF with pretty much any theme. There's a couple that have had some compatibility issues but mostly it doesn't matter what theme you use. You just style it to match the theme, whatever that might be.
Michelle