Customized Drupal with pre-installed modules - drupal

I heard in Joomla world they sometimes create so called builds - Joomla installs targeted for specific kind of site. Is there something similar for Drupal?
Someone may have likely created e.g. Company site with the same set of pages time and again, and it's possible that such builds are offered somewhere. I don't know how personal or commercial these builds can be, but I am sure some people can use them to speed up their development.
What are your ideas, have there been such sites or attempts, is this a right approach?

They're called Install Profiles. There's a bunch of contributed profiles on the Drupal site.

I can see that profiles from the link above don't actually contain modules themselves. Should I still download the modules manually in addition to downloading the profile?
Profiles can have a modules subdirectory for modules included with the installation profile.
AFAIK you need to download the modules manually if this directory is not populated.

There are a couple of good ones I didn't see listed on the Drupal profiles page.
They are iSite Essentials CMS and Acquia Drupal.

Related

Building a website for a hotel - is WordPress the best idea?

I'm researching to see if building a full website for a hotel be a good idea to do on WordPress.
I read that wordpress is okay but there are better options.
I want to design and code my own front end look to the website, but have the backend on a stable platform that can take all the reservations seamlessly.
My main concern is to be able to have a backup of all the files and easily switch to another server in case something goes wrong.
I can host the website on my server or host with the service you suggest that comes with the platform all together.
Any ideas and/or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
There are other options, no doubt, but yes, it can and is really possible to build it using WordPress as CMS.
If you want to design and code your own theme, you'll need to study the WordPress Theme Structure and, since you'll build it by yourself, you'll also need to develop plugins to create custom post types (aka CPT) to make the hotel management easier on the WP back-end.
About the theme structure, files, child themes and everything, I'd recommend you to read https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
About the plugins development: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/
About Custom Post Types: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/post-types/registering-custom-post-types/
About the backup: it's super easy and you can even make a full backup using free plugins via back-end. But if the site goes down you can easily do it via FTP downloading only wp-content folder and the database. It's really simple to migrate from one WordPress to another, or from host to host.
About the hosting, you'll need to use a server if you want to build this project. There's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org
The .com is simpler, you are not able to build everything you want. The .org is the open source project, which you get the files, upload to your server and connect to database (MariaDB or MySQL). Most hosts offer automatic installation for WordPress and, from there, you can change whatever you want and need.
Note: many developers create CPTs INSIDE the theme's code, but this is not recommended by WP as you can see in We recommend that you put custom post types in a plugin rather than a theme. This ensures that user content remains portable even if they change their theme.
WP is not really hard, after 1 week studying you'll see yourself getting over most difficulties. Even if it takes longer, don't give up. There's a huge community to help you with WP questions.
Hope it helps and I'm sorry my bad writing, I'm not an english native speaker.
C ya

How to keep backup or save latest WordPress build in Github

I am making a WordPress website and I might create new builds. How will I keep back up or save my latest builds, I would prefer to use and manage builds through github. Is there a particular way that I can do it in WordPress?
Simple way to install this plugin and create your WordPress backup and download it :
https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
I used gitwatch to automatically commit new code to a Github repository. This included new uploads and new plugins. Just follow the ReadMe and it works pretty well.
This is an example of a website where I used this technique.
Words of Caution
Use .gitignore to exclude your wp-config.php file so that database credentials etc are not stored to github.
Be careful not to dump your database to the wordpress directly (which
would automatically commit it to Github).
Be careful of plugins
that write sensitive stuff to a file that might get committed.
I am aware of Kerchoff's law, or not attempting security through
obscurity, but I am not stupid about the risks of automatically
publishing all of your configuration publicly. The site above is not
a high profile complex site (and I generally like to think I know
what I'm doing). DO NOT do this at home if your website is handling
sensitive information or could be at risk of anything more targeted
than a general Wordpress security flaw dragnet on Google.
One partial solution to these concerns would be to just make the Git repository private.
Finally if you are dealing with European data you need to comply with GDPR
which means you need to be ready to scrub a file from Git history
using something like BFG
You are addressing two different things. For backups, there are WordPress backup plugins that you can use like updraft (here's the link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/). But when it comes to development workflow then GitHub is the right platform. If you want to know how to work in a live environment and how to push and pull the latest changes from local to live or vice versa
(to keep track) then this guide will help you. https://www.cloudways.com/blog/wordpress-github/

