Before you start

I am a total newbie to Drupal and web development in general. I am looking to make a ride-share type site where people can catch rides with people of similar interests who are going hiking, boating, etc. I picture this very much like a classified ad site where the poster can enter information from a set of radio buttons and pull-downs for things such as origin, destination, number of open seats, etc. There will probably be 6-12 of these information points along with an open form text input box where they can add comments. When they submit their info, it will be posted to a board that others can browse, search, sort etc.

I need PM functionality so users can respond directly to the poster.

I need users to be able to set up and manage accounts so they can manage their posts. It would also be nice if once users hook up, they can be notified directly in the future when they log in that so-and-so is looking for a ride, or has a seat available (social networking option).

Hi. We're starting to evaluate open source CMS systems and were wondering where we can read reviews of Drupal. Are there some comparative reviews of open source CMS?

One other question: Does Drupal allow custom JSP apps to be part of the site? Thanks.

hello all,
I am researching CMS's for my non profits website. We are going to go through a major redesign and try and really increase the functionality of our website as both an administrative tool and a marketing device. I have a few questions so I will number them, thanks in advance for anyone that responds! Here goes:

1. I still don't quite understand how I will combine the design of a website with drupal. I am worried that I will have to fit our design into a template and it will end up looking boxy. Usually pages in dreamweaver, how would we integrate those into drupal from a style perspective?

2. I checked out the sites that were made with drupal and it seems like there are some great designs and uses already, does anyone have any other drupal sites that they can share with me so I can get a sense of how people use design differently?

3. Our goal is to make it so that people at the community centers that we run can log in to the site and post content from their sites such as pictures, video and possibly blog entries. This definitely seems doable in drupal... the question is how?

4. Lastly, we would like to make an intranet at the same time as the website so that we can have our employees fill out necessary forms online. Are there any drupal modules for Administrative functions such as HR, Purchasing, or budgeting?

Hello-

I'm a graphic designer, and I've been moving into using Drupal to power my websites for the past maybe 6 months or so. So far, I have had terrible luck with hosting.

At the moment, I'm in a huge pinch. I have a client who wanted to stay with her old hosting company, and after being told by tech support over and over that Drupal would work, and I must be doing something wrong, I was finally informed that they don't allow cron. So I've got this project that's been dragging on forever, and I really have to come up with a good suggestion for the client.

Hi I'm being to convert my actual joomla site to drupal... I want to create something of important like Teamsugar.com with some feautures of myplay.com, but now some doubts rise me in order to leave well and make a very structured job for after (the foundations for a structure are most important, I think!).

Mine problem and in a generalized manner of many people who approach themselves to drupal's worldis this:

*THE CHOICE OF THE VERSION*

Many people will think that it is one demanded "foolish", but in truth creed that play an important role for the development of a site! Drupal 6 is NEW RELEASE... Drupal 5 is STABLE RELEASE... the first one has many new feautures for the final user and "a fresh" api packet, in prestactional terms I do not know to quantify these improvements, but I believe that these improvements have brought remarkable progresses to the lovers of the "D"; the second one is instead the stable version most used and with one remarkable vastness of module to disposition.

The problem is this: To choose a new core version with the some possible modules to disposition and bug not still resolved, but that it gives to the "future" between not much time (even if creed that with the development of new Drupal 7 already in course.. also this version is just obsolete..), or to choose stable version of Drupal 5 (modules are many and all tested..).

Hello - I'm new at this this so bear with me. I'm starting a web page... technically a blog, but won't really advertise it as such. Anyway, I've found a free template I'd like to use and I'm wondering how simple or difficult it would be to get my site up and running through Drupal using this? Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks.