ATTN: Website Designers! Looking for some advice please

[NSX Prime]

Hey I know we have some web professionals on here.. Does anyone use Drupal? Any good books you recommend for getting started with it?

Thanks for any suggestions!

[crazyukrainian]

i did a little bit, working as hard as possible to get out of it now. google is your friend here. drupal has the worst learning curve of all CMSes out there (except maybe dotnetnuke or sitecore). be prepared to google for hours for every little thing you want to do and every single bug you will encounter along the way

[CL65 Captain]

+1 Drupal is more versatile if you are a php programmer and willing to write your own code, but Wordpress has caught up fast and if you are not a programmer 100x easier to use. I have one Drupal website that I had to write a lot of custom plugins for and I am eventually going to switch it over to Wordpress.

Lud, if you are not a good php programmer and willing to spend hours learning Drupal hooks --> no question about it, go with Wordpress.

[Vega$ NSX]

Lol! I thought it was some sort of drug.

[NSX Prime]

i did a little bit, working as hard as possible to get out of it now. google is your friend here. drupal has the worst learning curve of all CMSes out there (except maybe dotnetnuke or sitecore). be prepared to google for hours for every little thing you want to do and every single bug you will encounter along the way

What are you switching to? Are you switching simply because it takes too much time and effort to master Drupal, or for other reasons?

I have looked into it enough to recognize the very steep learning curve.. I was hoping someone would have a book suggestion or two to help me get through it with less googling.

[NSX Prime]

+1 Drupal is more versatile if you are a php programmer and willing to write your own code, but Wordpress has caught up fast and if you are not a programmer 100x easier to use. I have one Drupal website that I had to write a lot of custom plugins for and I am eventually going to switch it over to Wordpress.

Lud, if you are not a good php programmer and willing to spend hours learning Drupal hooks --> no question about it, go with Wordpress.

I looked at WordPress a while ago, actually set it up and built a couple mock sites with it. It was definitely easy, but didn't seem flexible enough to do what I wanted. Maybe it has improved and I should take another look.

Drupal definitely has the flexibility to do what I want, but I'm wondering if it's more than I can manage. If I had to start writing my own modules then that would probably be a deal killer. It appears to have a lot of pre-built modules available which provide a huge array of functions. I guess I'd need to sort through them and make sure they would satisfy my requirements.

Is there a good alternative that meets somewhere in the middle - more flexibility than WordPress but less work than Drupal?

[itrsteve]

If you look at the plethora or plugins that exist for WP (not to mention huge community support) I would dare say you should have much flexibility and easier researching if you went that route.

[audax]

Is there a good alternative that meets somewhere in the middle - more flexibility than WordPress but less work than Drupal?

ExpressionEngine (built on the CodeIgniter framework)

[NetViper]

Wordpress can pretty much do anything. I would research it a little more and look for plugins. I pretty much only use we now.

[CL65 Captain]

Check out these add-ons to WP:

http://wp-types.com/

or

http://podscms.org/

[roninasauna]

I dont know why anyone would use anything else other than wordpress


BY FAR the best imo

[NSX Prime]

OK thanks for the feedback. For you WP advocates - how would you rebuild this site in WP? What modules would you use?

Let's say the goals are to replace the wiki with a content management system that will automatically build a structure based on taxonomy. Keep the vBulletin forums intact and integrated with the main site. Revive the Events section by allowing user-generated write-ups to be promoted to a list (generally similar to the way it was before when I maintained it by hand). Have a Gallery that supports pictures with narrative descriptions and multimedia in a clean and easy to use manner (not to replace the Photopost user gallery, this is a separate "official site content" gallery for content similar to what is in the current Gallery link). Have a front page with promoted content (similar to Events, but with more detail). Ideally let any user submit and a team of editors clean up / approve content. Entire site needs to have flexible AdSense support.

BTW I am probably going to hire someone to build it out in whatever platform I choose if any of you pros want to submit a proposal and reference list of comparable projects. I do not have the time to do all this myself.

[NetViper]

OK thanks for the feedback. For you WP advocates - how would you rebuild this site in WP? What modules would you use?

Let's say the goals are to replace the wiki with a content management system that will automatically build a structure based on taxonomy. Keep the vBulletin forums intact and integrated with the main site. Revive the Events section by allowing user-generated write-ups to be promoted to a list (generally similar to the way it was before when I maintained it by hand). Have a Gallery that supports pictures with narrative descriptions and multimedia in a clean and easy to use manner (not to replace the Photopost user gallery, this is a separate "official site content" gallery for content similar to what is in the current Gallery link). Have a front page with promoted content (similar to Events, but with more detail). Ideally let any user submit and a team of editors clean up / approve content. Entire site needs to have flexible AdSense support.

BTW I am probably going to hire someone to build it out in whatever platform I choose if any of you pros want to submit a proposal and reference list of comparable projects. I do not have the time to do all this myself.

