[Lancaster] Lancaster Library

[andy baxter]

Richard Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 03:33:36PM +0000, andy baxter wrote:
>   
>> I might also be able to do something on linux based programming / web 
>> design.
>>     
>
> You said you'd been doing some stuff with Drupal ? I wonder if that might be
> a worthwhile subject ?
>
>   
Could be, though it's not linux, it's a CMS (but is free software and 
can be run on linux).
> I've been doing some stuff with it, too - not really using very much of its
> facilities, just some php modules calling into an external data-source via
> xmlrp :- which seems paradoxical, a content management system whose content
> is managed elsewhere; but it's incredibly useful just for taking care of all
> the display stuff, which I hate doing.
>
> And, I've seen enough to realise that there's a huge range of modules
> available, which I've hardly begun to explore but those I've seen are pretty
> wonderful, you can do a huge amount just with simple pointyclick setup.
>
> And then there's theming ...
>
>   
I think it's a great system. I have managed to build a working 
interactive site in about a month working part time, which I reckon is 
much quicker than I could have done it by hand coding. There are 
drawbacks, such as when you find some of the modules you are using don't 
work right with PHP 5.3, just after you've moved it to the live 
server... :(. But I've managed to work round most of the problems I've had.

If you want to theme it, look at the Zen theme which is a bare bones 
theme designed to make it easy for people to modify it to suit what they 
want.
> It could be useful for people with a range of different approaches &
> interests, is what I mean.
>   

The only thing is I wouldn't yet recommend it for someone with no coding 
experience. If all goes well, you might be able to build a simple drupal 
site without having to look at code, but to do more complex things or to 
fix odd problems which come up, you need to have some level of 
understanding of what the underlying code is doing.

What might be good is a session on building websites using CMSs, looking 
at drupal as well as joomla and wordpress.


andy