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By desi6ner on
OK, this is not a short and easy one, but I would really appreciate your help :-)
I want to create a Yellow Pages Script (yes, I've searched the whole drupal site, but I didn't find the answers I was looking for). The main Yellow Pages site in Norway is "Gule Sider" (meaning "yellow pages") at www.gulesider.no, please see http://www.gulesider.no/gs/categoryList.c?q=biler as an example (this is a search for "cars" in Norwegian).
In this exact search for "biler" (search for cars/car firms) you'll see :
IN THE MAIN COLUMN
- in the top theres some ads (I could use phpMyAdmin to do this),
- then theres some paid listings WITH their logo/images (I will send invoices by snailmail, but it should be possible to order listings directly from my website)
- then paid listings WITHOUT logo/images
- then this search finds the most relevant firms with "biler" in their name
- at the
THE LEFT COLUMN
- a directory of various car firms (firms that sells tires, autodealers, car repair etc. etc.)
AT THE TOP
- a search box to search the entire site
So, I guess this would be difficult to accopplish using Drupal, but I also guess it would be possible, but don't have a clue how to do this.
I'd prefer just to buy a yellow pages script, but I have yet to find any good ones - most are outdated, poor code etc. Then there's Drupal, but this will take several months to do by myself, cannot affort to spend that much time on this project.
SO WHAT DO I WANT TO ACHIEVE?
All I really want is to find a simple solution to get my own yellow pages site up and running without paying anyone to develop the site, and also I don't want to settle for a cheap and poor yellow pages script. The example above gives you an idea of what I want my site to look like. Also it is important to note that I want to make money with this site by offering paid listings.
Any advice would be welcome, including non-drupal advice! :-)
Comments
Forgot to mention...
It is the user (the FIRM owner, NOT the website owner) that should post the listings. Also, the user should be able to select which type of listing he/she wants, i.e. "paid listing with logo image", "paid listing without logo image", "free listing with basic contact info", and then there should be stuff like "add homepage link (additional cost $XX,XX"), extra info page (add additional cost $XX,XX to price) - hope you get the picture :-)
quick one..
hei desi6ner!
on the contrary, what you outlined is relatively straightforward using Drupal.
As a quick pointer, I'd suggest using the CCK module to create the different types of ads you have, convert them into products (so you can easily set different prices and fields, such as upload picture/logo etc. on the submission forms for each ad type) and use Drupals taxonomy (categories) to organise the adverts.
i.e. you can build a very slick and comprehensive gule sider yourself using Drupal version 4.7 out-of-the-box along with the ecommerce and cck modules. Drupal out-of-the-box has all the necessary functionality to organise your adverts into categories, search facilities etc.
Also, by using the ecommerce suite for Drupal, you can eliminate the need for snailmail invoicing..i.e. it handles the transaction and orders for you. Depending on the payment options you would like to provide, you can have a seamless, automated system.
how the ecommerce suite is structured, you can choose to add in snailmail invoicing alongside pay-straightaway options like paypal/credit card, so the person who wants to place an advert has a choice.
It's not simple, but, it is relatively straightforward and doesn't require a deep programming knowledge. the functionality provided by Drupal + CCK + ECOMMERCE is practially turn-key. The labour intensive area will be with theming (CSS and layout) - getting your gule sider looking the way you want.
There's also a strong Norwegian Drupal user community, so I think you'll find that a lot of the bits and pieces you will need have already been localised into Norwegian.
Hope that helps...lykke til!
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
How long would this take?
Thanks for answering so quickly Dub :-)
Any idea how long it would take for a newbe like myself to create the "gule sider" website outlined here?
(I have basic php knowledge, familiar with smarty templates, experienced in css/html, wouldn't even dare to make my own modules..)
quick one..
tough question..
If you're not familiar with the ecommerce module suite (the CCK module is very straightforward) here's a rough, back-of-an-envelope guess:
functionality
I've been using Drupal for quite a while and still tend to do that 1 day playing-around-with-Drupal thing before planning a project...the main reason is because new improvements and new features get added so quickly by the Drupal community it's a simple and easy way of keeping up to speed.
