By drupaldoople on

Hi All,
I'm considering creating my site with Drupal hosted on Bluehost. My only experience with Drupal is various searches in this forum and some tutorials on Youtube. I have a few things that are must haves and I was hoping to get an idea from experts versus my own newbie judgment.

My site will be similar to trip advisor, so registered users, posting review (a survey really), displayed in some nice format. Plus some form of simple payment, like to my biz paypal account.

So:
- Access control linking registered users to their own content
- Some way to display and input data graphically like a slider or a "star" ratings system
- Some kind of Email triggering capability, so users can register to receive content in email when certain content is added, like for trip advisor it might be, email me anytime a review for Hotel 6 gets a review. Something like that.
- Simple hookup to Paypal like with their embedded code, versus a complete commerce system.
- Any gotchas working with a host (any host) versus native Drupal installation.

I'm a programmer by trade so I'm not afraid of details BUT I'd really like things to be more config versus code. Drupal seems like it supports both, which is great. But I'd like to do as much as possible using native functionality versus having to create custom code, etc.

I appreciate any input you have.

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Taking your list one by one (it better to number lists like this):

  1. not sure what you mean by 'access control', but users are already linked to their content by virtue of they're being the 'author'.
  2. fivestar and rate modules
  3. https://www.drupal.org/node/645108
  4. payment module seems like a good simple option, but you mention embedded code so you could just do that not use a module at all.
  5. shared hosts are always an issue and they all play games with their advertised specs. Virtually any site with real traffic, will probably outgrow the site pretty quickly. Try to use a drupal friendly host and plan ahead for having to move if the site takes off.
drupaldoople’s picture

drupaldoople commented

Thanks. Seems like it's a Yes. I'm a former Lotus Notes developer and Access Control was the term used. I'm assuming there are ways to change access to content as well. For example I might want someone to be able to submit content but not edit it further.

As for the others things, it seems modules are the key, which is great. Only problem I can foresee, and maybe this isn't a problem, is if a host disallows certain modules, or being only limited to whatever modules the host provides. BlueHost is highly rated for Drupal so I'm guessing I'll be ok there.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

hey.... i haven't seen lotus note mentioned for a while (former notes developer myself)!

For example I might want someone to be able to submit content but not edit it further.

Yep. Separate 'Create', 'Edit Own' and 'Edit Any' per content type permissions are part of core, but there are also several other module options for access control (ie content_access, private, tac, tac_lite, etc. etc.).

Hosts won't typically allow or disallow modules-- they usually don't even know or care what your site is running. They will only care about server resources-- memory, cpu, storage, etc. There are some modules that require levels of access typically not granted on shared hosting (subdomain module springs to mind), but they're usually rare special cases.

drupaldoople’s picture

drupaldoople commented

I've also done a website, lightweight but successful, using Weebly. Obviously it's a page -oriented site BUT I do like their site editor. It makes adding static things like images, ads, you name it, drag and drop easy. How is Drupal as far as that goes? Are there good UI editors for that, that you then drop Drupal blocks I guess you call'em, into?

Anthony Pero’s picture

Anthony Pero commented

Not really the way Drupal works, at least by default. Here is a good example of the Drupal editor in action...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D93yOJrMopw

Anthony Pero
Project Lead
Virtuosic Media
http://www.virtuosic.me/

Anthony Pero’s picture

Anthony Pero commented

Bluehost is a great host, for a shared host, but if you are not scared of the command line r linux, I would highly suggest simply going right to a VPS. DigitalOcean is a good choice. A fairly robust Ubuntu LAMP stack with Drupal running on top can be set up and configured in minutes, and will run you about $10 a month. There are great help docs as well.

Anthony Pero
Project Lead
Virtuosic Media
http://www.virtuosic.me/

drupaldoople’s picture

drupaldoople commented

Thanks again for the great feedback everybody. I went ahead and bit the bullet! I'm looking forward to learning Drupal.