NYCPHP Meetup

[Scott Wolpow]

Drupal also allows for the styling down to the field level when using 
Views.
The Drupal concept is bare bones and you add everything.
Scott Wolpow

On 2/10/2011 6:14 PM, Gary Mort wrote:
> I'm playing with Joomla 1.6 and Drupal 7 on some sample sites [I'll 
> post the url's in a few days once I build up content].
>
> One of the things I am doing is looking on how to use Joomla 1.6 in a 
> Drupal manner from a user perspective[not coding].
>
> Drupal has 2 very interesting features, Nodes and Taxonomy.
>
> Nodes:
> Instead of "content" being the basic unit of measurement, Drupal has 
> the concept of "Nodes".... a node is very similar to a content item, 
> it has most of the fields a content item as....but it's not 
> specifically content.  In Drupal, you then configure different "types" 
> of content, basically extending the Node table[either by adding 
> another table and linking it, or adding CCK fields to the content, etc].
>
> Everything is stored in nodes + customization.
>
> So an online store "component" does not neccessarily have an a product 
> table and an order table.  Instead, it will have a Product Node Type, 
> and an Order Node Type.  Only adding more tables if it can't be 
> crammed into the existing Node structure.
>
> This way each and every "item" in the Drupal world has it's own unique 
> id/row in the node table.
>
> They also setup by default a number of "friendly" content types such 
> as  "Blog", "Article", "Page"  these are all variations on the simple 
> "content" item with slight tweaks, mostly on some default behaviors 
> and permissions.  For example, on a magazine/social website "Pages" 
> are the 'about us' stuff and such.  So only site admins get permission 
> to create those content types.  "Articles" are the news stuff so your 
> authors, editors, and publishers have various rights there....and by 
> default all new articles will go to the frontpage.  Wheras "Blog 
> Entrees" could be open for any registered user to create - as all 
> users get their own blog space.
>
> Also each content type has friendly details for the end user telling 
> them what sort of thing to post there, the rules for posting, etc.
>
> So, there are 2 levels here.  One is that all "things" that get 
> created in the normal course of a website have friendly, helpful 
> information/guidance/permissions for the user.
>
> The second is all "components" create nodes.
>
> The first level is easily emulated in Joomla! 1.6 ...  simply create 
> your categories for standardized pages, with permissions for different 
> users and such.  So basicaly, here you are not using categories to 
> describe the content of the document, but rather the purpose.  IE you 
> don't create an article in the  "IPad" category, a subsection of 
> "Gadgets"...  instead you create an article in the "Article" or 
> perhaps "Review" category.
>
> The second level requires buy in from extension developers to all 
> agree to use the content structure as the base for as much 
> functionality as they can...  So my goal is for a small sample site to 
> stick to this model....all components use the content tables.
>
> Taxonomy:
> This Drupal item is rather interesting.  It began mainly as a free 
> form tagging system.....with the added plus that you could have 
> multiple "categories" of tags.  So you could have a tagging category 
> which all users can add to/use to describe content.  You can also have 
> a tagging category for the website authors to use to provide a more 
> sophisticated/reliable set of tags for items[for example, users might 
> tag an article as "shoes!", wheras fashion authors would tag it as 
> "Manolo Blahnik, Fall 2010".  You can also create a taxonomy which is 
> /never/ used for tagging anything and is merely a list of frequently 
> used terms[for example, create an SEO taxonomy of terms to include in 
> most pages and then have a script run against all submissions to let 
> the writer know how many they used.  Or create a SPAM taxonomy of 
> words to AVOID in content which will be emailed in order to avoid spam 
> filters.]  In Drupal 6 there were a number of extensions to Taxonomy, 
> for example since Taxonomy was just a list of terms, there was a 
> module that added a definition field - so now you could create a 
> glossary.
>
> For the longest time, in Joomla 1.5 the easiest  way to emulate this 
> was to use Remository's Glossary component: 
> http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/living/education-a-culture/glossary/143  
> And all in all it is a pretty sweeet component.
>
> However, I REALLY want to stick as close to core as possible.  And the 
> new Category system for content seems like a pretty good system for 
> taxonomy.
>
> All you have to do is create a parent "Category" with the permissions 
> set so that /no one/ can create a content item in that category.  For 
> example: "Freetagging" for tags.  Or "Tech Terms" for a glossary.  
> Every category has a description field which can be used to provide 
> definitions of the term for glossary's or other information.  There is 
> still work to be done to build components that build on this to 
> provide management and user interfaces - yet all in all the basic 
> design is sweeeeet in that at least a lot of this is already provided 
> FOR us.
>
> Give me a week or so and I'll post back on some reports of how well it 
> is working out...  in the meantime I figured I'd solicit others 
> opinions since my own ideas tend to get stuck in small caves of 
> techno-babble.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New York PHP SIG: Joomla! Mailing List
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/joomla
>
> NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online
> http://www.nyphpcon.com
>
> Show Your Participation in New York PHP
> http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
>