I think wordpress right out of the box is going to be able to accomplish most of what you posted. I am not sure if there is a wiki plugin, but I would guess there is. I just need to search a little.

The Events section could be the blog, so it would be user contributed and commented. The Photo Gallery could be next gen gallery. Very simple to use and update.

There are lots of adsense opportunities in that as well, but the majority of the traffic i would guess will always be on the forums.

The front page could be done with a combination of the event blog and some static content to be able to post whatever you wanted. ie promote NSXPO. There are also plugins for sticky blogs so that could be valuable.

I don't know if you could integrate NSXprime user names with the wordpress backend, so most people would need to register on WP if they wanted to comment on blog posts etc. I would need to search and see if there is a plugin that can do that. Otherwise it could be done custom but pricey.

There are e-commerce plugins to do the store and it would be very simple if you support paypal only.

I would think it would be a 20-40hr project to move it all over and have the new site going.

It would be very sweet.

[crazyukrainian]

What are you switching to? Are you switching simply because it takes too much time and effort to master Drupal, or for other reasons?

I have looked into it enough to recognize the very steep learning curve.. I was hoping someone would have a book suggestion or two to help me get through it with less googling.

switching because ratio of progress to googling time is too low with drupal. ive tried to get into drupal but its a lot easier for me to get into something else (im actually going into c# custom coding, it suits my needs a lot better, or will once i have time to write a basic framework/cms type thing)

pretty much any book will help but you'll still end up with a headache


wordpress can probably help you do all this but i'd be wary of connecting it to the forum and any of the other trickier stuff. it should be possible with minimal custom code (if any), but might take longer to get it how you want than 40 hrs (depending on how good the plugins are and exactly how you want stuff to work)

[enkrypt3d]

yup the company im working for uses drupal and you'd be surprised if I told you where! its fine for smaller / lower traffic sites but not very scalable for extremely high traffic sites....

Here are a few sites to get you familiarized with drupal:

http://www.drupalgardens.com/
http://www.acquia.com/

[NSX Prime]

I think wordpress right out of the box is going to be able to accomplish most of what you posted. I am not sure if there is a wiki plugin, but I would guess there is. I just need to search a little.

The Events section could be the blog, so it would be user contributed and commented. The Photo Gallery could be next gen gallery. Very simple to use and update.

OK I've started playing around with WP in a test installation. It does look pretty good.

I'm a little lost on the best way to structure the FAQ/Wiki/whatever in WP. I can't find a plugin that does anything like that but maybe I'm just not searching correctly. Then I started looking at building custom post types and custom taxonomy and filtering display based on that, but as best I can tell that gets into coding that's going to be fairly time consuming for me to figure out (which defeats the purpose of WP over Drupal), and probably be a bear to maintain through WP upgrades, which is something I really want to avoid.

I see what you mean about using regular posts for the event gallery, though ideally I'd like a way to show just one or the other. Should I create a post format for that, add custom fields and a custom view somehow, or...?

I installed NextGEN Gallery. It looks very cool! I haven't really had time to mess with it yet but I think it will definitely do the job. I didn't see anything about video.. Does it handle that, or do I need to use something else? I'd prefer to keep photos and videos in one place if possible. One thing that looks awesome about it is the ability to connect a gallery to a post. That will be great for event photos!

The front page could be done with a combination of the event blog and some static content to be able to post whatever you wanted. ie promote NSXPO. There are also plugins for sticky blogs so that could be valuable.

I think that would all work as well. Do you have a plugin you recommend for the sticky blog post function? The example of promoting NSXPO is perfect for what I'm after.

I don't know if you could integrate NSXprime user names with the wordpress backend, so most people would need to register on WP if they wanted to comment on blog posts etc. I would need to search and see if there is a plugin that can do that. Otherwise it could be done custom but pricey.

I found one plugin that claims to do it but it's pretty limited and it looked like a messy install.. and most critically the author just revived it after having abandoned it for a while. I can't really rely on something like that. Then I found some other stuff to basically push the vB user list into WP. But in thinking about it, I wonder if that is actually a useful goal. Maybe I should just direct discussion back to the forums somehow?

What is the best AdSense approach? I looked at a couple plugins but none of them seem very polished, and they also maddeningly don't seem to let you use the actual adsense code, you have to put in your publisher ID and select the ad types from a menu. Why can't I just paste my ad code in? I have the same frustration with the current AdSense setup on vB. I don't understand why they are written that way. Maybe I just picked bad plugins to test. Anyway, I assume I could also somehow manually paste AdSense code into text blocks in headers/footers/sidebars, but it'd be nice to be able to also put them into the articles without having to manually code or place each one since there are so many pages. Any suggestions?

Thanks for any further input from you or any of the other WP gurus! Sorry if any of my questions are dumb.. I really just started looking at it and I'm far from an expert at this kind of stuff to begin with.

[NetViper]

OK I've started playing around with WP in a test installation. It does look pretty good.

