hi,

I'm looking for a CMS to use for my website.

Until now, I've been using phpBB2 plus, the extended version of the phpBB2 forum. It works fine, but the people using it want something more easy, something more transparent. It's true that it's difficult to manage simple content using phpBB2 plus, so I'm looking for an alternative.

At first, I had my eye on Typo3. You can do anything you want with Typo3, and the extension repository makes it easily extendable. However, it's far too complex for a simple webmaster like me.

After reading some reviews, I turned to Joomla (I haven't installed it yet). It looks easy to use and modifiable, so I thought it was the right choice. A couple of days ago, though, a friend showed me his Drupal-site: easy to manage, easy to navigate and attractive. So now I am in doubt what to use.

After reading all this, I'd rather go for Drupal, but I still have a few questions. I want a forum, and Joomla seems to work well with Simple Machines Forum, so here's question number one: Is there a forum that works well with Drupal (and, most of all, is there synchronization between the user databases of the site and the forum)? Is it possible to "spread" the forum across the website (different forum categories for different content categories)?

Second, the site needs some kind of photo album, and Joomla seems to work with Gallery2 and Coppermine. Is there a Drupal alternative, or are there Gallery2 and Coppermine bridges for Drupal too? Is there a way to allow users to upload multiple pictures at the same time?

Third, does Drupal support file publishing (for example, pdf's)? If so, are these files displayed as an attachment to a news post, or is it possible to publish them in-line (not for pdf's, but for example for jpg's, or html-pages)?

Fourth, does Drupal have the possibility of "Junior admins" (term form phpBB2): users that can manage the content of only a small section of the site, but do not have any other admin rights. And, if so, is there an easy-to-use graphical interface for these users?

Fifth (building on the previous question), there currently are about two hundred users on the forum, grouped together in user groups with different permissions, some of them moderators and junior admins. Above that, users in different groups are displayed in different colours when posting. Are there built-in features for this kind of not-so-small-scale (I don't dare say large-scale :-) ) user management?

And last, is it possible to change the fields in the user profiles? The users on my website are partly grouped together based on their age. So, I would like to include a field for the date of birth in the user database, and write a php-page with sql-scripts to automatically upgrade users to the appropriate usergroup at the beginning of the year. Even better would be if the users database could be synchronised with an external database (the one that our organisation's secretary uses for the membership management).

Comments

modem’s picture

Somethihng I forgot to ask: I've been reading about the Civicspace distribution, and the comments do not agree on whether you should or should not use it. So, does Civicspace seem a good option for my website, or should I just keep to Drupal? Why (not)?