Before you start

Hello everyone :)

I've started new work, helping a university bookstore that services mainly the students, replacing their currently horrible and buggy webshop. The new website is basically supposed to do what Amazon does (including the semantic features, like "Other people who bought this book also bought..." - that kind of stuff).

As said, right now their website is really quite bad, not quite dynamic, too rugged, and the company who developed it has seized to be, and thus it's no longer supported. My task is to replace it completely and add a range of nice features, like the ones found on Amazon, Blackwells and similar places.

The current hardware on-site is entirely Microsoft controlled, and the book database is populated by an MSSQL server. I've been told that there has to be really, really good arguments for switching to e.g. a Debian server for the website (which would be my preference), and I'm not in any way fanatical about it (at least not when I'm getting paid by someone else ;), so if it's at all possible to stick with the current MS setup, that's the way we're gonna go. Of course, PHP can be installed, no issues there, and a MySQL database migration could also be undertaken, although they really do prefer to stick with the current MSSQL server as other systems are running ontop of it. I've searched Drupal post about this, and it seems that it used to support MSSQL, then in 2004, it stopped being maintained, and there's currently a feature request accepted for upcoming versions to implement MSSQL compatibility, although no developer has been assigned to the task. I.e., my hopes are not up ;)

Greetings. I have a few questions regarding CMSs and Drupal, and I thought this was the appropiate forum to post them. i'm sorry if I thought wrong...

Hello, is it possible to use Drupal with a database that is in othe IP that is not localhost?How can you do it?

Thanks

Gi Guys,

I have been looking at drupal for a community website I have been asked to do. It basically consists of the following:

- Its a website for a local cluster of 9 schools in Australia ranging from primary to secondary schools.
- consists on three main sections 1- main page (with site into and the teasers) 2- Articles 3 - Forum 4 - Survey section (will explain later)
- It is meant to be a central place for teachers, students, and the local community to share information, opinions etc regarding the schools in the cluster. It is mainly aimed at the teachers though.
- It essentially needs 5 user types: Administrators, Teachers, Students, Parents, and Cummunity Users.
- If teachers post 'articles' they only want other teachers to see (same goes for the teaser as well), they they can tick a box when posting - used for posting info on how to teach a particular subject, lesson plans etc..
- Teachers, parents and students must select what school they are from when signing up.
- All teachers in this country are given an '@edumail.vic.gov.au' e-mail address when employed, so authentication when signing up must be send to this address only - ensures that they are actually teachers.
- the teasers must state what school they are from, and display a school logo
- Forum posts (including a teaser of 'recent forum posts') must have an avatar of the same logo from their selected school.

Hi folks, I am doing some researching to find some answers on the e-commerce module for this platform. Does anyone know of any sites that using this module? Also are there are documentation for it? Much appreciated.

A user pays with their cc and drupal automatically enables the appropriate user role for the user when payment is confirmed.

Is there any module or code snippet that does this? Maybe a WIP module?

Would be very interested to talk with people who are working on such a thing, or who have already built such a feature.

Thanks,
JR