I'm currently using xoops but can't get what I want with it which is a site like The Onion.

My question is if The Onion is the type of site a newcomer to Drupal can build within a reasonable amount of time.

ric

Comments

wanderingstan’s picture

Well, since the Onion uses Drupal, I guess you'd have to say it's that type of site. :)

Bèr Kessels’s picture

no you cannot build a drupal site like the Onion in "reasonable amount of time". Not if 'something like the onion' is all you have for a plan, for sure.

Not that drupal is that hard, but that you ave no plan, nor any details seems to be the problem.

With Drupal (with a lot of systems in fact) you need to make a plan first.

Drupal is not wordpress, where you say 'I want a weblog, I install it and I am on the rails'. No, Drupal is more a framework, not a ready made site.

---
Professional | Personal
| Sympal: Development and Hosting

riclloyd’s picture

My plan is to build a site like Onion.

I thought I made that clear.

That said, can I get less Sermons on the Mount and more concrete advice?

For example: is there a theme that lends itself to an Onion site moreso than others? Also, how do you get images in articles? Finally, is this one of those cms's where everybody thinks they're part of an ancient monastic belief system only the truly holy can comprehend?

I hate cms's like that. Everyone tries to be so holier-than-thou new people are scared away because they don't feel worthy.

ric

sangamreddi’s picture

If you're looking for the functionality and drupal customization, its better to hire a developer if you want things to get in done in reasonable time, because the learning curve for drupal is high.

Sunny                      
www.gleez.com | www.sandeepone.com

Rosamunda’s picture

Hi ricllyd!
I´m a newbie here just like you.
And I´m argentinian, so I have double trouble to understand things here, because I have to mentally translate everything :) and plus that, it´s even harder to made myself clear each time I´ve got a question.
And I´m not a php developer (not even close to that), as I´m a lawyer myself... I like to create websites in my free time, as a hobbie.

So far, I can tell that in fact, Drupal is not "easy" as Wordpress or Nucleuscms... not even like MovableType.
(I´ve tried them all)

But.

Even when I had all that personal stuff that told me not to dive into a "complex" CMS; I did it. I give it a shot.

I try and successfully installed Drupal. And many people here did answer my issues. There´s a lot of work to do, but people at the community are very cool guys that really try to help.
This is not a cms where "everybody thinks they're part of an ancient monastic belief system only the truly holy can comprehend" (Or maybe I´m one of those "truly holy" who knows ;)

The good news about Drupal is that you can do almost everything with it.

So, you have other alternatives, like the ones that I´ve mentioned before, but (in my personal opinion) you will not be able to have a site like "The Onion" with any of them.
Drupal is very, very flexible.

Please, don´t think that this anwer is rude or something, I had and I am having big troubles trying to get my Drupalsite just as I want, but I know that in the end, my time and work are not going to be wasted.

With Drupal, the magic word is "YES".
You can. You just need time and a bit of patience.

Rosamunda
Buenos Aires | Argentina
www.ligadelconsorcista.org

riclloyd’s picture

Thanks, Rosa, checked out your site -- very clever.

ric

bomarmonk’s picture

I was entirely new to CMS software, PHP, and MySQL. Just over a year ago, I didn't know a node from a taxonomy term. But I had a lot of time to figure it out. So I worked with Drupal for about a year, trying to develop a site that did everything I imagined the site could do. The good news: Drupal is flexible, powerful, and has a wonderful and active community. The bad news: it took me about a year of working on the site (there wasn't any hard deadline), and the site isn't nearly as polished or refined as the Onion. I plan on refining my site more, but in the meantime, Drupal is doing everything I want it to do. If you are more focused on developing the site and already understand PHP, etc., you may find that creating the site is a lot quicker. I'm guessing from your post though, that you will need time. Good luck. A more detailed plan of features and requirements for your site may in fact be a helpful starting point. How do you want your site to be like the Onion? Just the theme? Right now, your needs are open to interpretation, so specific help may be difficult for anyone to provide.

Robert Castelo’s picture

What Ber was getting at was - what features of the Onion site are you interested in replicating?

Even if your answer is "all of them" it's still useful to make a checklist, from which you can figure out how each feature will be implemented.

"Reasonable amount of time" - that's really subjective, one person's reasonable time is another's eternity ;-)

What you could think about is how long did it take The Onion to implement their site - can you put in the same time and resources...

http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2005/0830_making_new_f.php

Cortext Communications
Drupal Themes & Modules

------------------------------------------
Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training

Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
----

riclloyd’s picture

Trouble already ...

I thought images in articles was a basic feature in all cms.

Ok, so it doesn't come out-of-the-box with Drupal, but when I downloaded image.assit and read all the steps involved in installation, I must say, I was annoyed.

PhpAdmin ...?

PhpAdmin is the last thing I want to play with.

Ok, I but I bit the bullet and tried to install the mysql script anyway.

Got an error message:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: base_path() in /home/blackblo/public_html/drupal/modules/img_assist/img_assist.module on line 76

What does it mean?

I'm thinking it has something to do with this step from the installation instuctions:

3. Load the database definition file (img_assist.mysql) using the
tool of your choice (e.g. phpmyadmin). For mysql and command line
access use:

mysql -u user -p drupal < img_assist.mysql

Replace 'user' with the MySQL username, and 'drupal' with the
database being used.

