Before you start

Can drupal link between categories? I am looking to do something like this http://www.cambridgerapid.co.uk/coranto

I'm very impressed with Drupal and would like to incorporate it with an existing site. I'm also not very familiar with PHP coding, but am prepared to take my basic knowledge a step further :)

Before I install Drupal, I need to know whether or not it would be possible to use a vBulletin (or as a second resort, phpBB) user database with this CMS. Importing Topics and Posts is not important. What matters is that my users are able to login either via the message board, or Drupal, and therefore gain access to both scripts.

I would like some opinions about setting up a new website.
I am planning to start the project and have been preparing it for a few weeks. What I am setting up is a web site which will contain a lot of different content and it will be updated constantly, so I have no doubt that it requires a good CMS. After searching on the internet and testing different programs I found Drupal. I have read much of the documentation on Drupal and I believe that it could be the right solution for my problem.

Because this will be a time consuming and relatively big project for me I thought it would be best if I get some help and information from others on this matter so I can be sure that I am making the right decision.

This isnt a question about pre-installation of Drupal - but about the pre-installation of modules. Some modules are listed as being relevant for version 4.2.0 - what are the implications of installing such a module on a 4.3.0 system? Is it possible?

I've been looking around on the site but can't find the answer to my question - maybe it's me, but I would appreciate some help.

I am looking for a package to replace a site currently based on framesets and articles in individual files, for a history magazine site (in fact I've already posted a question about importing the existing site into Drupal - help welcome there too :-) ). This framesets technique has disadvantages, but it also has one big advantage: it is very easy (using OpenOffice) to give every article a metadata "content" and "description" (as well as a title) which will show up nice and cleanly in the search engine results (the disadvantage is that users get directed to the individual page minus the frameset, but there are ways round that).

Since the site I'm working on has extremely varied content, I'm reluctant to lose this feature since it would be impossible to update the metadata at the site level, in such a way as to reflect the richness and variety of content in the site, using:
META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="description"
META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="keywords"

I'm looking for a PHP/SQL based Open Source CMS which will therefore have the ability to associate meta content and description with each "page" (ie and above all article). Even better if it can do it in the Dublin Core standard.

I would also like to know about the internal Drupal search engine. What are the limitations to it? Does it just do search on title, keywords for example, or can it handle full text? Can it handle the content of file downloads (notably PDF?).

Good news, bad news.

Good news: I'm dying to use Drupal more extensively and have installed and configured test sites on three servers and worked through a number of newbie and eccentric application issues. I like the system very much.

Bad news: the feature write up on permissions as well as the detailed information needs a more explicit warning or statement that Drupal in its current incarnation does *not* support what most people think of a group and individual access permissions to limit access to pages, nodes, or other taxonomic elements.

I'm stupid and didn't check this out thoroughly enough, and am now facing a decision to drop Drupal completely, or try to install multiple db's and instances of it, not a good option except for very simple installations where you only have one group that needs special content not available to other groups.

I see discussions about adding more granular permissions access options, which is great. Many people who work with Windows and Linux systems assume (...and I realize the ass that makes me ;-)) that a 4.0 system release will have basic content access permissions, particularly when you read about role permissions in the feature write-up.

Every site I work on except for completely public sites, requires access permissions to limit and grant access to specialized or 'confidential' content. My understanding is that the current roles really only provide for a variety of administrators and moderators not *content* access permissions.