I am a total noob and just wanted to say Hi. I am trying to learn Drupal and all that it includes. I have bought several books and find them somewhat helpful. I look forward to meeting some of you at one of the monthly meetings. I have never been a programmer, but seem to be the IT support for my group at work. The reason that I am trying to learn the art of Drupal is that I want to create a local community website that is not controlled by any government or business entity where everyone can have a space for their different group. I hope that it will become a trusted source of information and collaboration within my community. I live on the West Side.
If this sounds familiar to anyone and they think that there already exist a template (free) that would suit my desires, please let me know.
Cheers,
jb
Comments
hi there
I'd recommend you start by developing a functional specification -- basically, a description of what exactly the site(s) can do and how it works. For instance, specify whether administrators have to add new users, or if anyone can sign up for an account. What kinds of content can users create, and can any user add any kind of content? Are certain types of content treated differently than others (for instance, you might decide that "meeting minutes" should be listed in a table with sortable title, date, and location columns)?
Developing a functional spec up front saves you a lot of time down the road, and lets you concentrate on delivering each piece of functionality, rather than designing as you go. This is a pretty invaluable lesson for any kind of Web development!
I don't think you'll have a difficult time selecting a theme that meets your needs -- there's a ton of great, free themes available. It sounds like you might also want to look into the Organic Groups module, which allows users to define and manage their own groups within a site.
Check out the open atrium
Check out the open atrium install profile. It's drupal + a lot of contributed modules + some really good configurations for starting a group based social network.
Openatrium.com