I am creating a community news site where anyone is eligible to contribute articles. I have been playing with and learning about drupal a few weeks now. I am pretty comfortable with html and css but not really familiar with php. I have taught myself everything I know through books and net vids so I can figure things out with proper instruction or documentation. I am also a Realtor so I know nothing about running a news organization. The following is what I have as organization so far. I would appreciate any constructive comments on any of the organization and I would also appreciate suggestions for modules that you think would be good for this site. I also want to keep the site very user friendly so nothing over the top, just focus on easy contributing and easy reading. I would like pictures and vids to be available too if there is an option that is end user friendly.
Members can contribute content in two ways:
- News articles- Must contain verifiable facts or sources and be informative to a degree. articles must be approved by "editors" to be published
- Editorials- Can be completely opinion based and published w/o approval (basically I just call the forum editorials)
Newspaper sections (site navigation)
- Feature
- Politics
- Sports
- Entertainment
- Money
- Community
- Funnies
- Editorial (basically a forum)
The sections themselves will most likely contain sub headings as well but that's not yet decided.
User Roles
- Chief Editor (me) oversee's operation of site
- Section Editors moderate news sections by approving articles and controlling content
- Writers contribute stories to the news sections. Writers must have at least some sort of profile information to be considered somewhat reliable
- Subscribers no profile required, just account. They can comment stories and create editorials
- Guests can view all stories and editorials (perhaps comment eds.)
Other info
I have an adsense account and planned on using some ads throughout the site to supplement to cost. If I get enough contributors and viewers my ultimate goal is to sell local advertising. I already have some local professionals that are willing to contribute some news so I'm hoping that can help get things rolling once I'm up and running.
Comments
So far...
... the content structure you have described could be accomplished almost entirely with Drupal core and standard modules:
News articles and editorials: Both would be within the "story" content type, though you could set up individual editorial contributors as bloggers, as well.
Sections/subsections: Managed through taxonomies (categories).
Multiple editing roles for "inside" and "outside" contributors: the ability to do that is built in.
But I gather you're going to want control over display of indexes of that content, so you probably need Views. And you mentioned "funnies," which, along with my guess that you'd have the occasional photo or two, suggests you might take a look at Image and its related modules, in particular Image Attach and ImageCache.
You may also wish to modify the structure of the standard "story," or create entirely new content types, so you'd want to try out CCK for that.
And you may want "pretty URLs," for which PathAuto does the trick.
I know there's a module that manages AdSense placements, but I have not worked with it to advise whether it's what you need.
If you are planning to have events as a content type, or wish to provide a calendar as a user interface to any of your content, you would want to check out the Date API and Calendar.
Personally, I rely on the Update Status backend module to help me stay alert to module version upgrades and security releases.
I'm sure there are other modules that would help, but this should be a good starter pack.
-- Jay Small
http://smallinitiatives.com/contact-jay-small/
-- Jay Small
http://smallinitiatives.com/contact-jay-small/
very helpful
Thank you that was very helpful. I had thought about using stories for news but wasn't sure if it would be the right thing or not. I want to keep it from looking like a blog as much as possible. I probably should have mentioned the modules I have already:
Image
Nodewords
Those are the only add ons I currently have. My biggest concern with using the Image module is creating a new node and putting it with another node. I want to keep the site as easy to use as possible and I'm afraid the extra nodes will ultimately make it more confusing to the end user. Or could I use CCK to put an image field in the "story" content and allow people to upload pictures? Like a Primary pic, 2nd, 3rd? And perhaps a youtube link?
Images
Not as big a deal as it seems. If you don't promote the image nodes to the front page, they don't clutter up the user experience.
We've been using the img_assist module, which makes it easy to embed references in the text using either HTML or img_assist's own markup. It works with the TinyMCE rich-text editor and users seem to like it.