Posted by nicmatts on April 4, 2013 at 1:57pm
I recently completed the migration of the North Dakota State University Libraries website from WordPress to Drupal. I was new to Drupal when I started, and the migration and design team was me, so the team didn't really know what it was doing for a while. :)
The front page uses Panels for the layout, Quicktabs for the tabbed boxes, and Views for the "Today's Hours" table and the events slideshow. I also used Views for our staff directory. I used Book for many of our tutorials, including Copyright and Fair Use.
For instant messaging, we switched from Zoho to Zopim Live Chat, and it is working really well so far. Much better than Zoho.
I am far from a Drupal expert, but I am happy to answer any questions about our site.
Comments
Nice, are you using Drupal 6
Nice, are you using Drupal 6 or 7? I noticed is that in you're using @import for your css files opposed "<style src=..." Is there a particular reason you went that route?
Are you doing any integration with existing systems?
Hi Nicole, nice work. Very
Hi Nicole, nice work. Very clean design.
I'm recent to Drupal as well and will be launching a public library website the week of April 15th. It's not perfect or flawless, but it's been a good introduction to Drupal.
Regards,
Scott
@the_paulus: We are using
@the_paulus: We are using Drupal 7. To be honest, I'm not sure why it's using @import. I had the CSS files aggregated, but I turned that off yesterday to make some changes. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
We don't really have the site integrated with existing systems, in terms of authentication or our catalog. We are moving to Alma and Primo this summer, so things will change.
@Scott, thanks.
Slide Show
Nicole,
What are you using to create the slide show on the lower right?
It looks good.
Views Slideshow
Thanks, Bibliotechie. I used Views Slideshow. I added an optional slideshow image field to the article content type. Then I created a view called "Front page article slideshow". Articles that have a slideshow image attached and are sticky at top of lists show up in the slideshow. When I want to remove an article from the slideshow, I uncheck its "sticky" checkbox.
Drupal site
Hi Nicole, site looks clean and accessible, nice job. I am planning to redesign my library site in Drupal. I am good in wordpress but its not robust for library site. I am very new to Drupal, can you help me suggesting some eBooks or tutorials. I really appreciate thank you.
Sorry it has taken me so long
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply--I was on vacation.
Drupal User's Guide by Emma Jane Hogbin was very helpful to me, as was this Views tutorial. After you understand the very basics of Drupal, you should get comfortable with Views and Panels. Views allows you to reconfigure information in many different ways. For example, the table with today's hours on the front page of my website is also rendered elsewhere as monthly calendars for each branch. I used Views to do that. I was able to change the layout of the front page with Panels.
Does that help get you started?