(Drupal) Website Re-Design/Development

Thank you for responding Tawny, (Sorry I was down for the count with a cold) I am still just learning Drupal and want to make sure Drupal will allow me to do everything my friend is asking me to do. What I want to do is: Find out how I can take two websites and start merging them. Giving the 'not so good' website some of the design and functionality of the better site. It's probably a shockingly simple project for someone experienced, but this is literally my first time. What I want to know is: Where do I start and what are some of the milestones I need to check in at to move this forward? Thanks!

Hi Tim.

That's okay, I hope you are feeling better! I can't access your friend's website, access denied? The target design site is definitely doable in Drupal. What sort of login functionality do you need for students, do they need to have their own "sections"?

It depends how confident you are in other things really! If it's your first time using Drupal you'd need to just get used to how it works. But Drupal is extremely powerful and very flexible - you can basically do anything in it.

Thanks! :) Tawny

Hi Tawny,

Thanks for your encouragement. Thank you for letting me know my friend's site is access denied. Hmmm. This probably means problems with the host? I will look into it. Yes, students would need to have their own section. The faculty and admin as well. Thanks! :)

Tawny, And if we also wanted to later add, say online payment of fees, or class sign-up/scheduling ... can Drupal do this too? Thanks!

Hi Tim,

Yes probably a vhost/htaccess issue! Hopefully it'll be sorted soon :) is the directory set for public access?

You can give students, faculty and admins their own sections. There are loads of Access based modules for Drupal, like "content access", which means people can only see their own content, or certain "roles" (like faculty) can see all posts done by faculty etc. :)

And yes, online payment of fees you could use Drupal Commerce. And registration, possibly https://www.drupal.org/project/registration .... There's thousands of open source modules on Drupal! It's good to check out how many sites are using it to see if they're any good. :) But like I say most functionality is possible in Drupal! I hope you have fun with it! :)

Thanks again Tawny, I may have more questions as I get further into this. For now, I'm not sure about the directory, but I now know to make sure I look into that. Anyway, access denied is a serious problem.