For a few years now I've been planning to convert my site (http://www.hotmanila.ph) to Drupal. As it exists, Hot Manila is not only table-based and utterly static but depends on client software to update which means it's a MAJOR PAIN to post new material.
This year I finally found some time to set aside for Drupal and have been playing around with Drupal 6 for several weeks now. It's overwhelming. I can sense the power, but also the wealth of maddening options and technical concepts. From what I've learned I seem to have three choices about conversion:
1.build a theme from the ground up
2.Use an existing theme and mod it (I've got my eye on News Wire)
2.Get the existing html template from my site, rename it page.tpl.php (or page_front.tpl.php), try to figure out where and how to stick in PHP tags, and write an info file as well as the appropriate CSS files.
I'm not at all proficient in PHP, I can do CSS but am rusty, and am conversant with HTML. My problem is an increasing amount of my time is being taken up studying Drupal (even my sleep is being haunted by CCK, node conversions, taxonomies and fields) and I still haven't chosen which route to go. At this point I need to decide how to theme my site (and I'd like section front pages as well) and how to assign the content to various sections. I've looked at and been inspired by the NY Observer -- but I know I could never approximate what they've done -- and also find Prosepoint a promising all in one package. I'd appreciate any insights and inputs.
Alan
Comments
change the theme all together | arrange content by taxonomy
from a content point of view:
taxonomies are just like tags.
from what i see, it would be better to tag every content with the categories you have as your menu.
then, you can have links somewhere on the right or on the left which are linked to each taxonomy / term
you could use Views for that.
the other way: you could have different content types. i'm sure CCK is available for this, but I hardly see the point of doing things with CCK if the content does not need to be too complex. Maybe you could use blogs instead - it is sort of already in news form.
from a theme point of view, news wire or some thing similar is a good start. of course, if you want to, you could try either Zen theme or Framework and start building from those (take note: these are bare-bones themes, meaning it's up to you how you customize it to your liking)
kaisa.com motolite.com homeworldfanonline.tk
my plan
thanks for the advice. I've been working on a taxonomy system for the various site sections -- haven't fine tuned it yet -- but what you said is good positive reinforcement.
As for the theme, I'd like it to follow the original html appearance as much as possible: four columns with multideck headers. It's why I chose News Wire, it not only has multiple column regions, it also has a suckerfish menu running under the header, which closely resembles the navigation in my own site. My problem with News Wire is I've been having difficulty precisely positioning and aligning the suckerfish .
Would I be any better off if I simply took my site's index.html, stripped away the content, renamed it to page_front.tpl.php and then pasted on PHP tags within the appropriate and tags? I've started doing this, but I'm lost on how to control the regions, especially given the fact that my html uses tables.
Also: the NY Observer team managed to style the heads of the stories, and to do this they said they had to hack Drupal core itself. I'd be interested if there were any other way to do this
You won't regret switching
You won't regret switching to Drupal.
Shameless plug: For more info on taxonomy/tagging, please visit: The Power of Drupal Categories
User Experience Design
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User Experience Design
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I know
I've had my eye on Drupal for a couple of years now -- I think it's not only powerful but is the most promising CMS (I actually researched this topic and came across a study predicted Drupal would be the wave of the future).
There's just so much to learn -- and so many many ways of accomplishing a given task, my problem has been deciding which path to take
re your article on taxonomy
That's exactly how I organized my content. Where I got stumped was nailing the Node ID for the section page so I could tie that to Contemplate, and you cleared that up brilliantly -- it was so simple lang pala (beats head on table top). Vielen thanks
We can also do that by
We can also do that by converting your front page or index to page.tpl.php and start pasting drupal php variables, I accomplished that task when i download CNN front page and start modifying it. it would be better if you can convert yout front page to tableless design (check out CSS 2).
Using Zen template (don't know the rest), you control the placement 0f region horizontally by modifying your template.php file and use it under admin/blocks, But i'm more confident on Panel module created by the same person that gaves us Views, Panel gives us the freedom to position all our block horizontally or vertically without need of coding.
that's exactly what I meant
that's exactly what I meant when I said that Drupal offers so many different ways of doing the same thing: I'm also studying Panels and Views, on top of my refreshing my knowledge of CSS2, on top of tinkering with CCK, on top of converting static html to a drupal theme, on top of studying how NY Observer managed its Drupal conversion.
To recapitulate, I have three different paths, and I'm trying to decide which will get me a conversion the quickest:
There's actually a fourth option. A guy has come up with a Drupal package he calls Prosepoint, which is specifically designed to produce a news site (complete with backend and theme). This looks nice, but the software package is only in version 0.6, so not too sure about its stability
ProsePoint
Hi,
Waves my hand
ProsePoint (www.prosepoint.org) is still in active development. We've gone from zero to our present position in 3 months. Who knows where how much further we'll get in another month or two? If you still haven't made a decision in that time, do please come back and give us another look.
Also, we've got plans to make changes such that you can use any Drupal theme with ProsePoint. That means if you like the feature set, you just have to pick a theme off Drupal (NewsWire?), and you're ready to go.
