By clau_bolson on

I have read a lot and looked at many CMSs and I'm a bit confused. I have never installed a CMS before.
I have a site in mind and I need to find a CMS that suits me out of the box or with a few, easy to install, addons.
What I need is this:

- The site has about ten sections.
- Each section has its own content administrator
- Groups are defined that belong to sections
- Each registered user belongs to a group and can post stories, news and comments only in his group. Yet he can see the rest of the site.
- There is a menu in every page with links to each section's home page.

Can Drupal do this, alone or with modules? which ones?

Thanks.

Comments

pembeci’s picture

pembeci commented

I never used it but the Organic Groups module may be what you are looking for:

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/og

alexandreracine’s picture

alexandreracine commented

I am a "technician", work in computer security and have installed other CMS like phpnuke before so installing drupal was easy to install, long to understand, since there are soooo many options, and modules (addons) are easy to install.

But if you are new to all of this, don't know how to create a mysql table, and never have installed a CMS before, well, this will take time. Other have suggested that drupal is not so easy to install.

Just take your time, be patient and use the forums.

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

webwright’s picture

webwright commented

Short answer to your question-- Drupal can do everything that you need.

Long answer:

There's a spectrum that every app falls on that ranges from powerful/confusing to simple/easy. I would probably say that Drupal falls somewhere on the powerful/confusing end of the spectrum.

It's REALLY powerful and flexible. I've done a few different Drupal sites now and I'm STILL stumbling onto stuff that makes me say, "Holy Crap. I didn't know Drupal could do that!".

Given the featureset that you're after, I think you're going to have a frustrating time unless you have a LOT of comfort with web applications in general (PHP, MySQL), HTML, and CSS.

Regards,
___________________________________
Tony Wright
Day2 Technology Ventures - Venture Capital for Technology Startups

clau_bolson’s picture

clau_bolson commented

I didn't mention it, but in fact I AM very confortable with PHP, MySQL, HTML and CSS. In fact I have made a lot of programs, one of them a sort of very simple CMS, but now I need a much more complicated program.

I was confused because I was overwhelmed at first by how many programs there where out there, second by the different terms. Did I need a CMS? A blog? A groupware program? A community program? All of them? Third by the different terms each program uses referring basically to the same thing.

I will give Drupal a try today, and if I go on I hope to count with your help, because I only have a month to set this up.

Thanks to all.

Claudia

PS. Sorry if my English sounds weird, I'm from Argentina

pembeci’s picture

pembeci commented

Well, since you are comfortable with all these I think Drupal is what you are looking for. You can employ all of its flexibility and power by your programming skills. I was in a similar situtation before I chose Drupal and I am extremely happy.

senit’s picture

senit commented

I am part of a team that does a lot of Drupal module testing. You can send me a message through my contact page here. Maybe we can use a chat tool or something so you can get many questions answered in short time. I am in European time zone (GMT+1), and prefer to do this in the evening, so either during your work day or during the weekend. We have a project that involves Latin-American countries soon, so maybe it could be interesting for several reasons.

sprite’s picture

sprite commented

Drupal is a huge feature rich product when you include its modules.

I think that to understand Drupal best, potential users should understand they will need to create/customize their own template to create the look and feel they want. I have found that is one of the biggest aspects of any such project.

Drupal's contributed modules are really what make Drupal what it is. Of all the CMS systems I evaluated, Drupal's overall architecture proved accessible and logical.

None of the CMS systems available is perfect. Nor can anyone currently available do 'everything' but Drupal's open architecture and large user base provide a basis for doing many things. Isn't the Drupal site itself quite a good proof of concept (with over 50,000 nodes (think page/post/article)?

I have read a lot and looked at many CMSs and I'm a bit confused. I have never installed a CMS before.
I have a site in mind and I need to find a CMS that suits me out of the box or with a few, easy to install, addons.
What I need is this:

- The site has about ten sections.
- Each section has its own content administrator
- Groups are defined that belong to sections
- Each registered user belongs to a group and can post stories, news and comments only in his group. Yet he can see the rest of the site.
- There is a menu in every page with links to each section's home page.

Can Drupal do this, alone or with modules? which ones?

Thanks.

spritefully yours

spritefully yours
Technical assistance provided to the Drupal community on my own time ...
Thank yous appreciated ...