News site relaunched with Drupal

Posted by subir_ghosh on April 9, 2008 at 12:03pm

Hi everyone

I have relaunched the Newswatch (http://www.newswatch.in) site, and of course it has been remade with Drupal. I am calling this a Beta version primarily because the site isn't populated much.

Just briefly:
i) Two major section pages: NewsBlog and Features. Other section pages will be developed as and when there is sufficient content to play around with.
ii) The site makes extensive use of Contemplate, CCK, Views, NodeQueue and Node Images: best example for a variety of such combinations would be the homepage itself
iii) Number of content types: 16
iv) Total number of TPL files: almost 100
v) Number of regions (as of now): 16

Comments please!

Cheers.

Subir

Comments

Great site Subir! Could you give a newbie some tips?

Posted by jamescarvin on April 9, 2008 at 9:45pm

I enjoyed your site, Subir. It shows me that what I would like to do at least can be done. Now I just need to go do it. But it has been more difficult than I thought.

I have been struggling to learn drupal. The biggest problem is I don't know where to turn for help. I am building a news site and the following have gone wrong.

tinyMCE did not install right. I don't know who to ask for help.
images import gives me an error message "The directory files/images/import does not exist."
I don't know how to take a site once developed and get everything onto a server. My host has Fantastico which has a drupal option. I don't know how to add modules to my server.

Those are just the immediate problems. For images it looks like you are using CCK. I am using …

Image
Image attach
Image import
Image toolkit

Because of my problems I din't get as far as CCK.

I need to just try each module to see how it works, I guess, because I haven't found any forum threads describing the advantages and differences.

I want to create a user class called "journalist" to be able to enter their own articles and let them imbed their images where they want them. That means they need to be able to upload images, or refer to URLs to import from. But I'm not sure how to handle copyright issues when I don't know the source. I guess what I need is a legal notice the person uploading the image signs prior to submission.

"Admin" can then control where the articles appear on the front and other pages. And the users class can sort articles by various criteria. Also will be RSS feeds aggregation and outward RSS of original material.

If anyone here would be willing to help a newbie, I would sure apprecite it. Thanks!

James Carvin
Thank you for your help!

Just a quick reply now,

Posted by femrich on April 10, 2008 at 9:04am

Just a quick reply now, James (I'm rushing to a meeting). When you get stuck on a particular module, try the issues queue for that module for help. You can find it by visiting the project page for the module (i.e. http://drupal.org/project/tinymce) and look for the links that say "View all support requests" or "Request support"). Best to search first and see if someone has already posted the answer to your problem.

A hint with TinyMCE, a very common problem is either not downloading and installing the separate files from the TinyMCE main project (not found at drupal.org, last I checked), or installing them in the wrong place in the folder structure.

Regarding images, I found some excellent articles on various image modules at the Lullabot's website, particularly one by Angie Byron, Image and Image Exact vs. Imagefield and Imagecache. I have to rush and can't search for the links now, but if you try and cannot find them, post here again and I will provide them.

About 18 months ago I think I was about where you are at now with Drupal. Stick with it, scour the documentation at Drupal.org, and think of the learning curve as a valuable, necessary, and perhaps even enjoyable part of the experience.