Before you start

Back in June and July I considered switching from WordPress to Drupal to host my webcomic (Help Desk, at http://ubersoft.net). Eventually decided not to, because while it seems pretty obvious that Drupal is a more robust platform for genuine content management, I wasn't able to figure out how to get it to replicate all the functionality that I managed to hack out of WordPress.

However, it's become pretty clear that I'm trying to make WordPress do too much, because when traffic spikes it makes mySQL very, very unhappy, and everything falls apart.

So I'm looking into Drupal again -- a bit more cautiously this time. Because while it seems that Drupal *will* do everything I want it to do, it's also pretty clear that getting some of it to work is far beyond my very basic abilities when it comes to php and CSS.

I hope some of you can help me figure out, once and for all, if Drupal can handle this laundry list -- and second, and equally important, how much time I'm going to have to devote to setting it up in order to do so... because unfortunately I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like.

Hello, I have a question about Drupal's forum module. Does it support post - moderation? I would need all my posts to be approved before they appear online. Would this be possible with Drupal's forum? Or are there any forum modules that support this feature?

Really thanks for your help.

Hi all,

Going down to sunny Spain (Canary Islands) this Christmas, I have decided to spend some time getting to know Drupal better. I have installed Drupal 5.0 RC 1 and everything is working great. So my question is this, what should I read to get to know Drupal? I won’t have access to the Internet.

I have downloaded most of the videocasts from the Dudertown website and will download videocast from the Lullabot website (can anyone recommend any other good Drupal videocast sites?).

Hi,
my server is running drupal 4.7.4 on php 4.4.2 and mysql 4.1.21 .

Is it recommended to upgrade php and mysql to 5.x for drupal 5.x ? What are the advantages ?

Cordially,
Brakkar

I need to have a web site with the following features:

- Complete content control of all pages
- 3 levels of members: 1. anonymous 2. basic member 3. paid member. (site should handle accepting payment to become a paid member)
- each content / page should allow me to set which set of members can access the content. (all members, basic and paid, just paid)
- message board with image posting (thinking phpbb for this integrating with drupal).. and it would be great if the above member levels had various permissions on the message board as well.. (like paid topics etc..)
- user profiles with customized information.
- complete customization of the look of the site.
- easy enough for my clients to use on a daily basis.

I then will need to:
Import users from old site and message board into drupal, and make the system force users to update their profiles when they login.

I'm a very experienced PHP / MySQL application developer. I've never worked with drupal before. From what i read it should be easy enough to do all of the above, but since drupal seem to be able to do everything under the sun i'm having some trouble figuring out just what i will need to do. All the drupal instructions make it seem very complex.

If you can give me some time estimates on how long it will take to set it up all up that will help to. Assume a very fast learner.

PS: what message board system is this? Is this the build in system that comes with drupal?

I am one of two administrators. I am wondering where within the website would I find the file directory. We are looking to change a few thing within the site. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Shelli