I'm a little lost on the best way to structure the FAQ/Wiki/whatever in WP. I can't find a plugin that does anything like that but maybe I'm just not searching correctly. Then I started looking at building custom post types and custom taxonomy and filtering display based on that, but as best I can tell that gets into coding that's going to be fairly time consuming for me to figure out (which defeats the purpose of WP over Drupal), and probably be a bear to maintain through WP upgrades, which is something I really want to avoid.
.

I am not going to be a ton of help on all your questions.

I haven't looked at the plug in for wiki, so I am not sure if it changes the whole site to act like a Wiki or what. Is the goal for users to be able to edit the pages? It would be simple to just create pages in WP with the current info in the wiki and just tag them.

I am not sure if Nextgen does video, but should be easy to figure out. There are plenty other options out there.

There are also lots of sticky posts.

For adsense, if you dont want to use a plug in, you can just past the code in a widget.

[itrsteve]

For video look into the "Smart Youtube" plugin and just host all of your actual videos on youtube. the plugin is great because you can predefine your style properties on the backend and then when you post a link that starts with httpv or httpvh the plugin automatically takes over and embeds it.

The NextGen gallery is great, I went through a couple before I could find that. For the event stuff I would make separate posts for that and then link them off a calendar. You can add your next gen albums to a individual post as well.

[NSX Prime]

I haven't looked at the plug in for wiki, so I am not sure if it changes the whole site to act like a Wiki or what. Is the goal for users to be able to edit the pages?

No, I have given up on utilizing true wiki functionality. Despite all the people who asked for it, time has shown that the community just isn't interested. Whatever the reason, I've seen no indication that more than a handful of people are interested in that kind of involvement, so I will just set those people up as editors, which is easy in any CMS.

It would be simple to just create pages in WP with the current info in the wiki and just tag them.

OK.. But then how do you generate a useful navigation structure? With that volume of information a tag cloud is of marginal use at best IMO. The lack of linearly navigable structure was one of the main complaints about the wiki, and people were very happy with someone took the time to create that structure for the wiki. So I really think something like that is important as opposed to relying on tags or searches.

For adsense, if you dont want to use a plug in, you can just past the code in a widget.

I do want a plugin, because I need multiple ad placement types depending on the page type and I need a way to globally manage it. I'm trying to figure out which one is good. I figured someone out there must have some experience with it since both WP and AdSense are so popular..?

[NSX Prime]

For video look into the "Smart Youtube" plugin and just host all of your actual videos on youtube. the plugin is great because you can predefine your style properties on the backend and then when you post a link that starts with httpv or httpvh the plugin automatically takes over and embeds it.

Hmm. It sounds cool but I'm not sure all the videos will fly on YouTube. I guess I can try.

The NextGen gallery is great, I went through a couple before I could find that. For the event stuff I would make separate posts for that and then link them off a calendar. You can add your next gen albums to a individual post as well.

That is cool.

So it sounds like there is no easy way to have an integrated media gallery with pictures and videos and audio clips in one place? If so that is pretty disappointing but I guess not a deal killer.

[itrsteve]

Hmm. It sounds cool but I'm not sure all the videos will fly on YouTube. I guess I can try.



That is cool.

So it sounds like there is no easy way to have an integrated media gallery with pictures and videos and audio clips in one place? If so that is pretty disappointing but I guess not a deal killer.

No you definitely can. When you make a regular blog post you will link your NextGen gallery with a simple tag with corresponding gallery ID

[nggallery id=4]

From there you can post your text writeups and video embedding (I suggested smartyoutube because it's easy). This way all media & text are on one page.

[enkrypt3d]

http://coppermine-gallery.net/

[NSX Prime]

OK.. But then how do you generate a useful navigation structure? With that volume of information a tag cloud is of marginal use at best IMO. The lack of linearly navigable structure was one of the main complaints about the wiki, and people were very happy with someone took the time to create that structure for the wiki. So I really think something like that is important as opposed to relying on tags or searches.

Anyone? This is critical. I can't go further with WP until I figure it out.

[itrsteve]

Anyone? These are two critical pieces. I can't go further with WP until I figure them out.

Are you trying to suck the wiki into WP? If anything I would leave wiki separate and just modify the look to watch the WP pages. I'm not sure if I fully understand what you're looking for out of the navigation portion, feel free to shoot me an email if you want to chat about it offline.

There are tons of ad management plugin's, I've never used one personally but I do know they exist.

[BudweiserŽ]

Anyone? This is critical. I can't go further with WP until I figure it out.

I may be misunderstanding your question, but doesn't the parent/child/grandchild relationship between pages take care of this? Or maybe a combination of categories and parent/children?

Looking at the current wiki, those 8 main "categories" (learning, sharing, purchasing, etc.) would be the parents and everything else would come below them.

Or, those could be actual Categories and then you save the parent/child stuff for the detail pages? Example - /Acura/Contact, or /sales-production/model-information

Granted, with well over 1,000 pages of content to import I would think the tricky part is importing everything properly. Taxonomy should be easier to figure out IMHO.