By scrumpy on

Didn't know where I should post this but I thought someone here would have experiance with this..

I'm starting to put some thoughts down on paper about running a community website for the area where I live. The website will be focused on events, people, shops and services available to the community. Now whilst I think this is a good idea for everyone I certainly don't have the time to run something like this 24/7 so I'm looking for an opensource Portal/CMS solution that I can get responsible people to help me run; or atleast look after sections. Is Drupal an option?

I've not really thought out all the requirements yet but initially I'm looking for;

- Secure and Stable (OpenSource) Portal/CMS solution - the site will be non-profit making
- Easy to administer, and have good delegation of administration (ie. for sections of the site)
- Easy to use for authors/contributers
- Customisable external look and feel (to make it simple for the visitors)
- Aggregation of posts/content for main site page and subsequent sections within the site (ie. village or county based)
- Good support and forums
- Blocks/modules/code snippets to support additional functionality (gallery, mail, advertising, forums, etc..)
- Single Sign on capabilities (1 password for all services)

That's all I think of at the moment, I'd appreciate any thoughts from anyone who has experiance from running something like this. Perhaps an example site like this running on Drupal.

Many thanks,

scrumpy

Comments

Geary’s picture

Geary commented

There are a lot of ways you could build a site like that, but it's the kind of site Drupal excels at.

Here's an example of a community site running Drupal:

http://www.blufftontoday.com/

severinka’s picture

severinka commented

I would love to make a section on my site exactly like blufftontoday.com or ourmedia.org where every member that registers with me gets their own blog and things like those sites offer. Before I jump into this project full stream I wanted to know if these were standard things that come with drupal or how much extra work was put into the development in such sites.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Severin

adamg@universalhub.com’s picture

adamg@universalhub.com commented

When a user registers on a Drupal site, he or she gets a blog and RSS feed. You actually have to do some work to turn that behavior off.

It's one user per blog (unlike, say, Movable Type, where you can have multiple authors for a blog), but there's a way to get around that if you need it, via categories.

http://drupal.org/node/21032

has some more specifics on Bluffton Today - see the last message in the thread in particular.

severinka’s picture

severinka commented

What forum system is this forum running? I like it very much.. Right now we're running FUD Forum in php and have had a few security breaches, so I'm not too happy right now.

Thanks again for your time.

Severin

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Looks like Drupal built in forums.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

FIRESIDE91’s picture

FIRESIDE91 commented

These are the forums built in to drupal :)
---
This post not under warranty
I AM NOT A EXPERT PHP CODER

adamg@universalhub.com’s picture

adamg@universalhub.com commented

http://www.h2otown.info/
http://www.urbanvancouver.com/

One thing that is really cool about Drupal is categories - it's just great for organizing content in multiple ways.

http://www.universalhub.com/taxonomy_html as an example of content organized by both neighborhood and topic.

zirafi’s picture

zirafi commented

Hi,

I don't know whether i should ask my question here. Since this thread talks about same kind of requirement which i've and hence i want to give my requirement here.

I've a site running on ASP & MS SQL and now i'm planning to migrate to PHP and My SQL. While i am going through this site i got an impression that i can have this Drupal system to migrate my site. Is this really possible?

Here is my site www.eparadesi.com and it does have community portal links like Classifieds, Forums, Yellow Pages, Events and now i'm planning to have picture rating system like "hotornot".

I am really looking for valuable suggestions on my requirement because it will really help me to convert my site to Drupal.

It will be great help if someone can help on this.

Thanks,
Ram

divrom’s picture

divrom commented

civicspace?

It's a pre-packaged version of Drupal designed for community development.

zirafi’s picture

zirafi commented

Hi,

Not yet, i'm still trying to understand how far i can use this CMS.

~paradesi
www.eparadesi.com

zirafi’s picture

zirafi commented

Hi,

Do you think you can help me on this.

I evaluated Drupal and i liked it so far. Since Drupal seems like a good CMS for community web sites, i'm planning to convert our site " www.eparadesi.com " on ASP+MS SQL to Drupal and for which i'm looking for best possible options. So far i could think of the following plan and i don't know how to decide on this.

1. I don't know how possible it is to convert whole site into Drupal. Do you think it is best option?
or
2. Based on my current evaluation on Drupal i could think of the following modules are already available and they can be used for my site.
- Forums
- Events

And i need to have these modules too to complete my requirement.

- Classifieds
- Matrimonials (Match making)

Do you think someone can help me to do these modules seperately if i can contribute some money as a contributor.

Please let me know what do you think and also if you have any solution for my requirement, do let me know.

Thanks,
Paradesi

FIRESIDE91’s picture

FIRESIDE91 commented

Drupal can do everything you stated, all though it will take a day or two to configure, it won't work out of the box. But drupal is a very complete and integrated system, and once you get used to it you will love it.
---
This post not under warranty
I AM NOT A EXPERT PHP CODER