*************************************

Yeah, but I dont know what the line "mysql-u user-p drupal

How do I do it? Where do I make that change? Which file? Or is the change made somewhere in PhpAdmin?

Nothing in the installation instructions gives these details. It seems, the assumption is you know your way around PhpAdmin which I don't -- tthat is, if it involves anything more than installing the sql file...

ric

riclloyd’s picture

this was cut from the comment directly above:

Yeah, but I dont know what the line "mysql-u user-p drupal imag_asst.mysql" means

How do I do it? Where do I make that change? Which file? Or is the change made somewhere in PhpAdmin?

Nothing in the installation instructions gives these details. It seems, the assumption is you know your way around PhpAdmin which I don't -- tthat is, if it involves anything more than installing the sql file...

Oh, by the way, appearantly the my attempt to install image_assit wound up crashing my entire Drupal site.

This this kind of thing happen often with Drupal?

ric

Robert Castelo’s picture

Try these instructions.

http://drupal.org/node/17473

Take the time to read the Drupal Handbook documentation. If you really get stuck, and can't find an answer in the handbook post a specific question in the support forum, you'll usually get some help.

If after reading the documentation installation is still too much of a hurdle, Joomla is an alternative CMS which has a one click installer.

Good luck.

Cortext Communications
Drupal Themes & Modules

------------------------------------------
Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training

Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
----

riclloyd’s picture

I'll check it out and report back.

ric

riclloyd’s picture

I read the manual and my installation of the sql file was done precisely the way the manual instructs.

I'll now post the same detailed and specific question I posted here, in the support forum as your advise.

By the way, I counted two uncalled for insults in your reply.

Should I look forward to the same treatment in the support forum?

ric

Robert Castelo’s picture

Mmmh, wasn't trying to insult you at all, surprised you've taken my assistance that way.

Never mind, I'll refrain from replying to you in future.

------------------------------------------
Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training

Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
----

NaX’s picture

I think the img_assist module has dependencies, check the top of the readme file and make sure that all dependant modules are enabled.

jakeg’s picture

This is like asking if a newcomer could cut down a tree and build a boat out of it: yes, the material is all there, but you need to know what to do with it.

It takes a long time to make a site like The Onion on top of Drupal. If they'd started from scratch making their own CMS it would probably have taken them a lot longer and given them many support problems in the future. But by using Drupal they're more future-proofed.

If you're sh#t hot at PHP/MySQL/CSS/HTML/Javascript/graphics/server-admin then maybe you can 'make' a site equally as good as The Onion on top of Drupal by yourself in about half a year. You'll also need content for it though...

Jake
Drupal web services, London

desi6ner’s picture

riclloyd,

I do think we're in the same boat here... I do admire the Onion regarding both layout and functionality. And I want to make a couple of websites similar to the Onion.

I've been trying to make something similar with Joomla, but it's close to impossible.. Back at the Joomla forum most "experts" answer in a "i'm-better-than-you-stupid!"-way. Furthermore they say "everything is possible with J!" but when I ask for showcases as a proof, noone have ever shown me more than just a average site, nothing like the Onion..

I do think Drupal is THE best CMS out there, if "best" is related to what you can do with both functionality and layout. For two weeks now I have worked 10 hours a day to figure out this, been installing and playing with a LOT of different CMSes... it's a depressing journey, and we all know that there's still unsolved problems with every single CMS (both os or commercial) out there today.. It's to hard to make something professional, this isn't the way it should be.. Actually I did ponder on making my own CMS, but that's probably not the best solution either.

As I'm new to CMSes, I'm experienced about css/html/php/mySQL.. It's amazing how hard it is to get the CMSes to go along with the design and the plan of the website developer, it's a motivational killer.. Why don't Drupal come with images in articles by default..? there's just so much to do from scrach..

Anyhow, just like you I want to be able to make a site like the Onion using Drupal..

lu5dx’s picture

Martin from Argentina. Sorry for replying to this topic so late. But I've just read it.
I believe we are all in the same boat. I mean we are all trying to get something that works great for managing the content of our web sites! Aren't we?

If your answer is yes, then well, you are at the right place.

Achieving a site looking like the onion can be done with either, Drupal, joomla, tikiwiki, and even postnuke.

I've been using joomla for intranets for a long time and recently I moved to drupal, because of the flexibility and power behind it.

But several things need to be told.

1st. I'm am not a newcomer, which does not mean that I'am expert, not at all. To get things done I usually have to look for info and help from others, read a lot, etc.

2nd. To achieve a site like the onion, you will need hours, several hundred hours. You'll need to learn how to code in php and also some java and javaScrip and CSS.

3rd. Let me tell you Drupal is one of the right tools to do it. The flexibility and community behind drupal is among the best.

4rd. Right now, I'am working (in my spare time) on a news site for my town. I'm pushing hard to make it look like the onion. We estimate that the project will take 1,500 man hours. We'll see what happens.
Anyway If we get the same good looking result we will let you know how we did it!

Regards.

Martin A.K.A LU5DX

chmli’s picture

great ! thank you guys here, and i am also working on a new onion-like website as a novice. thank your posts here and they are all very helpful for me!

saili@eden.rutgers.edu

chmli’s picture

great ! thank you guys here, and i am also working on a new onion-like website as a novice. thank your posts here and they are all very helpful for me!

saili@eden.rutgers.edu