CMS for specialized academic site

CMS & WordPress
1

Hello,
I’ve been looking for some time now for a free/open-source CMS that will suit a specialized academic website. Many of them provide the basics of what I need - actually, what every CMS is by definition (multipage articles, menu configuration,etc etc), but some of the added functionality I really need seems to be buggy.

I specifically need, in either native or add-on form:

  • a module that enables accurate, professional PDF generation from submitted articles (including images)

  • a good WYSIWYG editor

  • a robust file management system

  • forums and photo gallery (hopefully one that aesthetically syncs with the CMS and doesn’t look like a different website altogether)

  • perhaps a good chat system (although I don’t think this is central)

I’ve tried quite a few; XOOPS looked promising but had the least organized community support I’ve seen (no organization, no telling if this add-on works with the current or past CMS version, etc); Joomla! and Drupal seem to be the frontrunners, but the PDF addon I had for Joomla! couldn’t even format correctly after italicized words, let alone links and images! Drupal has some interesting features, but there were issues with the PDF functionality there as well.

If I remember correctly, there are 2 major open-source PDF modules used by your average CMS, and they both have advantages and pitfalls, but depending on the status of my project I may consider paying for a professional module if it works the way I need it to.

Anyway, any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated! :slight_smile:

2

Well you could definitely build it on Drupal but there will be a learning (R&D) curve involved in the PDF generation part.

I’ve loosely followed some discussions about generating PDF’s from Drupal Books but haven’t looked into it deeply. Drupal will publish reports n PDF and being that it runs on PHP, it can take advantage of all that PHP provides in PDF generation so it’s certainly possible.

For wysiwyg, I would use the wysiwyg module and add TinyMCE to the library. I’d use MCE and the MCE Directory tool for my file browser or you could use WebFM another great file management utility.

I would build my own gallery within Drupal with CCK and Views… You can integrate Gallery/Gallery2 but it seems to big, heavy and disconnected (to me) when you can build a custom one within Drupal.

There are lots of modules for chat including some that use 3rd parties like RealChat. You can also do Instant Messaging with several IM Modules however, they still seem to be under development and could be buggy.

http://drupal.org/project/phpfreechat
http://drupal.org/project/messaging
http://drupal.org/project/ajaxim
http://drupal.org/project/xmpp
http://drupal.org/project/chatroom

There’s lots of possibilities but you’ll have to buckle down and spend some time in design and development to come up with the solution.

Cheers,
Andrew

3

Andrew: Thanks for all the info - definitely some stuff worth looking in to! :slight_smile:

4

No problem at all. You also might find Moodle helpful. There’s a Drupal module for it as well, [URL=“http://drupal.org/project/moodle”]here.

Cheers,
Andrew