I’m starting work on a new website and have locked down the domain. It’s going to be a multi-faceted website, only some of which will be blog-like, so WordPress is out. And having previously tried, and rejected, Joomla!, I’m going to give Drupal a serious try this time.
Amazon delivered “Drupal for Dummies” – every one of the “Dummies” books I’ve tried have been excellent – and the O’Reilly “Using Drupal” – also a publisher I like very much. The former will blitz me through the basics while the latter will provide the nitty-gritty when I need to go deep.
Now, if work would just get out of the way …
Let me know. I picked up a Joomla! book for something that didn’t materialize. I have another “something” pending and I need to pick a path to take. Knowing what you find to be reasonable would help.
Why didn’t you like Joomla? I’ve done sites with WP, Joomla, and Drupal, and, frankly, i find them all too cumbersome and restrictive – much of the time, it’s actually easier to accomplish what i want with Dreamweaver, but, of course, no plug-ins or modules or packages or whatever terminology each tool uses – those *do* let you do some great and whizzy stuff whilst keeping your fingers from getting banged up on the exhaust pipes and manifolds. Doing a site for someone else, these utilities automate enough that the somewhat uninitiated have a shot at administering their own content, but they’re still obscure enough, i’d have a hard time recommending one over another. (‘course, WP is superb for blogs, but once you start getting fancy with add-ons, they all have a big enough catalog you can find something to get you where you want to go…) So, just curious what caused the judgement call.
Hi Mike,
The website that I’m putting together will start with several contributors, each of whom will be adding content in their specific area about once every couple of weeks. While it is unlikely they will all be in there at the same time, there’s that chance and, because they are true novice users, I’m not going to expect more of them than logging in and using a WYSIWYG editor for their area.
The front page of the website will have a summary/links to the most recently added articles.
There will also be an overall calendar but I’m thinking I will probably have to take their inputs and do a manual merge — it all depends on the available calendar support. (Google Calendars looked pretty good but after they decided to drop Reader, I’m not sure I want to rely on them.)
Eventually there will be a store with shopping cart, etc.
If you are putting something like that together without Joomla! or Drupal, I remove my hat and bow to you.
I’ve not had quite this mixed of a bag. Web sites with multiple logins for content creators. ‘kay. Use whichever. Web sites with shopping – i’ve only done that by hand, and with PayPal – not a large inventory, tho’ i’m looking at it now with WP and have looked at it previously with Drupal – PayPal’s little widget creator has always made it easy for me tho’, since i’ve never had a site selling more than a handful of items at one time.
Calendars *always* drive me crazy! iCal is supposed to be sort of a standard, but sharing calendars among sites and apps is never easy. One day, he keeps saying to himself, i’ll figure that out. It’s on the “C” list, tho’…
No hat tipping required!!!