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Any chance you could upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7? It is considerably more intuitive (although still massively robust and complex). If there is a local drupal group in your area, they may be eager to help you get things sorted out. The group in my area (Grand Rapids, MI, US) is. If you want to experiment with Drupal 7, start a (free) site on Drupal Gardens (http://www.drupalgardens.com/). You may decide the upgrade is not worth the effort, but it might be worth checking.
tims
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+tslager=isdcorporation -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+tslager=isdcorporation -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Lauren
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 5:24 PM
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Searching Techwr-l archives (Was: Advice on starting out)
On 4/19/2011 4:49 AM, INKtopia Admin wrote:
> [From Al]
>
> Morning folks -
>
> I'll do my best to send out updates via the list but right now the arc
> of my progress can be summarized as: know problem --> frustrated b/c
> the first 10 solutions don't work the way I wanted --> find solution
> or something I can accept as better than where I started.
Many people on this list use the list as a collaboration and support tool for dealing with these sorts of issues. It is educational and fun for participants and often helpful for the person who is looking for a solution. So share away...
> But for those playing along at home, I can give a little structural
> background on the site and email discussion groups:
>
> Most of the website is powered by the CMS solution Drupal 6.x. Drupal
> is a very robust open source platform but is pretty complex. I'm an
> avid Wordpress fan because it's fairly user friendly. Drupal isn't.
> However, there's a ton of good training out there for novices like
> myself. Lynda.com has some good stuff.
I *love* Drupal. I use Drupal with Zen as my main theme and I build custom themes for my sites that go on top of Zen. I'm still learning how to use this. I have several sites served from one Drupal installation, but I began with several installations and I recently migrated them all into one. Unfortunately, I have shared hosting, so my php limit is set at 32M, which means my sites have memory limit errors.
I need to get that fixed.
> However, the archives for the email discussion groups aren't really
> part of Drupal thus the formatting problem I had late last week when I
> changed the navigation UI for the site. The archives are created via
> some dark art process I haven't quite figured out. As of yesterday, I
> know that Mailman runs this list serve and a small script comes into
> our mail server (postfix) and grabs all the recent content. Then, on
> the backs of fairies this content is archived into folders by date and
> time. It then generates a summary Index page which is level 2 in the
> archives if the entry page /archives is level 1.
That doesn't sound fun. I would probably try to keep the archives separate for now and look at various tools to integrate old technology into Drupal. There are so many tools available that there should be something for this.
> As of now, we just have deep links into the archive and a header that
> sort of looks the same. Our long term solution is to start archiving
> everything within Drupal, but I'm certain that the process won't be
> pleasant.
I think it is best to keep the archives in their own database and find a way to call to that from Drupal.
Also, make sure that you keep your Drupal system modules and themes separate from your site-specific modules and themes, otherwise you can wreak havoc when you upgrade and when you have two modules or themes with the same name. Plus, add-ons can break your system.
> Frankly, right now, I'd be pleased to find a solution that integrates
> the Drupal search with the archives search. There's a couple good
> possibilities out there but until I look into the difficulty of
> bringing all the content in house; the two searches will need to be
> separate. I'd rather not burn time with an interim solution if the
> long term fix has a comparable time and difficulty rating.
I would keep the legacy stuff separate, since Drupal does not need to change anything to read a database and importing that data into your Drupal database could lead to trouble in the future.
> Thanks for being part of Techwr-l and for your interest in our
> progress. It's greatly appreciated.
I am totally interested in your progress with this and I want to learn how you are using Drupal.
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