By bingobango on

I just installed Drupal via Acquia dev and I am struggling to work out how to implement my idea for a Community based website , so I am looking for some overall advice.

Here is the basic functionality I am after:

Some basic functions:

- users create a profile and can log in.
- They create short posts (or articles) which will be seen on the main page, posts by all users will appear on one main page and be seen by everyone.
- when creating a post there should be a title, body 1 and body 2,
- When posting users should have the option to hide their username if they wish.
- When a user reads the post of another user, they should be able to rate the post, using 2 buttons: a +ve or -ve button, and give a reason why they chose to rate the way they did (via a text input appearing or comments box).
- Each post will have an overall count of +ve and -ve responses as rated by all the users who voted/rated
- There will be a way to show only featured posts, recent posts, popular posts etc
-Users should also be able to comment on any post (as well as rate the post)
- optional: users should set an expiry date for their post when creating it, either by selecting date from a calendar or drop down

Is this at all possible?

Thanks for any pointers on where to get started

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Yep you can do this with drupal no problem.

You'll want to checkout the anonymous_posting, rating, views, and node_expire modules. Though I'm not sure if there's a d7 version of the last one-- if there isn't, you can set it up with the rules module (there might be other modules as well).

bingobango’s picture

bingobango commented

Thanks - i have installed all compatible modules.

Any pointers on how to actually create the site? what do you need to do first (like a very basic beginners guide).

There seems to be nearly too much info on the drupal site!

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

The problem is there's never one way to build a site-- everyone works differently. I tend to work by configuring all possible core stuff, then move to contrib stuff, always working on the simple things to the more complex things. For example, your site-- setup your users and fields, then add a second body field to the desired content type and whatever else you can do with core. Then maybe setup anonymous_posting (if there's anything to setup), ratings, and work your way all the way through till you do your views.

that's just a suggestion though-- that's what works best for me, ymmv.

msimanga’s picture

msimanga commented

Experiment as much as possible before actually creating the site, it is the best way to work out how to use each module. I would also say read some write ups in the show case section, http://drupal.org/forum/25 selecting sites that have similar functionality to the one you want to create. Good luck.

bingobango’s picture

bingobango commented

Thanks all - I have been reading as much as I can and watching some tuts on youtube.

Still confused about how to create functionality. For example.

Can you create a content type, which has 3 fields - a title, and 2 blocks of text. These can be filled out by a user and get posted to the main page.

But after they are posted, can you attach say, 3 customised buttons (like voting buttons) to each user post?

How would you do that?:

{EDIT} OK I have managed to create a content type, called mycontent. It has a title, and 2 bodies. A user can fill it out and it posts to a view.
I have also managed to get a voting widget attached to mycontent.

How can I set it up so the user can decide whether to have their username displayed along with the post or not. i.e. like a checkbox that says - 'hide username when posting'

Also - how can you add more fields to a user profile, so they can add more information about themselves, e.g. dropdown box etc to choose something about themselves (male/female etc).

Thanks

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented
How can I set it up so the user can decide whether to have their username displayed along with the post or not. i.e. like a checkbox that says - 'hide username when posting'.

I mentioned the anonymous_posting module, but I meant the http://drupal.org/project/anonymizer module though I'm not sure if there's a d7 version yet. If you want the user to select this for all their posts you can add a user checkbox field (ie 'post anonymously'), then add some code in the node.tpl.php file that checks that value prior to printing the submitted info.

Alternatively, if you want it per node, add the field to node and once again check the value before printing the submitted info in node.tpl.php.

Also - how can you add more fields to a user profile, so they can add more information about themselves, e.g. dropdown box etc to choose something about themselves (male/female etc).

admin/config/people/accounts/fields

bingobango’s picture

bingobango commented

Thanks - I'll look into those modules. There doesn't seem to be a d7 version of anonymizer though.