By modul on

Hi all,

I'm a complete newbie to Drupal. I installed it and got it "working" (i.e. I have not yet seen any mysterious errors showing up), but before I trust my office's site to it, I would like to have a few things clarified.

My site has some 5,000 Static text files (some php included to connect to some statistics page). Many visitors keep links to one or more of these files. It is, therefore, compulsory to NOT change their location or their address. So, my first question: is it possible to display static pages within Drupal without too much hassle? I have been doing some reading on this forum, and my first impressions in this respect are a bit scary... Am I wrong? How easy is it to display these static files? By easy, I understand something like <some-command-to-open http://my.site/archive/file1234.php> .

Second question: how easy is it to categorize a file under several categories (without, of course, physically moving it)? Come to think of it: how easy is it to categorize anything at all?? I managed to get into the Drupal "taxonomy" thing, which looks promising, and I solemnly hope that this is really The Answer to anyone running a site with many different text files dealing with many different topics. How easy is it to actually link this taxonomy system to one's texts?

Third question: is it possible to have different styles apply to different contents? Is it, for instance, possible to have our series of "interviews with researchers" look different from our series of articles on "educational policy" (I work in a university, that's why).

Well, that's it - for now. If some good soul would be so kind as to spend some time to explain these things to a definite newbie...

Ludo

-edit by sepeck: added code tags around example provided so that it would not be stripped by filters.

Comments

chx’s picture

chx commented

If I'd need to tackle with this problem, I'd write a very simple module which would import those text files and set up the alias for them at the same time.

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druvision’s picture

druvision commented

Take a look at this article from the sitellite CMS for a possible approach which can also work for drupal. Of course, I would love if somebody write a drupal module for it.

modul’s picture

modul commented

Thanks for your reply, Chx, but as I told you, I'm an Absolute Newbie, which means that I am utterly happy if I manage to get something installed without being flooded by a plethora of inane PHP error codes. "Writing a module" sounds to me like travel instructions to go to some country, beginning with "First, construct a jet plane..." And "setting up an alias"? Well, I'd like to, but how, where, why?

Is there no place or thread where newbies like me are literally taken by the hand in setting up a Drupal site?? I printed the entire manual, but it looks very much (too much) like Work in Progress, not something which outsiders like me can actually Use.

What I'm looking for, is "something" (don't even know what to call it in the Drupal terminology) which actually opens a static file, something like "some_drupal_miracle_command_to_open http://mysite.com/file1234.php".

Hope someone is willing to help me...

Ludo

ramdak5000@www.drupal.org’s picture

ramdak5000@www.drupal.org commented

I am no expert on Drupal, but here goes:

1.) You lost something at the end of your first question- please study the formatting options for forums postings and post again so that someone can help you

2.) You probably won't find a better system that Drupal's taxonomy in most/all CMS systems for categorisation. And, yes, it can do all you want and more (read this to understand taxonomy better: http://drupal.org/node/19627#comment-33352).

3.) Possible again. Please do a search on the forums. I forget the post but your question has been answered before.

Just do a search on 'moving to Drupal' and you will find postings from people who have written scripts (and shared them) that import thousands of file easily into Drupal.

Hope this helps.

ramdak5000@www.drupal.org’s picture

ramdak5000@www.drupal.org commented

Well, I found the "moving to Drupal" post that could possibly help you:
http://drupal.org/node/7443#comment-16015

kbahey’s picture

kbahey commented

I have done something very similar to what you want to do, i.e. move some old content to Drupal and keeping the URLs the same.

I wrote a little bit about it here http://baheyeldin.com/drupal

So, to answer your questions:

1. I did not use node_import, but my own scripts. These were very specific to my old home grown CMS, so they are not of use as a generic solution. But the idea is to import the nodes, and then assign the old URL as a path alias to them. node_import is worth checking for sure.

2. Taxonomy allows any node to be in multiple categories. I use it and it works fine. There are some limitation (e.g. bread crumbs will only use the first term).

3. Check the sections module. It allows multiple themes, one for each section.

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