Drupal offers a huge amount of flexibility and the ecommerce suite is no exception...it takes a while to fine tune the ergonomics to the way you want it to work. As an example, setting up the automatic notices that the ecommerce module sends..copyrighting the text for each notice, how the ordering procedure works...formatting the invoices, deciding whether users have to register and login before ordering or not. And so on. The first day playing around with Drupal + ecommerce suite is very valuable as it gives you a black-box understanding of how it all knits together.
Note: all of the above is all carried out using the default theme, to get the functionality nailed before you start on theming.
design & theming
If your site "container" design and layout is already done, I would add 3 days full-site theming to take a design and convert it to a Drupal theme.
testing and tweaking
3 days. Most of the add-on payment integration modules that comes with Drupal allow test transactions. For example, I did the worldpay.module for Drupals ecommerce suite and that allows you to send a dummy credit card number to a few friends/collegues so they can try out your gule sider from beginning to end and give feedback.
As a tip, there's a very strong temptation to start hacking modules to get things looking the way you want or doing what you want it to do...try and avoid that at all costs. The functionality that comes with the ecommerce suite is incredibly powerful and extensive and an innocuous change in one module might have a domino effect right across the entire suite. Try and stick to theming instead of hacking if at all possible.
That's just a back of an envelope guess, Desi6ner...there's a best practices section of the handbook worth checking out as well, in case I've missed anything....and I think there's a "how to setup a classified ads site" section in the handbook as well.
Hope that helps
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
Wow...
... I feel slow now. LOL! Even if I could work full time on it, I think doing all that would take me a month!
Sorry, I don't have anything productive to add other than agreeing that Drupal is great for this. I'm doing a pseudo Yellow Pages in my community site and wanted to "subscribe" to the thread. :)
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
LOL
lol...the above was just a back-of-an-envelope guess Michelle...and if I was doing a site like that for someone else, it would probably be spread across a few weeks.
The above would be a guess of actual production time for *just* doing a simple adverts site...e.g. it might take a newbie who is DIYing a site 2 days to install and setup the ecommerce suite, before they get to the 1 play-around-with-drupal day.
On top of that you have the distraction factor...i.e. when you're looking at something, you invariably spot something else, like another module and think "oh! that might be handy for what I'm doing"...and suddenly the goalposts start shifting and you find yourself veering away from the core objectives.
Also, designing the theme can take weeks...deciding on colours and layout..the production time I mentioned for theming was based on the assumption that all that how long is a piece of string work has been done.
So, please treat my guestimate as a rough guide only..Desi6ner is very clear to what he/she wants to achieve, so it was just a quick guess. It would be great if Desi6ner went for it and reported back to how long it actually took for each element.
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
Taxonomy the time sink
Taxonomy is what's killing me. I'm trying to set up the categories for the directory and am going round and round. I started out by doing a whole page copy from a YP site that listed by category into a text file. I'm now sorting and re-arranging and trying to decide how I want to organize all this stuff. Then, once I have these hundreds of terms molded into a hierarchy I like, I need to add them all to the site. Then I need to figure out a good UI for it all because dealing with hundreds of terms will be a mess for the users if I don't simplify. Argh, my head hurts!
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
quick one..
the gule sider (golden/yellow pages) interface desi6ner linked looks quite intuitive..but achieving that level of "intuitiviteness" only happens once you've nailed the taxonomy structure. I agree with you that it's a big time sink, it took me ages trying to get to grips with it, the more levels you have, but, it is worth sticking with it. If you can find a gule sider type site that has a full site map, it might help as a "taxonomy model" to start with.
Someone else mentioned the views module, which is an option, but, AFAIK the usefulness of the views.module is pretty much reliant on how well you structure the site taxonomy anyway....so it's back to that head hurting stuff. My head hurts just thinking about it.
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
Yeah, did that
I started out by copying a site with an extremely full category browse section. I don't want to just copy a site, though; I want to make it fit what I'm doing. My website has a slightly different slant to it than just another YP site, so I need to organize things from that perspective.
