By jhviljoen on

I would like to request some advice please.

We currently run a Joomla site where we sell E-Learning content (digital products) and books (physical products). The site incorporates an E-Commerce store which is integrated with a Learning Management System (LMS). The courses that are provided access to via the LMS are in SCORM, AICC, HTML5 and video format.

The whole Joomla system is set-up as a multi-tenant environment where (in a nutshell) - it is not a very complex environment:

  • The primary Joomla system distributes functionality and modules to secondary Joomla sites (i.e. different products are displayed on different Joomla sites). This is done using a multi-site extension and virtual domains. The secondary sites are managed, administered and controlled centrally from the primary Joomla site. All information pubslished to the secondary Joomla sites are managed from the primary Joomla site/back-end.
  • The E-Commerce store (together with the LMS) provides marketplace functionality where vendors/suppliers can create and upload courses/products. These products are then curated (by us) and displayed for purchase in the secondary Joomla sites as per the point above. Customers are then able to login from the secondory Joomla site and access their purchased courses/products.
  • Based on predefined parameters, secondary site "owners" are able to login as administrators where they have access to a dashboard with basic reporting information (sales figures, course user statistics etc.).

We are currently planning a major upgrade to our system (including migrating to a new LMS) but, for a number of reasons, we would also like to consider a complete system rebuild on Drupal instead of Joomla.

  • In principle and without detailing all the nitty-gritty, is the above reasonably (without an enormous amount of complexity and customization) doable using Drupal and Drupal modules/extensions?
  • Which Drupal LMS can you recommend? Moodle (or similar) is not an option as it needs to be a native Drupal LMS extension/module.
  • In our experience, the e-commerce systems built-in to LMS modules/extensions do not have sufficient functionality for our requirements. Which Drupal (powerful) E-Commerce system - with multi-vendor/marketplace as well as affiliate tracking functionality - can you recommend that will work well with the above mentioned LMS within the Drupal environment?
  • Which multi-tenant/multiple-domain/multiple Drupal sites within a single installation modules/extensions from Drupal can you recommend?

Lastly, being new to Drupal, which additional Drupal extensions/modules can you suggest for the following functionality:

  • 3rd Party frameworks for Drupal (such as Gantry for Joomla)
  • Site back-up, management and admin tools
  • Mass emailing (not Mailchimp)
  • Security
  • HTML Drag/Drop Editor
  • SEO

    • Thanks!
    Jan

    Comments

    WorldFallz’s picture

    WorldFallz commented

    First, as a former joomla user let me say "Welcome!" and let you know that i've never regretted making the switch though that was quite a long time ago so I've not used or even seen recent versions of joomla.

    as to your post, moving a site/app like that to a new platform is going to be a large undertaking regardless of the framework. I've not done an LMS myself yet, but I can at least point you in the major direction of some projects to consider:

    1. http://fourword.fourkitchens.com/article/lmss-and-more-drupal-education -- excellent and still relevant article of drupal and LMS.
    2. http://groups.drupal.org/lms-learning-management-system - not sure how active it is, but its probably worth checking out.
    3. http://drupal.org/project/commerce - for all things commerce. Some folks still recommend ubercart, but from the breadth and complexity of your site, commerce will be more easily extended.
    4. http://www.elmsln.org/ - the home of elms
    5. http://www.drupal.org/project/opigno_lms - a newer player
    6. http://drupal.org/project/domain - for managing fully separate sites across domains
    7. http://drupal.org/project/og - for managing subsites. if you really want separate sites, you have to use the domain module. If you can use one site and manage subsites, then og is the way to go.
    8. http://drupal.org/project/subdomain - for being able to use subdomains with og subsites
    9. http://www.drupal.org/project/backup_migrate - just what it says.
    10. http://www.drush.org - swiss army knife for drupal
    11. http://www.drupal.org/project/bootstrap / https://www.drupal.org/project/foundation - imo needing a 'gantry' is itself an admission of a CMS's shortcoming. You won't find may rockettheme level themes out there for drupal. The Rocket folks themselves dipped a toe in the drupal waters for a while but eventually abandoned it when they couldn't shoehorn drupal into their joomla shoe factory. Plan on using a base theme and doing your own design and style.
    12. http:drupal.org/project/panels / http:drupal.org/project/panelizer - comes closest what I think of when I see 'drag and drop' in connection with html. There's also the display suite module.
    13. http:drupal.org/project/wysiwyg + ckeditor (which is pretty much what got added to d8) - for content creation/editing.
    14. http://www.drupal.org/project/views_send - mass mailing, though if you really mean a newsletter type thing you'll want to check out the simplenews and newsletter modules.

    I think I hit all the major points.

    jhviljoen’s picture

    jhviljoen commented

    Thanks for the great feedback and links!! We have a lot more homework to do. From what I have researched so far, with where we want to go with our application, it can all be done with Joomla but Drupal certainly seems much better suited. Joomla has been fantastic for us but I think we have outgrown it.

    I see that with Drupal 8, we can use a static site generator for building the template and then port it to Drupal - this may very well solve the "gantry" issue.

    Thanks again for your feedback. We will likely post some more queries soon - as we research in more depth...