Profile for a 'corporate' site - work in progress

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dman's picture

I've started writing up a handbook on lessons learnt when setting up a more centrally-administered site.

Drupal is set up to maintain community-based sites out of the box, with comments, blogs, forums, and multiple users and roles integrated as part of core.
However it's also a very strong platform for centralized, traditional Content Management and a full web development platform, from a brochureware 'about us' site presence to full ecommerce site or knowlegebase.

This handbook focuses directly on the latter cases, with lessons learned from private, corporate and government sites.

These types of site differ from default Drupal sites in the following ways:

  • Little call for user registrations. Usually registration is given to a handful of content editors, who are the only ones that add content to the site.
  • Comments, forums or blogs are left out of the core site design.
  • The publishing workflow is usually a little more stilted. Rather than content or functionality being edited directly on the CMS, there is often a 'staging' site and a publishing workflow, often between different physical machines. This approach is not optimal under a live CMS, and creates some problems with keeping things in synch.
  • Site themes are highly stylised, and less generic than more open-plan sites. This often creates a tighter set of guidelines for the site editors to follow, which in turn reduces or complicates layout flexability.
  • Site editors usually deserve full HTML privileges by default, along with image embedding and enhanced abilities.

.....

In the process, I had a go at constructing an install profile for a corporate development project

I'm intending to throw a bunch of screenshots in, and there's at least 2 pages more to come on archiving, deploying and releasing. Change management is a bitch.

Anyway, I've thrown this up public, so have a look. Comments back here - I don't like managing mini-communities on my own boards :)

Comments

Great Thoughts

rmahon's picture

Very nice job on choices and reasons why to configure a corp. site.
Much appreciated

Ron

DrupalBiz

druvision's picture

Great! I think this can serve as a good base for my DrupalBiz small business installation profile idea.

What should be included in such an installation profile?

My preliminary ideas (add yours):

  1. Contact form with Light CRM (Workflow / actions based).
  2. Easy way to migrate data from existing non-drupal sites.
  3. Several high usability businesslike themes to choose from.
  4. Some standard site pages, in a ready-made layout, ready to be edited: products, solutions, jobs, recommended links. About us / contact us page. News/blog page.
  5. A standard products CCK.
  6. Inline AJAX content editing support.

I think that there is a place for a small business installation profile (similar to the current drupalEdu.org installation profile).

Amnon
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Professional: Drupal Israel | Drupal Development & Consulting | בניית אתרים
Personal: Hitech Dolphin: Regain Simple Joy :)

Isn't the link active any more..

techrobo's picture

Hi,

Isn't this link above, active anymore, "an install profile for a corporate development project". This link gives page not found.

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