Interesting that so many of us appear to be doing similar things. See
my comments below.
Kevin
RedBugz Software wrote:
On 10/28/06, m h <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Since it appears you're looking for a CMS system, drupal is quite
popular. It appears there is a ged plugin as well[1].
Note that I haven't used the plugin, so I can't comment on it, but it
might be worth checking out. Drupal has quite a large userbase and
community, so you might want to check them out.
I'm right in the middle of setting up a collaborative website for our
family. After some research, we've decided to go with
Drupal/CiviCRM/PHPGedView/Gallery2 for now. We're still getting it
setup so I'm not sure how it'll end up, but I'll give my impressions
so far.
<snip>
I, too, have been trying to set up a site for my extended family. I
haven't been very focused on genealogy, though-- mostly just
communication. I want people to be able to post contact information,
reunion notices, news items, and pictures. Also, it would be nice if
people could send secure messages, such as a private message accessible
only through SSL, with notification to email that there was a new message.
My first idea was to look into re-using some of the code used to create
some of the mission alumni pages. I was unable to convince my mission
webmaster to release the code. Plan B was to roll my own site (that is
what you see on https://www.morewisefam.net/, though you won't be able
to see much since you don't have an account). At the time I started,
every CMS tool I found seemed like gross overkill and had too much of a
learning curve. I also leaned towards a custom website since I do a
fair amount of custom web apps and database stuff at work. However, the
custom approach has proven to be more time-consuming than I planned.
Two years after I started the effort, I still have not finished. Plus,
I am not much of a security expert and with all the personal information
I hope to store, I am a bit leery that something I develop will be the
means of enabling identity theft (or worse) for my entire extended family.
So, I decided to re-evaluate existing CMS tools. I really like Gallery2
for images. I evaluated Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, and CivicSpace.
Frankly, they all seemed to be about the same. Again, I got overwhelmed
by their complexity and decided I was far enough down the custom path
that I should just finish what I started. Down the road I'll probably
migrate to Drupal (or whatever best meets the bill at the time).
That was a couple of months ago, and with the birth of my daughter I
haven't really done anything more. My current site is written in PHP
and uses a MySQL backend. It is my first attempt at PHP, but if anyone
thinks there is anything worth sharing I'd entertain the idea. I had
always intended to make it open source at some point but I've been
pretty lazy. Maybe when it's feature-complete...
CiviCRM is more than we need, but it seems to be the nicest/easiest
way to get rich contact information for the family members, and has
nice groups and tags support and some mapping capabilities. Another
solution we're looking at is called the CCK, but we haven't done much
with that yet.
Drupal does require some hands-on work. It's very flexible and looks
like it will be the best to add some custom functionality we want to
add later, but does have a bit of a learning curve, especially with
terminology (nodes and other abstract terms). The Drupal forums are
active and there seem to be many helpful people.
<snip>
Well said. Flexible, but very hands-on. Not very usable out of the
box. At best you have to know exactly which plugins to use, and which
ones aren't too buggy. CiviCRM is also much more than we needed, and
there were certain elements which would have to be changed before I
would consider using it (such as gender: Female/Male/Transgender).
So we decided to roll our own using Drupal. It's been more
time-consuming than I hoped, but I think we can build what we want for
now. Once it's done, I'll post a link so people can check it out. I
think it would be very cool to put together a nice Drupal distro for
family sites with all the stuff nicely integrated. At some point, I'd
like to help code something, I just don't have time right now.
My biggest complaint about all the CMS tools I looked at is how loosely
the different components are integrated. It always seems like a
collection of 80 tools instead of 1 tool with 80 plugins. And since
none of the tools did everything I wanted, I would be stuck writing my
own code anyway, which just adds to the steep learning curve. A distro
would be great. If I ever get around to finishing off my current site
and migrating it to Drupal, I would definitely consider contributing to
your effort. My time is rather limited, but at a minimum I could assist
with feedback.
Kevin
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