[kdewebdev-site] Drupal review

[Andras Mantia]

Hi,

 I did a "review" of Drupal, meaning that I played with it, tried to do 
the same things like what we have on the current site. I found some 
things that I couldn't do yet, but this might be also my lack of 
knowledge. As I saw there is also a Drupal API that I didn't explore as 
well that it is possible to access directly the database to do things 
that are not in the API. I didn't explore how to write modules or 
themes either.
 What I don't like is:
1) slow workflow when building the site. The fact that I have to use a 
web interfaces and work through the net doesn't really satisfy me. I 
like the quick preview in Quanta, even through a local server. 

2) I don't know if it is possible to have a local Drupal installation 
for developing and when you're done publish the result to the real 
site. If such a setup can be used, that would somewhat make developing 
faster.

3) I dislike the webform to enter the texts. I heard that there are some 
editor that can be used for them (I assume they are Java based or 
something like that), but I doubt it would offer even similar features 
to what katepart offers (not talking about what Quanta adds on top of 
the katepart).

4) Probably mass-changing of the pages (e.g. changing links there) can 
be painful, because the pages are stored in a database (no file 
search&replace).

5) I didn't investigate the possibility to have real subsites 
(kdewebdev.org, quanta.kdewebdev.org, kommander.kdewebdev.org etc.) 
pointing to the same drupal installation. If it is not possible, I 
think we can forget about it...

What I like is that it offers the possibility to gather site maintainers 
who don't have too much PHP knowledge (for adding tutorials, faqs, 
articles about Quanta) and without the need to create a full account on 
the server. I also like the possibility to change the look of the site 
without touching the core of it, by writing a new theme. Of course, it 
is possible also now with some CSS, but the layout would be more or 
less the same anyway.
 I also liked the fact that I could insert my own PHP pages easily into 
the Drupal framework.

So there are several possibilities how to go on:
1) use Drupal for everything, but for the pages requiring too much 
logic, use external PHP files (and just include in Drupal). These files 
(and possibly our own themes and possible modules) would be stored in 
subversion and Quanta can be used to develop them. Quanta could suffer 
some additions in the feature regarding the preview: insert the edited 
document in a "preview template" before previewing. This could be used 
to get a preview that is close (or same) as the final page in Drupal if 
it is possible to extract the CSS and the code that Drupal puts around 
the pages. Other idea (it just came to my mind) could be that the text 
is put directly in a database in the local Drupal installation and the 
preview would show the page directly inside Drupal. As a first approach 
(either of) this preview can be implemented through an external script.

2) use our own code in general, but use Drupal for some functionality 
(blog, forum, articles, maybe FAQs). 

3) use our own code and install specific extra applications if needed 
(forum, blogs, etc.)

I don't think #2 is a good idea, in that case probably #3 is better.
#1 is possible only if #5 from the problem list can be solved!

So what do others think we should go on?

Once we decide on this issue, we could go on and decide who will work on 
the code. Actually this is relatively easy from my point of view. I do 
not want (myself) to create a new framework, nor to write a Drupal 
theme as I don't have time for it. So it all comes down to either 
contributor offers (read, the one who codes decides), be it a 
contributor who does this for fun or Carlos' company. As I understand 
Carlos has Drupal experience, so probably they can create a theme and 
do the things as it should be, not as I figured out how to do. :)
I think even in the case its done by Neurotic, we could have a good use 
of other contributors as well, as the kdewebdev specific development 
should happen on our server in an open way.

So this is about my experience and ideas of Drupal. The test 
installation is at http://www.kdewebdev.org/~jens/drupal/quanta  for 
those who are interested in seeing it. 

Andras

-- 
Quanta Plus developer - http://quanta.kdewebdev.org
K Desktop Environment - http://www.kde.org
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