I'm building a content website whose basic elements are not just plain text but rather structures containing multiple fields. I want it to be based on open source CMS so that I can extend/tweak it as I wish.
Drupal's CCK module gives me exactly what I need, and I'm trying to understand if I can get this capability with DNN (or do I have to code it myself). Most of the developers in my company work in .NET languages to there's a significant advantage for me to work with DNN.
You might look into one of the following DNN modules:
DNN Content Builder
DNNMasters Content Builder Pro 2.x with Ajax
The second of these looks like the more powerful but, unlike the first, is not free.
The simple answer, in, 2011, is no, even with special modules, there's nothing that rivals Drupal's CCK / Fields API in DNN.
The Tab->Module approach is fundamentally flawed in this respect.
Related
I'm searching a CMs that can offer me these features :
Localized fields with a custom number of languages
Each article belong to a category that may have parent categories
language and category could be calculated from url example /en/maincategory/subcategory/my-article-url-rewrite
I was looking in drupal for these features. I haven't yet found something on localization. I have found another solution that could satisfy my need which is Plone but I can't decide which can can give me what I want. Can Drupal do all this ? Plone ? Or there is another solution ?
Plone seems quite a good choice for this project.
Localization can be handled using the excellent product LinguaPlone;
Hierachical categories can be handled using collective.virtualtreecategories, or using hierarchical vocabularies and a custom field with a collective.dynatree widget (I did something similar in a recent project);
Plone does not retrive content using URL dispatch, but path traversal; however, using correct content placement inside folders, you can have a directory structure that complies with your format.
Of course, you will also have access to Plone's powerful User and Group management facilities, ACLs, workflow engine, and many other features.
If you are knowledgable in Python, you might also want to look at Django, which is more like a framework than a CMS, but hey...
Yes, eg. Drupal 6 is able to do that. Just take a closer look at modules:
i18n (shortcut for "internationalization"),
Locale,
Language Icons,
Pathauto,
Transliteration,
etc.
There are a lot of tools for that.
To look for multilanguage-related modules, just follow the link: http://drupal.org/project/modules?filters=tid%3A97%20drupal_core%3A87%20bs_project_sandbox%3A0&solrsort=sis_project_release_usage%20desc
Drupal even provides translation files for its interface and some modules have translation of their interface bundled in the installation files.
If you only need the features you specified, the only thing you need is to install modules you choose, change the default configuration if needed, and you are able to do what you planned :) Drupal has some administration interface that is not friendly to new users, but it is surely able to quickly fulfill your requirements.
If you're using a fixed list of categories and sub-categories then all of your requirements are standard features of the eZ Publish CMS available at http://share.ez.no
If they are not a fixed-list then you may need to create a bit of custom code.
That CMS also uses Zeta Components
I'm new to Drupal, but I want to create an add-on. The add-on requires some sort of multi-page form with advanced jQuery (I already looked at the jQuery module).
The add-on requires details of the current logged in user and will also communicate with an external database.
I've been looking at tutorials concerning Module creation etc. But they mostly cover creation of simple forms, where as what I want to create is more of a plugin.
Multi page forms are a total drag. Pro Drupal Development, has a very good section on this topic, and I highly recommend that book if you are doing any Drupal development.
Online I found the following article pretty useful too (though I ultimately went with my own system).
http://www.nicklewis.org/using-chaos-tools-form-wizard-build-multistep-forms-drupal-6
There's a decent example here:
http://thedrupalblog.com/creating-multipage-form-using-forms-api
To make the most out of this, you're going to want to get pretty friendly with the Form API:
http://drupal.org/node/204270
Sadly Drupal.org seems to be missing a Drupal 6.x explanation (though plenty exist for 5.x and 4.7 oddly enough).
Multi step forms are complex by nature, but there are some methods to make it easier. I recommend that you have a look at the multistep form tools offered by the Ctools module. This blog post by Nick Lewis explains how you can use it.
I think you should think twice before going with javascript/jQuery to create your forms. Javascript is a great way to improve the user interface, but it can be easily manipulated because it's client side technology. You shouldn't rely on javascript alone for things like input validation, temporary storage of form values and controlling the flow between different steps of the form.
I feel odd saying this, but I don't think you want to use the Drupal Forms API.
The Forms API provides a lot of security features (unique token, rebuilds form after submit to compare to ensure correct form is processed, etc.) and allows other modules to modify your forms, but I think a lot of those features will get in the way of your jEditable form. Multi-page forms are not that challenging using the Forms API, but jEditable elements will be.
Your module could simply add a menu item with a page callback function that puts together your jEditable form for you. That is about as close to the world of a 'normal PHP' script as Drupal will let you get.
I would like to know how feasible is Joomla or Drupal towards a website development which has around 80 web pages? I'm a part time website designer who does a bit of server end development as well using PHP and Python/Django. However, i have never attempted developing a website of this scale. There is a lot of static content on this website and some user interactions using JS/JQuery. The only PHP used would be in contact forms. Rest would be only HTML/CSS/JS. As there is lot of text information to be coded into the web pages i would like to know how Joomla or Drupal would help me?
