By friskya on

I want to create a simple lost and found website. Initially, all I want is the actual lost and found categories, but I've decided to use a CMS for it's creation in the expectation that I will want (or need) to add additional resources in the future. I had considered a simple BB for it, but that won't give me any real flexibility for the future. I even went so far as to install and set up phpBB, but I'm really not happy with the results.

Drupal seems to be one of the most capable of the CMS's, but I can't find anything that tells me what I will need to do to create the intial setup. I'm a complete newbie, so following "recipies" isn't something I feel qualified to do. (yes, I did look at the classifieds recipe elsewhere on this site)

Basically, all I need are the two catagories, "Lost" and "Found", with users able to submit advertisements in a very set format with certain required fields.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? The phpBB setup is here:

http://www.lostdachshunds.org/forum/

It will give you an idea of what I hope to accomplish and maybe an idea of what to suggest?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

jclifton’s picture

jclifton commented

You should be able to get things up and running pretty easily. Start with a default install, and then go to the administration section, and then to 'Categories', and add a new vocabulary. For now, let's call it 'Postings'. For types allowed, check 'story'. Don't worry about the description or any of the other fields right now ... just go ahead and save the new vocabulary.

Then, add terms to the vocabulary. One should be "lost", the other should be "found".

Now, create another vocabulary ... call it "location". Then add terms for each of the states, provinces, territories, etc. you have listed on your phpBB site.

Now, again in the administration section, go to "Access Control". Give authenticated users the ability to "create stories", and "edit own stories".

At this point, any registered user should be able to create a 'story' (which is, in your case, going to be a lost or found item), and categorize it as 'lost' or 'found', and also categorize it by the location.

That should get you started on the right path ... there will, of course, be more to do (disabling default modules you don't need, maybe fine-tuning the permissions, etc.) but I think that will get you a functional site.

friskya’s picture

friskya commented

Okay, I think I've got the basic functionality set up, but I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out the "published to front page" routines.

I always want (at the very least) the last 5 submissions on the front page, but when there are more than 5 published items, I want the newest posting to push the oldest one off the front. And I want all submitted content to expire and self delete after a set period of time (probably one week)

I've spent all day now setting this up, so if anyone has any guidance they can offer, it would be very much appreciated.

The site is live at http://www.lostdachshunds.org if you are interested in what I've been able to do so far.

Also, what's the recommendation for cron settings? The search function is going to be critical to the success of this site.

jclifton’s picture

jclifton commented

Glad that got you going. I know from experience that figuring out how to implement something specific can sometimes be a challenge with Drupal ... but in the long run, the flexibility is well worth the trouble.

I unfortunately can't help you with the front page settings ... none of the sites I've done thus far use that functionality.

As far as cron goes ... I am using the poormanscron module, and I have it set to run every hour, and the search module is set to index up to 100 items per run. I think those are the default settings, but I'm not sure, since my brother has helped me set up the site I'm using this on.

In short, what you set those to is going to probably depend on site traffic. I don't see any reason why ou couldn't have the cron run every 10 minutes at this point, though. The search module *will* tell you how many items are waiting to be indexed at any particular time, so if you keep an eye on that, and increase the run interval, or either increase the number of items indexed per run when you regularly see items waiting to be indexed, you'll probably be ok.

The only thing to watch out for is that if you end up with *lots* of new posts between run intervals, the indexing process will take a long time. However ... we're probably talking > 1000 items, and with lots of words.

JC