To the OP: When looking at exisitng YP sites, this one was the nicest I found: http://www.yp.com/ . Might want to have a look at that for ideas. That isn't the one with tons of categories. Unfortuantely, I didn't bookmark that one.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
Adding detailed geological categorization
Thanks again for the quick answer Dub :-)
Another essential thing I forgot to mention is the categorization of data, i.e. every usable yellow pages script would need a way to filter out the spesicif firms in a certain geographical area.
Example: User wants to find firms that sell car parts. A userfriendly way to do this is to offer a way to browse the directory. First the user clicks the "Directory" -> then "Cars" -> and then "Car Parts". Then the user should be able to select the geographical area of interest, starting with selecting a major mart of the country i.e. "South East" or "North West", then if the user wish to narrow his result he could select "State", and finally "City".
This link at gulesider.no: http://www.gulesider.no/gs/companyList.c?bc=165&drill=&q=biler is where you can find car parts in Norway. Please try this so that you'll understand what I want to achieve: Click "Midt Norge" -> "Sør-Trønderlag" -> "Trondheim". Now you have selected first a major geographical region of Norway, then a state (or "fylke") and finally a city ("kommune"). Notice that while you browse and narrow your results the user will be presented with results within the given region.
Now you should get the exact idea of what I had in mind.
So my final question now would be - Is it really possible to do all that I have outlined in this thread in drupal, within reasonable amounts of time, taking into account that I am not an professional programmer?
Thanks for helping this newbee on his feet ;-)
More taxonomy
Just create another vocabulary with the geographic information and tag each entry with that as well.
It's definitely possible. In fact, I'm working on something very similar at this very moment. Time depends on how fast you can work. As I said in my other post, I guess I'm slow. :)
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
quick one
there's a number of ways of doing that...(the regional filtering of ads)....
Like Michelle said, you can setup taxonomy's (categories) to include a regional drop down list as someone is entering an advert, or you can use a CCK postcode field to filter the ads.
I think Michelle's idea is probably the better way to go - use taxonomy (categories) to organise your ads because there are already a lot of taxonomy add-on modules and snippets you can use to plop into a left/right handside block in the same way the gule sider page you linked is done. i.e. a block appears with regions + number of ads per region when you're viewing a particular listing.
It's well worth spending a bit of time scanning some of the taxonomy related modules and searching for "classifieds" on here, before charging into it.
To answer your question about the time thing...the quick answer is yes, as long as you don't mind spending a few hours familiarising yourself with taxonomy's, how they work and digging through Drupal.org. I think understanding taxonomy and how to set them up, will be the key to your project. (it's an out of the box Drupal feature by the way).
You don't need to be a professional programmer to build what you outlined. The skills you have are far greater than what I knew before I started using Drupal (not that I'm an expert, but, I'm able to get by).
If you get stuck, the drupal.org community is very good and strong. If you can't find answers on the forum or a handbook page dealing with a problem you have come up against, post on here and usually someone will chip in and help out. Make sure to search first before posting a question, though. It avoids the forum getting filled up with the same questions being asked over and over again.
Actually, I'm almost certain someone has posted a handbook page on "how to build a classifieds site" which would be very useful for what you want to achieve.
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
interesting... ( actually I
interesting... ( actually I am bookmarking this thread)
subscribing to thread also
something similar might be needed down the line so I thought I'd keep an eye on this one.
I was just surprised not to hear VIEWS mentioned for the pulling and sorting of data.
Subscribing
I'm subscribing also..
newms
Views
I'm planning on using views for mine. My general idea is to have two paths... One is a browse drill down through the categories. The other is views to "search".
Michelle
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My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
donations
I would be really happy to pay some money towards getting this working and available - I think this is something that is missing that is so important. So many people want to host searchable, geographical adverts on their site like yellow pages. It really isnt very cool to have the ads just stuck under categories like the directory module I dont think. How long do you estimate it would take to finish Michelle or is it something that everyone would need to do for themselves?
I would love a module that allowed you to;
define your own geographical areas
define states
define postcodes
define your own categories
post an advert (user) - for me basic text ad goes live
approve an advert (webmaster) - paid version goes live
search these ads (that can have photos) by state, postcode etc.
Drupal would have nearly all I need then!