Beng
ProsePoint developer
--
ThinkLeft - http://thinkleft.com.au/services/drupal
ProsePoint - http://www.prosepoint.org
Hi
Yes I've definitely got my eye on your commendable project (lots of code-fearing journalists will be in your debt). I think you have very good implementation and I've been checking out Prosepoint every few days since I discovered it. What you say about being able to use it with any theme sounds exciting. When do you think you'll have a version 1.0 ready? I was testing your ver 0.6 offline but couldn't get it to work
Re:
Hi,
You can actually use Drupal themes with ProsePoint themes. Initially when ProsePoint was first released, we weren't sure what sort of things we'd need the theme to help out with. Now, after a number of releases and things have stabilised, the situation has turned out quite well. There's only one or two differences between a ProsePoint-customised theme and a generic Drupal theme now. You can use Drupal themes with ProsePoint and nothing's going to break.
Having said that, we're just about finished with porting the Newswire theme to ProsePoint. There's just a couple of minor potential bugs to test for before we let it loose for the public. Perhaps Monday ish next week, +/- a day.
From memory, there was one bug in 0.06 that was causing PHP warning messages to appear if your server is super strict about PHP. This particular message can usually be ignored, but it also messed up with some ajax calls during the install process. Hence the whole installation broke :(
Anyway, I'm digressing.
Please try installing ProsePoint again when you have time. If you have any issues, please let us know so we can investigate and fix it. We want to fix as many bugs as we can find.
Re: 1.0 ... It's hard to say, but I'd guess it'd be in a few more months before we officially bump up the version number to that. However, please note 1.0 is just a number. The latest 0.09 is very much usable. The feature set is not quite complete, but the core functionality is there and working.
--
ThinkLeft - http://thinkleft.com.au/services/drupal
ProsePoint - http://www.prosepoint.org
Just tried it just now
Tried installing Prosepoint 0.09 using Wampserver but got this error message:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\wamp\www\includes\file.inc on line 891
From what I've learned about Drupal so far this is one of those legendary install problems which can be traced to any number of reasons. By way of comparison, I haven't had any problem installing Drupal 6x not only using Wampserver, but also on an actual online server. Guidance?
Tried it just now
Tried installing Prosepoint 0.09 using Wampserver but got this error message:
"Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\wamp\www\includes\file.inc on line 891"
From what I've learned about Drupal so far this is one of those legendary install problems which can be traced to any number of reasons. I fear for my sanity trying to guess what it could be.
By way of comparison, I haven't had any problem installing Drupal 6x not only using Wampserver, but also on an actual online server. Guidance?
Argh
Pressed the button too soon and ended up sending two nearly identical replies. Sorry about that
Let's talk about this elsewhere.
(Let's talk about this elsewhere. I don't want to pollute this thread with troubleshooting.)
Please try increasing your php setting max_execution_time to 60 seconds and try again.
That's usually stored in the same place as the memory_limit setting, and you can try https://answers.launchpad.net/prosepoint/+question/45582 or http://drupal.org/node/207036 to find out where your PHP settings are stored.
As an aside, you also need your memory_limit setting to be at least 32Mb.
ProsePoint does a lot more during installation (approx. double the number of modules, and more initialisation), hence it needs more resources than a normal Drupal install.
Anyway, please give it a go. Or if my directions sound confusing, let me know and I'll rephrase them.
Also, please follow this up by filing an issue either at https://bugs.launchpad.net/prosepoint, https://answers.launchpad.net/prosepoint, or http://drupal.org/project/prosepoint (the third option is not preferred, but you may not like having to register at Launchpad).
--
ThinkLeft - http://thinkleft.com.au/services/drupal
ProsePoint - http://www.prosepoint.org
Just a quick reply
Will take this thread up in http://drupal.org/node/331169 but the short report is: it didn't work. I checked the php.ini file and found the memory limit already set for 128 MB, so didn't touch that, and then I changed max_input_time to 60, restarted wampserver, tried running Prosepoint install and got:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in C:\wamp\www\includes\file.inc on line 891
Hello, I've had the same
Hello,
I've had the same sentiments before when I was just starting with Drupal and I guess if you're looking for the quickest way to do it then I'd vote for the third option. Option 1 is the best and cleanest but it would take you more time to convert the whole thing. Forget about option 2 as it might possibly mess up your site :P
mike_gie.
It's just mind-exploding
Every time I focus on the third option, I run into a discussion or site related to the first two, and I become excited and so I try those out first. The net result is I'm making incremental progress in all three paths. Also sometimes my brain hurts....
Anybody?
Ack, I'm getting too involved with Drupal and it's eating into my regular work. I have to resume earning my livelihood soon :)
Is there anybody out there who can give me an estimate for doing the drupal 6 conversion of hotmanila.ph? I've already figured out most of the taxonomy but it's the theming that's killing me -- I'm trying to get the same look as the current site but I don't know enough PHP (and Views and Panels) to move the regions and align them properly.
Alan