Hello Everyone!
I need to create what I imagine to be a simple website with basically 4 pages:
1. The first one is private (only people with admin rights can see it). This page is where I create a list with several products.
Thinking about it as a database, this page should generate the (unique) table containing *all* the products and their characteristics.
2. The second page is where the users register their information. It is open access to everyone. Here the users register and save their info.
DBwise, this page would feed the (unique) table containing *all* the information relating to each user.
3. The third page is where each user (previously registered) selects a product (from the list that I created) and gives the price that they are willing to pay (or sell), the location of the product, and any other information related to the sale.
DBwise, this should be a (large) table containing the userID, ProductID, and all the conditions related to the sale (price, quantity, buy/sell, location, etc., date of the post)
4. The fourth page would be only based on queries of the table in 3. For instance, it would contain (apart from several ads), graphs with the buy/sell prices each day (like a graph of a stock index for instance).
But the user should be able to chose the filters for the query. For instance, “a graph only with the price in regionA”, or “a graph considering only buys/sells posted on that day”, and so on, kind of like on EBay.

So, I have a few questions and I understand that not everyone is capable of answering all of them. So, if you know any of the answers, I would be really glad to learn them!
1. Could you please let me know how difficult you think it would be to create such a website in Drupal?
2. Do you know/can you suggest any modules that I could use in this case?
3. Do you think it might be easier to do that with Dreamweaver and try to do the php and database on the side? What about using Wordpress?

Thanks a lot in advance for the help!!
All the best,
Thiago

Comments

John_B’s picture

I think it would be more of a struggle in Wordpress than Drupal, though I am a WP fan. I think that writing your php is maybe not such a bad idea, if you do foresee needing the built-in extensibility and security which Drupal already has. It certainly achievable in Drupal by someone who knows the system well. It is not entirely simple, but will need some time learning Drupal and the Views module, though time spent studying the Drupal ways of doing things is not wasted.

Note that Drupal has an extensive (perhaps over-complex) APIs, so once you are familiar with those, you can still build a custom-coded solution on top of Drupal, rather than using the more generic existing modules. That is a good solution provided you do you use the Drupal APIs, because adding raw PHP to a Drupal site crates maintenance and security problems. Many sites use a judicious mix of contib and custom modules: you can in theory do most things with contrib modules and no coding, which can improve maintainability, but sometimes a custom module is a more elegant and lightweight solution.

This post belongs in the 'Before you start' forum.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

thiago78’s picture

Hi John,

Thanks a lot for the answer! I would be happy to move this post to the "before you start" forum, but I don't know how to do that... Maybe a moderator can do it?

I am also a fan of WP because everything is so much simpler there... The reason why I posted this question was exactly because I already expected that Views would be the key module that I would need (specially for that "page 4", I believe). And I remember someone saying that doing something like Views does was very difficult using WP.

So, just to see if i understood, you basically think that I can do this website in Drupal, (and the "main" module that I will need to learn is Views), but you also think that I may need to code in php to obtain exactly what I want. Is this correct?

All the best,
Thiago

John_B’s picture

Yes that is what I meant.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors

thiago78’s picture

I will try it :)