When you use Content Management Systems, you don't need to use code to make content, that is what the CMS is for. If your site is purely static content with a contact form, Drupal might not be the best choice unless.
You already know Drupal.
You want to learn how to make sites with Drupal.
Drupal is very powerful, it's extremely flexible and a great framework. But it comes with a cost, it's more difficult to learn. If you just want to make a site with 80 or more pages and a contact form, you will most likely be better of with Wordpress. It's more simple and userfriendly. It's not a great development framework like Drupal, but if you only need a contact form and content, you wont need a development framework anyways.
If you're not used to using a CMS, both of these options will be quite a culture shock. In my experience, Joomla is slightly easier to learn than Drupal, but each are a LOT more work than hand-coding a bunch of pages.
Who will be updating the content, if at all? This should be a major factor in choosing a CMS, especially for a small, relatively static site. If the answer is "you" or "one person who can be trained" then you might want to think about keeping it hand-coded (making use of SSI or similar, where appropriate).
Alternatively, if you want a lightweight CMS, take a look at something like kirby or perch, both of which are excellent CMSs for small sites, with relatively low learning curves.
Drupal is pretty powerfull when it comes to content management content management. 80 pages is really nothing. You can sort everything easily with built in Taxonomy-module(used for categorys, tagging, ...) and even create own displays with the Views module. Because of CCK, you can make as many different content types you want, with all kinds of input options(wysiwig text, select lists, checkboxes, files, ...). For the contact form you just use the built in one or use the Webform-module.
I dout you'll have to do any coding for this, but beware, drupal is quite big and you might take some time to understand how it works and how to install. Once done however, it's all very smooth :)
Haven't worked with Joomla yet, can't help you there, but you might wanna google "drupal vs joomla" or similiar, there's plenty of articles. From what I've read, Drupal can do more, but Joomla' easier to learn.
It totaly depends on what functionality you want to have. If you are interested in multimedia or more complex functionality then Joomla is a better option. Thus when it comes to build up a complex and robust website full of features and functionality, you should go with Drupal. Go through this blog to get clear information: http://hirejoomlaprogrammer.blogspot.in/2012/07/joomla-drupal-or-wordpress-which-cms-to.html
our website resides on iis-server and is completely written with Expression Web using templates and pure html-pages based on those templates. There's also some slight functionality built using c# in code behind.
Now i've been looking into DotNetNuke 5 as an alternative, so that our content editors (no tech bg) wouldn't have such a hard time when doing updates, adding pages and so forth. Naturally we would like to keep our finely tuned css-layout and maybe add some additional functionality later, probably using DNN modules.
I'll begin with a broad question:
Are there any best practices for migrating into DotNetNuke from an existing website?
Any articles, blogs, webcasts, books etc. related to this question would be much appreciated!
https://www.datasprings.com/Resources/ArticlesInformation/MigratetoDotNetNuke/tabid/737/language/en-US/Default.aspx
http://forums.asp.net/t/843931.aspx
The last one is a bit older - not sure if these will help - I think the thing to do is sit down understand how DNN does its pages and menu etc and then map it out on paper
planning planning planning -----------------
No matter what going from html to dynamic system like DNN is going to take grunt work
I'm about to embark on a journey to build a multilingual Drupal site, where I will most likely have to use Views, Panels and Taxonomy pretty heaily. I am a bit worried about the new-node-for-every-language approach, especially using Panels.
So far I've gotten it to work similarly to what I want by not having multilingual support for the Panels content-type, and fetching content that is from Current language and language neutral . This seem to work as expected, but I'm seeing some problems with it. There might be the occasion that I will have to have a language specific Panel (not published in English for example). If I need to have all my Panels multilingual, there seems to be alot of work to place the nodes for every column in every page in every language. I'm thinking I could possibly solve this by fetching the content with some kind of view with arguments, but this will most likely also lead to alot of work.
Is there some proper way of doing what I'm attempting to describe, or do I have alot of seemingly unnecessary work to expect?
I assume you have i18n module (http://drupal.org/project/i18n) and Views module installed. Then you can create a view for each language - one can choose language in "Filter" section of the view definition.
Once you have views, then you can link them to menus or blocks. The problem is you must have a separate version of block or menu for every language, with a proper view associated - Drupal is choosing proper language version itself according to the configuration (typically content type set in a browser). I haven't found any easier way of doing that.
Fortunately preparing multilingual content is not that hard thanks to the "transalte" functionality for nodes after enabling i18n module, so new node for every page is something one can live with.
BTW you are right that the way Drupal is doing i18n is not the best solution one can think of. I am having hard time with it sometimes.
Well there are some serious issues with views over translating taxonomy terms or vocabs names. This could be resolved with some extra modules or / and custom PHP code inside views fields. Usually 70% of modules does not support translation, then you need to patch them to support it. While others does have translation possibility, but it could be two possible ways: uses variables table to hold different translations UI dependent (need to switch to other language to find a string) or uses translation field tables to utilize "translation interface" from admin menu.
So far that's it :)
I wish you luck!