Posted by tandonian on May 8, 2009 at 4:12pm
We are working on an alumni site and we would like to extend the drupal profile to our specs. We want to populate the profile with very basic information; name, and email address, and then notify the alum of their account being created. We then want them to be able to log in and add information at their discretion, and ideally also expose it to certain user roles at their discretion.
What are some best practice and best modules to use to do this. Also it is my understanding that in D7, profiles are going to become content types and will have the ability to alter them with CCK, as fields moves into core? If this is correct, I am wondering if there is a best path to choose now to make for the smoothest transition to D7.
Comments
CiviCRM?
I think the best solution will be to use CiviCRM (www.civicrm.org). It integrates with Drupal very well, has excellent Views 2 integration and supports a granular access control lists to different fields in user profiles.
It allows to add 'tabs' to user page, user registration and is quite a convenient and complete solution.
It even allows you to create contact records without user registering - which I think is useful for Alumni websites in case not all alumni decide to register - at least, you will be able to have a complete list of graduates in a proper database - if you have a dedicated person to keep an eye on database. (And it has contacts unduplicate feature, which is also useful as the base grows).
Recently CiviCRM developers finished a book about CiviCRM, which can give you an overview of features and use cases, it's available here:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/CiviCRM
CiviCRM database sits separately from Drupal database, so it should survive D6 -> D7 change without big losses. Then just a few pieces of code will need to be changed (integration to registration page, to user page, and Views 2 module) to work from D6 to D7.
Regards,
Danila