Hi Everyone,
I haven't fully decided if drupal is the way to go but was hoping people out there could give me advice.
I run a social networking site for professionals. It has been bult on social engine (yuk!). As you can imagine the code and script is extremely slow.
I need to know if Drupal 7 has the following capabilities.
Need to have these all in one site.
member/company profiles
chat/video system
blogs
video/album posting (lightbox?)
Events
Groups
Job board
Classifieds
Social feeds (members can follow our sites feed along with their other feeds from G+, FB, and Linkedin)
Activity feed from site
social sharing
Invite members (login to social network and invite them or invite by user's email address)
News
Sliders?
I see is majority of these modules are in drupal 6 and still in beta for 7. I also saw that drupal 6 will be shut down in the future and also creates issues with migration.
Hope you guys can help me with this!
Comments
The only item in your list
The only item in your list that is not yet available from a contributed module is Chat/Video there was a great module in Drupal 6 called QTChat but this has yet to be ported to Drupal 7.
Drupal can handle all the rest of your requirements maybe with some coding to tweak the look and feel and improve the UX or functionality. A proof of concept site as a prototype should be easy for a good drupaller to pull together and should be used to influence both the UX and look and feel (or theme) of the site.
Perhaps I should clarify what
Perhaps I should clarify what I mean, I was a bit hasty last night, but then I have so much of this list working in the site I built in D6 and is now being ported to D7.
member/company profiles This can be covered by Profile 2 (it used to be covered by Content Profile in D6)
chat/video system The problematic bit.
blogs This is sort of in core but a new content type could be created for this is current Blog module does no suffice.
video/album posting (lightbox?) - Covered by Image, Lightbox 2 and Colorbox
Events - Ignore the events module this can be created using Date as an Events content type.
Groups - Organic Groups could do this
Job board - A simple job board can be created using Fields Date and Content Type with Contact and maybe Privatemsg
Classifieds - Again a content type with views to list it
Social feeds (members can follow our sites feed along with their other feeds from G+, FB, and Linkedin) - this is quite common and assuming Fb and Tiwitter don't shift the goalposts should work but see below regarding fb and Twitter issues.
Activity feed from site - Aggregation or Feeds should cope with this.
social sharing - Status can do this linked to Fb and Twitter.bit of work to make it consistent (as I see from how much testing a fellow Drupaller had to do to iron out bugs)
Invite members (login to social network and invite them or invite by user's email address) This was covered by invitations module in d6, the Invite module is still in beta and there are some issues with cancellations and blocked users in the issue queue but worth a test. A custom module may otherwise be the solution.
News - relatively easy content type to create.
Sliders? - There are so many options here, views slideshow, accordians etc abound. It depends what your wireframe and UX requires, if the content is delivered by views the use of third party jquery plugins merely needs some coding in php and js
I hope that helps clarify things a little.
TechnoTim2010, I just wanted
TechnoTim2010,
I just wanted to say thank you for reaching out and helping.
Your break down give's me a better understanding of what is possible and what is not. I truely greatful for your help!
Is there a way to add you as a friend on drupal groups or as a contact?
One thing I noticed for the chat/video is that comet chat offers a drupal 7 package but I can't seem to see anything about it on drupal. We used this for SE but I don't like how you can't touch the code. I wanted to build a similar function and have full control of it.
Do you currently have a site up and running that is community based? If so can I check it out?
Cheers!
Hi I am glad to help. A
Hi I am glad to help.
A Client asked me last year to build a Social Network to his brief> At the time it was only viable to do it in Drupal 6. Then due to my client running out of cash and also the graphics to be supplied by the client not arriving, the functioning system sat in hiatus for 12 months. I now have the graphics and am rebuilding the site in Drupal 7 (having got all the Drupal 6 T-shirts it makes rebuilding much easier) and plan to have the site up in alpha by the end of the month.
Interestingly the graphics bear little relation to the framework I built last year being at times simpler whilst also being more complex at other times.
A working chat module is something I would like working however I am aware that it is the app that is most flaky on facebook so it must be tricky to make scalable and reliable so If I find a working module It may be something that doesn't survive beta testing.
Some things have proven easier already, theming the front splash page with a user registration form on it proved much easier in D7, LoginToboggan (a corker of a module for handling workflow for users from login and logout) is much more stable and statuses has less references to facebook in css plus i am building it in a responsive HTML5 theme so it looks good on PC's IPADs and Smartphones.
We should stay in touch I will contact you direct through Drupal.org.
Regards
Tim
Tim, What are your thoughts
Tim,
What are your thoughts on Themes? Omega? Zen? another one? Not sure what to make and what would best fit a social network.
Also let me know if you got my email or not. I sent one to you.
Hi Zach I am currently using
Hi Zach
I am currently using Zen as that is what I originally used in D6 I have had Omega recommended to me but I found it awkward to use and poorly documented or charge for tutorials, I use Storefront which is simple but also has it's limitations, (it is perfect for ecommerce sites) . Responsive and Adaptive Themes are the way to go, I see my peers invest months of coding to build an app in xcode then find they have to release it anew when apple release an IOS update, they then have to repeat the task for Android and now MS Surface. I think an HTML5/Jquery approach where the site iis usable as is on a smartphone or tablet is a better approach and clearly more maintanable. There are some issues. I would love to suss out how SASS works but the documentation eludes me.
Allied with this one of the difficult decisions are around layout, panels offers the most flexibility but makes me wonder how to get the sidebars to operate properly when working on a smartphone, ideally you want the status's and timeline and some menus in big buttons for a smartphone to make it meet KISS. Blocks with context however may be easier to use and more akin to a responsive/adaptive theme.
So a bit of research and playing will reveal all. May go to square pig on Monday to pick brains of some of the drupal community.
If anyone can point me to a shortcut article explaining how responsive/adaptive themes work it would be good.
Tim