Vivienne
Module
I wasn't planning on writing a module... I'm using already written ones. Plus, I don't need the whole ecommerce part because I'm not charging for listings. So I'm not the person you'd be wanting to pay. :)
If you're serious about paying, you may want to do a post in the paid services forum listing the requirements you just stated and see if you can get some interest. What it sounds like you need is something along the lines of the directory module with ties into ecommerce. An experienced coder should be able to do that fairly easily, I would think.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
quick one..
Hi Vivienne,
Just in case anyone else spots this and assumes that Drupal can't do what the poster mentioned...please note: Drupal already allows you to do all of the following...
define your own geographical areas & define states
Many ways of doing it..the simplest way to do it for an adverts section is to use category.module (available out-of-the-box with Drupal)
define postcodes
Same as above, or alternatively you can specify a POSTCODE field using the cck.module and setup your own custom content.
define your own categories
You can use the category.module (available out-of-the-box with Drupal)
post an advert (user) - for me basic text ad goes live
You can specify who can post ads with/withoiut approval by going to ADMIN-> SETTINGS -> CONTENT TYPES (available out-of-the-box with Drupal)
approve an advert (webmaster) - paid version goes live
The ecommerce add on suite of modules and other modules like the Lm_paypal.module allows you to do that automatically.
search these ads (that can have photos) by state, postcode etc.
Search facilities are available out-of-the-box with Drupal. helper modules like the views.module, taxonomy_browse and many other search add-on modules exist under DOWNLOADS -> MODULES on drupal.org.
Worth looking at the following handbook page that is a HOWTO: Create a classified ad section using Drupal or the Lm_paypal.module that includes a paid adverts option.
hope that helps
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
Clarifying
Just to be clear, the category module is a downloadable contrib. It's the taxonomy module that comes with Drupal. I think taxonomy is more than capable for this.
Also, I didn't mean to imply that Drupal couldn't do this as is. I was thinking a custom module more in terms of glue to make it easier to put all the pieces together. With a little effort, as Dub showed, you can do it without wiriting a new module.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
Business Directory for Animation industry
If anyone would like to see the business directory implemented at www.imagineanimation.net (a portal for the animation industry), please send me an e-mail and I will give you access details so that you may assess whether its functionality matches what you want.
It currently allows classification by business type (many levels) and/or by geography and/or name search (partial or full) and/or postcode search (partial or full)
Regards
Terry
Recent Drupal sites:-
www.allegiantair.com www.defaqto.com www.quarkexpeditions.com www.sportrelief.com www.chevronhackles.com
www.philipturnercrafts.co.uk www.intelflexplus.com www.aprilroseturner.com www.businessclubagent.ihg.com www.businessclub.ihg
http://drupal.org/node/81589
You describe a classic taxonomy problem, and the realist approach is to accept that it will be iterative.
Taxonomy is very powerful, but solving taxonomy problems is a matter of thought rather than programming - VIEWS is very powerful, but taxonomy is a real GIGO issue. You won't get it right first time.
Ian Dickson - community specialist.
www.emint.org - Association of Online Community Professionals
if you are have ,can you give me one
i want the full code of website dir
but i didn't find in google
http://www.allystone.net
thanks dub
I've been grappling with a related question in regards to postcodes /geo areas and states and I think you have nicely summarised the best approach I have come across to date.
Cheers
subscribing
- yeeloon
Why?
This thread is done. The last post was over 5 months ago. Why subscribe to it? Not trying to be mean... I'm seriously wondering why people respond to ancient, inactive posts to "subscribe" to them. I can understand with active posts because then you can easily see when new things are added. But for finished ones, I don't get it...
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
bookmarking
Hi Michelle!
was actually keeping it bookmarked, as it could come in handy when i do need to develop something similar in near future. : )
...since there's just too many topics in drupal.org
Cheers!
Maybe a flag favorites utility...
Maybe drupal.org should install the flag module, so we can save our favorites independently of posting a "subscribe" note. Just an idea...
I need to develop a site
I need to develop a site wherein:
1. In a single taxonomy term i can have paid as well as free listings.
2. The paid listings are always listed first when the user clicks on the term link followed by the free listings.
Any pointers on how to do so??
Thanks for the guide!
Hi there!
Thanks for the guide!
Michelle
http://lnk.uz