Great Drupal CMS Modules for Building a College Community Website
May 19, 2009 by Srikanth AD Tips and Tricks
Drupal , an open source server based content management system (CMS) and which we have mentioned here (built in PHP/MySQL technology), can support a wide range of web designing including blogs, community, promotional websites and many more.
Drupal provides easy tools with the help of which various sites can be easily developed. Its minimum requirement and easy installation makes it even more user friendly. Various modules available with Drupal.org further enhance the scope and usability.
Here we are presenting a few modules which can come extremely handy while building a college community website based on Drupal.
Enable users to create and manage their own 'groups'. Each group can have subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves.
This module will be helpful in creating groups for members like teachers, students etc. You can even group students according to their class. The advantage of this module is that, we can have group posts that are only visible for those group members.
See the Organic Groups module in action here .
This module will display any views date field in calendar formats, including CCK date fields, node created or updated dates, etc. Switch between year, month, and day views. Back and next navigation is also provided for all views.
You might find it useful for posting college events and other stuff to be shown on the calendar.
Leggi il resto di questa voce »
Sphere: Related ContentTags: cms , college , community , content management system , drupal , modules , mysql , php , website
Seedling – a pre-configured Joomla package plus extensions and modules
Mar 18, 2009 by Mircea Goia Tips and Tricks
Se si vuole avere il sistema di gestione dei contenuti Joomla + proroghe e strumenti in un unico pacchetto ora lo avete. 
Il nome è Seedling e rende la vita più facile quando si tratta di costruire o gestire il tuo sito web.
The software installation on your host/server is quickly and easily (2-3 minutes), featuring a customizable template and demo content which you can edit or replace to create your website.
One thing the Seedling folks don't mention explicitly is what exactly is in the package beside Joomla (which is also not the official release of Joomla Project but a customized version). They just mention “ article commenting, advanced image handling, embedded video and more “.
This package is not free though. Seedling + basic support is $49 and Seedling + professonal support is $349 (1 year).
Seedling is built by the people from Design Guru , a Toronto, Canada based company with 5 years experience in using Joomla content management system.
They also maintain a pro-Joomla blog found called Why Joomla where they have more details about Seedling .
Watch a tutorial about using Seedling below
Tags: cms , content management system , extensions , joomla , modules , package , seedling
The OpenX plugins (free ad server) for Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress have arrived!
Aug 17, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Because there are many users of these content management and blog systems – Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress – the team behind the free open source ad server solution OpenX started to develop plugins for them.
This will help the users to get the most out of OpenX, ultimately making more money from online advertising.And recently (August 15) the team released those three plugins! Below you have a small description of each of them (according to their blog post ).
OpenX for Drupal
The module was developed for Drupal 5.x and 6.x and supports OpenX 2.6 and later (you need to have OpenX installed on your server to take advantage from this module). This is a working protoptype and developers can help improve it. More details here .
Download the modules:
- Drupal 5.x
- Drupal 6.x
Installation
To install and configure the module:
1. Unzip the relevant Zip file (according to which version of drupal you are using) into your Drupal/modules folder.
2. Login to your Drupal admin console and go to Home > Administer > Site building
3. You should now see the OpenX module listed. Enable it
4. You need to setup your zones in Home > Administer > Site configuration > OpenX AdServing
5. If you have an account on the hosted version of OpenX, you only need to put the zone ID's into the table (you can also give the zones meaningful names here).
6. If you want to serve ads from your existing OpenX installation, expand the “Don't have a hosted account?” section and enter the delivery URL to your OpenX installation
7. You can then add the blocks to your layout in Home > Administer > Site building > Blocks
They have prepared also a FAQ for you in case you have more questions.
And, of course, you can always get support on their forum .
OpenX for Joomla!
The module (working prototype) was developed for Joomla! version 1.5.x and requires OpenX 2.4 and later (and also the hoted version of OpenX). As in Drupal case, you need to have OpenX installed before taking advantage of this module. More here .
Download the module for Joomla 1.5.x
Installation
To install and configure the module:
1. Go to Extensions – Install/Uninstall
2. Upload the Openx module Zip file
3. Go to Extensions – Module manager
4. Find OpenX and click name to open module
5. Enter the delivery URL where you have installed OpenX. If you have set your delivery URL to be different from that of the main installation then place that here. By default the OpenX hosted version is placed here. You need to have an account with OpenX to use this
6. Enter the zone ID which you wish to display in this module
7. Now choose the position in your Joomla! template where you want to display ads
8. Enable the module
9. Your ads should now appear!
To create multiple ads on one page, copy the module and repeat steps 4 – 8.
Read also the FAQ page and into more support on their forum .
OpenX for WordPress
Because Wordpress is wildly used OpenX had to develop a plugin for this blog system (many times Wordpress is seen also as a content management system too).
Like in the above cases the Wordpress plugin is a working prototype and developer can contribute to make it better. The plugin supports OpenX 2.4 and later as well as the hosted version of OpenX.
Download the plugin for Wordpress 2.5.x
Installation
You need to have OpenX installed before installing this plugin.
To install and configure the plugin:
1. Drop the attached file in the /wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation
2. Enable the plugin in the WordPress administration console.
3. Setup the OpenX server in the OpenX-WP setup page
4. You can now add OpenX banners within your posts using the macro “{openx:NN}” where NN is the OpenX zone ID that you want to display.
5. This plugin also provides a widget which can be added to the WordPress sidebar
More detailed instructions can be found in the attached README.txt file.
Their FAQ section can answer to more questions you might have. Not to mention the forum .
These prototypes were designed with simplicity in mind but the team expects, with the developers help, that these plugins to be developed into feature rich integration tools.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: drupal , free ad server , joomla , modules , open-source , openx , plugins , wordpress
Get News by RSS feed