a few how do I's from a newbie

By jbowman on 7 Jan 2006 at 04:06 UTC

ok so I've decided to give drupal a spin to see if it can fit my needs for what I want to do for my website idea. It's basically a site similar to myspace. Somethings I'm trying to figure out.

- require a picture upload on registration

- user profile comments: I want people to be able to leave comments to each other on their pages, where everyone can see them

- restrict certain forums to certain access roles

If anyone can give me some help in figuring these first few things out, I think I'll be able to get a better idea of how everything works. I could dive in and start writing code to handle all these, but I'd rather learn the "drupal way"

Comments

Pointers

jibbajabba commented 7 January 2006 at 04:13

> - require a picture upload on registration

See "Enabling user pictures (avatars)" http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/profile

> - user profile comments: I want people to be able to leave comments to each other on their pages, where everyone can see them

You probaby want this module: http://drupal.org/project/node_privacy_byrole

Ask specific questions about how to use them if you get stuck.

Some not so definitive responses

Steve Dondley commented 7 January 2006 at 04:14

I have been using Drupal for two years. I will give you what I know, but that doesn't mean someone hasn't come up with a patch to do what you want.

pictures on registration
can not do as far as I know

user profile comments
can not do. I'm quite certain of this.

restrict forums to access roles
entirely doable with a third party module called taxonomy_access

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ok thanks... I had seen the

jbowman commented 7 January 2006 at 04:27

ok thanks... I had seen the taxonomy_access module, but it didn't work on version 4.6.5.. upgrading to the 4.7.beta2 has it working. I guess I just have to hope it's not horribly broken.

I think I'll just continue setting up the site with modules and such to get as far as long as I can, before I start diving into the code itself, so I can keep up with patches on the beta.

Thanks.

taxonomy_access module

Steve Dondley commented 7 January 2006 at 04:32

I haven't used the module in a while. And I helped write some of its code about a year ago. It's only a contributed module and it seemed to go in and out of stability. A really robust and efficient module has yet to be devised. Maybe in future versions but you may be waiting a year or so.

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re: taxonomy_access module

jbowman commented 7 January 2006 at 04:41

it appears to do what I need it to do... all I really need is a way to have a few forums set aside for a couple of administrative roles I have set up.

it looks like figuring out how to attach comments to user profiles is going to be my biggest challenge early on. But I'll have enough to do with installing a few other modules, and modifying some of the layout with the phptemplate system (or smarty if I find I like that better, I do like the smarty templating system but I haven't researched how well it is supported yet), that I should be busy for at least a week or so, and hopefully have a better idea of how things work.