Before you start

HI All:

I'm gonna build a website using drupal and flash, and i'd like to add chat feature for my customers. I checked the forum and found some chat system i can use with drupal. After having a look at them, i really can't see how to choose the best one from them. Can you please tell me your choice? Thanks. PS: a chat system with good layout; written in flash is preferred.

Will

Hi,

I am super new to Drupal and just had a few queries...

-If I don't want a theme/template for a website I'm designing, is it possible to use my hand-coded HTML,CSS to create the look, layout etc. of the website? Or do I have to modify existing themes? How easy is it to create a theme to mimic my HTML,CSS website?

I am developing a Drupal 5 site for an animal shelter. In a few weeks, we will be running a promotion to find the cutest pet in our community. We will post a couple dozen photos on our web site and ask visitors to vote on the cutest pet. The cutest pet and their owner will win a prize. At the same time, we will have gathered email addresses from the voters for our monthly newsletter.

Can someone recommend a particular polling module or combination of modules to do this?

Hello,

Me again!

Does Drupal have any modules suitable for asset management? As an IT support company we need to keep network / security / equipment / asset information on hundreds of clients.

I've searched for open source Asset Management tools and nothing comes across as a great fit.

Is this something Drupal could do? How does it cater for importing / exporting?

Many thanks in advance,

Chris

Hello,

I'd like to integrate drupal into another CMS system on a site I maintain, and wonder how to do this with a minimum of coding.

What I'd like to start with is to have users log in only one place. So what I'd like to do is to set up a custom function in drupal where users are logged in without having to submit username/password.

From looking at the drupal code, It looks like the best solution would be to make a change in the function user_load in the drupal-user module:

from

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
    if ($key == 'uid' || $key == 'status') {
      $query[] = "$key = %d";
      $params[] = $value;
    }
    else if ($key == 'pass') {
      $query[] = "pass = '%s'";
      $params[] = md5($value);
    }
    else {
      $query[]= "LOWER($key) = LOWER('%s')";
      $params[] = $value;
    }

to simply

$query[] = "name = " . $_SESSION['login_other_system'];

Where existing uid is supplied, the user will always log in successfully to drupal. In addidtion changing the code, it will never be possible to log in except through the other system. And the security will hopefully be taken care of by insuring the integrity of the session variable (session logged with IP and timeout)

Do you think this is a feasible solution?

Hi all,

I am evaluating different CMS as a platform for a community site that will host several academic projects, discussion fora etc. The audience are people working with information technology as part of their research and we want to provide a platform where they can prepare their projects or discuss related questions. From what I have seen Drupal, maybe in the OpenAcademic flavour, seems like a very good choice for what we have in mind.

I have some familiarity with CMS, but have never used Drupal before, so I am very keen on getting your input - recommendations for modules that might be especially helpful and the like. I have drawn up a list of our requirements. This is more of an ideal list and I would be very surprised if any system would support this out of the box or with modules, but obviously the closer we can get the better:

multi site capable:
- several sites installed on the same machine (at least 3)
- users only need to register once to access all the sites
- users can have different roles in the different sites, i.e. moderator on one site and normal user in another
- search for as well as taging of resources should ideally work over all sites

several groups on one site:
- some groups will be by invitation only, others open to all members of the site
- groups will have content available to all users and other content only for the group members