Integrate blog into own website

There are already several questions with a similar title, but they received either no answers, or the answers were too specific.
I would like to integrate a blog into a website, so that content can be updated using a simple interface, e.g. from a wordpress/blogger/... account. I find the solutions with iframe cumbersome and unprofessional and I am not sure that modding a wordpress/blogger/... theme gives satisfactory results either, plus, I am not fond of running a whole wordpress engine on my website.
I build my light-weight websites from scratch (in gedit, Notepad for Linux), so I am not tied to any particular system or software and have full control over the layout.
Do you have any suggestions for achieving a satisfactory solution? Will I have to learn ASP.NET and IIS?
Many thanks.
WordPress is a good solution for your system. It's easy to install and use.
Requirements from WordPress Codex:
WordPress server requirements for Version 3.2:
o PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
o MySQL version 5.0.15 or greater
o (Optional)(Required for MultiSite) Apache mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)
It is also required that you install it on Apache. So, no need to learn ASP.NET and IIS.
If you want to have a blog, just pust the wordpress files in a folder called blog and install it there. You will then be able to access the website from yourdomain.com/blog/
Perhaps, I think integrating WP will be the best solution.. Integrating WordPress.
And for the IIS alternative, ChiliASP can be an alternative for IIS on Linux, but costs $$$ and I heard it wasn't working well. Alternative to that, learn PHP/MySQL. You'll never regret learning it, and you'll never go back to IIS/ASP. Linux/GNU opens doors like you wont beleive.

Using wordpress as external content management system

We are planning to create an asp.net website (probably mvc), that needs a cms for news items.
Our content managers and others who require to publish news have asked if they can use wordpress for content management.
Our users have different roles, and news items should be visible to certain roles, or even specific users if possible.
The reason they want wordpress is the manager's user friendliness, so if some other alternative with the same kind of user experience would be ok.
Could anyone please point me in some direction?
NOTE: I'm still doing research at the moment, so I've got nothing holding me back at this point.
There is an API plugin that has been developed to spit out information in JSON, but I have not actually implemented a site with it:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/json-api/
Perhaps you could have the authors work on a wordpress install and create your app to draw content via that plugin?
I too was facing the same issue, little different. We want to have WP as CMS so that our site can take the benefit of SEO which is very easy with WP. SO we installed WP under a folder in the Main ASP.net based website. Initially there were issues, I was unable to run it. Finally managed to run it. Solution is posted here - http://www.wwwlabz.com/how-to-run-a-php-based-website-from-a-subfolder-in-asp-net-website. Hope it will help someone. Actual site where we implemented this is http://www.periproperties.com/content/.
Now I want to have specific section of WP to be accessible on my site. SO I am exploring different options and will post, if found something
Thanks.
DotNetNuke is the most popular ASP.NET based CMS (source). I am implementing my first project in it and so far I am very happy with it.
Note the free edition will not work for you since you need customizable security roles and free has a limited set of predetermined roles. You'll need the pro edition.
I don't know how similar it is to WordPress. Overall, WordPress is much more popular but of course there are platform issues with WordPress since it is Apache based and you want to create an ASP.NET website.

Could I use a pre-built CMS or should I build one from the ground-up?

I am working on a project for a client that started out as a simple CMS with pages, posts, and a directory. The client is constantly expanding the scope of this project with requirements for customization of just about everything. As a single developer, I am having trouble keeping up with the clients time-table. I have googled for software packages that might already exist that proved the features my client needs but I have not found anything. Does anyone know of any pre-built software that allows for the following customization or at least better words to describe this type of package?
Here are some examples of the customization that is requested:
A page or directory listing needs to be formatted from an admin-defined template. Within this template there needs to be admin-defined sections that contain admin-defined data types. (This is so the look and feel of the site can be maintained while users can easily build content, add listings, and etc.)
Advertising-tiles need to be able to be defined and populated globally and at page level.
All user generated content, pages, posts, and directory listings need to be associated with user and have flexibility to show all other user generated content for inter-linking between same users content.
Site would need billing/e-commerce system for premium listings, premium posts, advertising tiles, and etc.
Approval system for all user added or edited content (pages, posts, directory listings, etc.)
(asp.net and mvc are definitely preferable)
Site would need billing/e-commerce system
This is the number one reason you should not roll your own. Find an established CMS and take the time to learn to use it.
My dear friend, I've read your question & I may suggest that you should try some open-source CMS software with your own which can generate, display admin-generated templates & other stuffs. You should use the
Pre-bulit CMS software for keeping track of pages.
Your own small customized cms for maintaining templates.
osCommerce (open-source) for eCommerce support.
I've not had a change to use it, and I'm not sure if it will provide for you all of your demands or not, but I've heard a lot of great things about the project. Have you tried the open source project Drupal?

Resources