Before you start

I've read alot about Drupal and it looks like a viable solution for my CMS needs, especially since Drupal has been used by many similar news websites (such as theonion). We are looking to create a news site, where users can login (profiles) and comment.

However, I am not a great programmer. I remember trying to play with Drupal 2 years ago, and I had a VERY touch time. In our case, I am very hesitant about using Drupal because we would need a customized theme. I was hoping I could find a theme that was already setup that allowed us to easily post articles, and allow for users to login ... and then make style and graphic changes to change the look (keeping everything else in place). However, most of the themes in the gallery are rather bland. None look like theonion or any of the top drupal news sites.

So, I was wondering if anyone could point me to some GOOD news website themes. It would be great if certain modules were already included (such as user login), so I don't need to figure out how to get it to work... which is very aggravating for a non programmer. It may be alot to ask (and may be nonexistant), but it never hurts to ask.

Basically, the site needs the following...

User Login & Profiles
Featured articles placed on the homepage (in an appealing way)
Category sections (listing articles in that category)
Articles (and be easy to add new categories)

Hello all,

We -- a distributed group of academics in a science project -- want to jointly write a book. The book will be written in LaTeX because of the heavy load of mathematics; it will also include lots of EPS figures. However, every member shall be able to edit or, alternatively, down- / upload the LaTeX text as well as the Xfig, gnuplot, etc source files generating those EPS files. In the end, it shall become a single PDF (or PS) file.

Ideally, we can split the book into manageable nodes -- that's the word in Drupal slang? --, each of which makes a chapter. That is, each node contains the LaTeX file as well as the EPS files plus their respective source files for that chapter? Then, each node should display the fully processed PDF output of that single chapter, with figures, math, references, etc as in the final product. And another process concatenates every node into the final downloadable PDF file as. So, there are actually two outputs, the chapterized ones visible on the website and the entire book for download. And, thirdly, there must be a way to include each node in a list of contents, through which the individual nodes can be accessed online as well as by which the individual nodes are concatenated in the right order.

Hello everyone!
I've just installed Drupal 7 for testing purposes. I've noticed the great community you guys have and the great support. I've also noticed the large array of things Drupal could do.
But I'm a newbie on Drupal, worked before a lot with Joomla and they're pretty similar...
So, I'm working on a project, a complete travel guide in my language and, before I start digging further, I'd like to know few simple (I guess) things about Drupal.
I'll just express the few needs I have to continue working with Drupal and please, please, help me with some suggestions.
1. I'd like my site to have 3 columns and I've noticed I can easily do that
2. I'd like my site's articles to support a tagging system and I've also noticed the Taxonomy in Drupal 7, which is great.
3. Want to know if i can create categories like Joomla has... and have my URL's set accordingly.
4. Don't know if I can have a breadcrumb to follow categories / subcategories / articles as well.
5. I'd like to know if I can create new menus assigned only on the pages I tell them to. And for the same menus, I'd like to know if the links could follow categorization (E: /destinations/europe/austria/viena/attractions/prater-park.html).

Hi! My name is Rawal. I'm here for help/suggestion in creating my website.I'm going to build a website where people can read online ebooks and can also bookmark them into their account, limiting in the package they buy from us.So that I'm looking for a Content Management System (CMS) which would be best for this purpose. For better understanding, I'm writing some special work which we have accepted will be done by our website:
1. Packages with 3 types and each have specific limit (For Example a limit of Books and duration)
2. Only a showcase on web front other data can only be access by having our one of the account packages.
3. To add policies for data access.
4. The main and important thing is User account management.For example user has following facilities.
i) Can Add books into their account.
ii) Personal, Organizational or Educational user account types with different options on user panel.
iii) Can read books on Flip Book application "Power Book" which is XML based. Visit site http://tinyurl.com/3ph2alw
iv) Categories will be limited to registered users and visitors/guest can't even saw these.
5. Forum and help community.

Hi all, my names Al and I'm new to Drupal and was somewhat bummed that the chat didn't work and that the instruction manual wasn't up. I'm looking for a good CMS that has the functionality to put what I need on a site I'm going to build.

I know basis JavaScript, PHP, and AS3 for flash, but don't really want to do much programming at all. I do need a site with membership, forum boards, a chat to do a sports draft. I'm going to need numerous databases for stats, members of the site and players, plus free and paid memberships.

I plan to set up a network of around 50-100 very small (up to 10 pages each) sites with separate content (and hence menus) but common templates, look, modules, layouts and everything else. Managed physically by 1 admin and a few node editors. Some sites will have external domain address. How to implement it the easiest way?

1. Multisite - isn't it a waste to create xx databases just to have a few pages in each? Besides, the administration work during frequent updates would be quite large, even with aegir.

2. Domain access - it is said "use it if you share content across sites" probably for a reason, and I won't share content (nodes). Besides, how would DA behave in case of 100 sites? I think it is not design for such cases, but not sure.

3. Organic groups - documentation says each group may have separate home page and there may be many many groups without performance hit, so sounds good. But how to implement access to group homepages with external domains? The og_domains module looks dead, no D7. Besides, there would be a waste of the "organic" part, because I am not using any groups in fact.