Posted by Anonymous on December 21, 2011 at 3:12pm
Hi Everyone -
I'd appreciate any perspectives/opinions/experiences on Drupal 7. I'd like to build a "responsive" site that can adapt to any screen size (who wouldn't - right? ;-)
Our current site was built with D6. While not overly complicated it has multiple Blogs, Feeds and provides access to video via a video library. With the new site, we'd like to introduce a Mapping feature (i.e. Tilemill/Mapbox) to provide ready access to projects and related data/content in an attractive, easy to use interface.
I have experimented with the OpenPublic D7 distribution and like what I have seen so far.
Any thoughts or considerations are very much appreciated.
Thanks so much,
Ken
Comments
responsive sites and d6 v. d7
Hi Ken,
There's some good information about responsive web site development revolving around the Filament Groups release of the new Boston Globe. This is one of the first major sites to have a fully responsive interface.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/09/how-the-boston-globe-pulled-o...
In my opinion, this will be a new standard in the next few years. The idea of design with mobile in mind first, then allowing the display of the information to adapt to your user's situation is exactly where things seem to be moving.
As for D6 vs. D7 - D7 is a very sophisticated system, and has a lot of great updates and added features, however, we haven't had a chance to implement it yet for a client project. With every client we've had in the last 6 months, we've looked at the requirements needed for the project, and it always seems that one or two of the requirements don't have D7 modules that fit the needs....or if the D7 modules do exist they have bugs or known issues that are critical. For instance, we recently launched a pretty large eCommerce platform for a client. Our first thought was to use D7 with the ECommerce Module or Ubercart for D7...but after doing research, it seemed that their were too many problems with those modules to head in that direction.
For us, it's about the security of the clients site. If we are confident we can build everything we need in D7 and it won't require much more time or contributed updates to modules than what we can do in D6, then great! Let's do it. But we haven't been in that situation yet.
As for mapping in Drupal, I would turn to Google Mapping API and possibly use the GMap and Location Modules. Also, these guys did a presentation at Drupal Con last year related to mapping in Drupal - http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/making-beautiful-maps - you might find some good info there.
Hope this helps,
Josh
Josh Fischer
www.artsmithmedia.com
Great Feedback Josh - Thanks!
Hi Josh -
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to respond to me. Your input is valuable to say the least.
I'm looking forward to developing a responsive site one day and the Boston Globe demo is pretty impressive. The article you pointed me to was interesting in that it helps one to understand the types of issues (at least some) that must be considered before attempting to create a truly responsive web site.
I've been comparing our current site's modules to the D7 counterparts and have found no show-stoppers in particular however I would always prefer modules that have been officially released as opposed to beta versions. Consequently, I think your statement re. the client's site security is very accurate and has to be a priority (especially when working with e-commerce).
I did come across a performance issue that is worth taking note of as their is some concern in the Drupal community about D7. Some users claim that their D7 sites are slower than their D6 sites and their is agreement (even by my shared hosting service) that it is important to run PHP 5.3.0 or higher if possible. Apparently the architecture of D7 is much different than D6, so system requirements should not be taken lightly for this latest version.
I've seen some video of the Mapping API, Gmap, and Location modules and I'm curious to see how well they interface with third party mapping solutions. I just had a taste of the GeoIQ mapping system the other day and I think it has good potential.
Thanks again Josh. Your input has been very helpful.
Have a merry Christmas. Looking forward to talking to you more soon.
Ken
old topic, new information
At DrupalCampMD today and one of the sessions is by one of the developers of data.ed.gov. Check out the product they've built - http://data.ed.gov/grants/oii/2011/investing-in-innovation - really impressive.
They are using:
Views
Table Wizard
Open Layers
Mapbox
Views Charts
Views Bonus Pack
Josh Fischer
www.artsmithmedia.com
Just curious
Was that presented by Jason Hoekstra? He's a great guy. I helped build that (when I was at NGP VAN) along with assistance from the fine folks at DevelopmentSeed. It's also using feeds (using a custom mapper), features, and context. The theme is based off of Rubik and Tao, also by DevSeed.
yep, it's Jason
yep, Jason is presenting. That's awesome that you worked on this project. It's pretty complex, but so powerful. There are so many things that could be accomplished with these mapping and data visualization tools. Great stuff.
Josh Fischer
www.artsmithmedia.com