Epic community site with drupal in 12 hours.

[ftaylor]

www.mymechscape.com

RuneScape.com is a MMORPG from Jagex.com. It's MASSIVE. Millions of people play it. MechScape.com is due for launch imminently, bringing runescape into the future.

MyMechScape.com is the most powerful, community driven, fansite out there, and I developed it in about 12 hours starting yesterday.

let me know what you think.

As a user you can;

-create custom groups
--invite other users to these groups
--give other users privileges over the group content
--have a private group forum
--make private postings of any kind of content available to drupal within your group (basically do anything within your group pages)
--maintain a custom menu for your group
--maintain an image gallery for your group
-keep a blog
--make blog posts
--subscribe to blogposts via rss
--subscribe to comments on a particular blogpost via rss
-create any content available to drupal for the main site (basically anything), which is then added to a moderation queue for administrator approval/deletion
-ask questions to be answered by any user with sufficient 'expert' privileges in the FAQ section
-apply for available roles, eg moderator, administrator.
-categorize content with tags
-pimp out your profile
--custom contact form on your profile
--custom guestbook on your profile
--custom avatar
-receive notifications via X when a wide range of actions occur
--email
--private message
--sms
--rss

and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head, I won't even start to tell you what I can do in the admin pages.

In the pipeline:
-friendslist/buddylist for each user
-user points and awards
-user badges
-mymechscape store where you can spend your userpoints
-the classic flag offensive buttons
-server space for each user, with clever IMCE image module.

Your opinions please.

[Acro]

The problem with Drupal is the ugliness of its templates. It can't compare with Joomla in that sector.

[Gerry]

I am not a gamer so I would not really know how to navigate around.

I know of drupal but have not tried it.

Acro has a very valid point about Joomla and templates.

I was not a master of Joomla but I do like it.

I am now learning WordPress which is by far easier than Joomla.

I understand that Drupal falls in that same category.

Joomla is da bomb for extensions, plug-ins, modules etc.

WP is getting pretty beefy in that area as well.

The WP templates are also becoming a factor to reckon with.

[ftaylor]

Ok folks,

go and check now. I've put the theme switcher on and grabbed a few themes off drupal. I think you must both have had a bad experience with drupal themes, because there's some really nice ones.

I think that Drupal and Joomla are comparable in the module/extension stakes, however, it must be said that Joomla is about 4x bigger than Drupal as a core install. No wonder it gets hacked so often.

Wordpress - you have to make a different, full, template for each page. That's failblog worthy. However, wordpress is the easiest, and it certainly comes with a lovely UI out of the box.

D and J are both a completely different ballgame in the complexity stakes.

But you know, use whatever works for you. It's all about the productivity baby.

[kengreenwood]

Forget about Drupal or Joomla for this type of project. You need to be using NING. Check out the community I have built for Second Life at http://www.MySecondLife.com or http://www.ShareYourSL.com

Much better for what you're looking to achieve.

[Makis77]

Forget about Drupal or Joomla for this type of project. You need to be using NING. Check out the community I have built for Second Life at http://www.MySecondLife.com or http://www.ShareYourSL.com

Much better for what you're looking to achieve.

clueless post

[ftaylor]

Forget about Drupal or Joomla for this type of project. You need to be using NING. Check out the community I have built for Second Life at http://www.MySecondLife.com or http://www.ShareYourSL.com

Much better for what you're looking to achieve.

Are you joking? Next you're going to be telling me I should use proboards for my forums.

How much control do you get over Ning? Can you write custom modules for it? If you can, do you have to share them with every other community?

I don't even care what the answer is to be honest.

[kengreenwood]

Sorry - didn't read through all of your requirements. It was late. NING is far simpler to use that any of the open source solutions out there but won't give you the amount of flexibility that you may need. If you don't want to be slaving over it, NING is a good solution. Far from a clueless one.

[ftaylor]

Well thanks for taking the time to try and help anyway Ken. I think that Ning looks like it could be good for alot of things, but it doesn't afford the control that I need for this project.

[kengreenwood]

Yes... I do have to agree with that. I've used Drupal, Joomla, Ning and a few others... and as far as ease of use/maintenance is concerned, you can't beat Ning. But you do lose a lot of flexibility and if you want it to be truly your own, you'll need to cough up extra cash on a monthly basis to remove ning logo's and have you own ads... peace...