Before you start

Is there a way to have a separate login page as opposed to having the login block natively assigned to the front page? This is the one thing that is really deterring me from utilizing this system for the company I work for as having the login block on the front page is fairly useless for the type of content we produce. We essentially don't want people to come to us asking how to get a login, thinking they can submit stories, etc. I belong to a B2B publishing firm and having people bug us about this little pittle is something we don't need.

Hey all

I'm already sold on this thing (using it for one other project and possibly going to use it for something else if that something else ever gets off the ground plus recommended it to yet someone else :P) so don't really need to convince me it's a good idea to use it.

What I'm curious about though is whether it's going to work for a new project I'm trying to set up. This new project is a homeschool site and as far as I can tell from experience, drupal has everything I need except for possibly two things:

We're considering Drupal and are having difficulty working out if it's
right for us. What's hard is seeing how to do, in Drupal, what we
know how to do in other web systems. (Modules seem to be very flexible,
but it looks like you have to have a good understanding of Drupal
before you can understand them.)

Is there a tutorial that shows

- how to convert a static site to Drupal?

and (not asking for much :-) a tutorial-ette on

- gradually adding more functionality

We're considering Drupal and are having difficulty working out if it's
right for us. (Have RTFMed but not sure which FM TR). The best way
to express our requirement is via an (only slightly) artificial example:

We want to run a user group. With Drupal, can we:

- access our list of members held in an external dataabse?

- if not, can we create a table, and import them?

- do we end up having to write a module, or is there
general "access this db/table" functionality?

We want users to be able to register for a conference, so in effect
we want them to be able to:

- populate a row of another table, where the key is their email address

- have continued RO access to that data, so they can update things later

- have RO access to selected pieces of all the other rows, so they
can see if their friends are attending

and

- be able to add new records (and update them later) to yet another table
containing contact details for other people who might want to
attend the conf / join in the user group.

Are we barking up the wrong tree by looking at Drupal?
Even if there is a "user group" module, the real question is: can
we do the above in a general way?

Many thanks,
Niall

ps: some of this seems to have been touched on in the posting "Database GUI, how??"
but it's not clear *how* to do it: is it in-built functionality o

I am new to the CMS world. I have a current site that needs to be rebuilt and I would like to know if I can use Drupal to provide the same functions as the current site. The url is http://affairedecoeur.com
Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I installed Drupal on a dedicated server. Per instructions from handbook and Robert Douglas book, I set memory to 24 in php.ini.

My shared host just informed me I have over 100M of memory (for a different website). Why do instructions say 20 or 24? Why don't I just set it to 100 or unlimited (if that's a possible setting)?