Looking for examples of excellent layouts/functionality for content heavy sites

C

CLKeenan

Banned
Jun 24, 2006
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Boston, MA
I'm in the process of redesigning my education site and would love to get some inspiration from other content heavy websites that you have found to be very clean, easy to navigate, but still with some character to them.

I plan on using the Omega base kit for Drupal 7. In case you're not familiar with it, you can check out some of the functionality of it here: Omega | Responsive HTML5 Drupal 7 Base Theme

I love the responsive grid layouts. Will be very handy for students reading a 10 page chapter outline of their textbook as the main body column can expand/shrink to meet the needs of a wide screen monitor, laptop, ipad and mobile phone.

If you are a designer, and you are interested in creating some wireframes for me, please shoot me a PM for more details. Or even if you're not a designer, but want to talk more about this, hit me up on skype for more details.

Thanks,
-Chris
 


Good luck with the redesign. Never used Dupal but I just had the unfortunate experience of migrating a Joomla site. I used a theme that runs on the Gantry framework and uses the 960.gs layout which really does rock. And you're right on about content presentation, that will fit your niche well.
 
MSTeacher said:
Good luck with the redesign. Never used Dupal but I just had the unfortunate experience of migrating a Joomla site. I used a theme that runs on the Gantry framework and uses the 960.gs layout which really does rock. And you're right on about content presentation, that will fit your niche well.
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Thanks for the positive feedback on the 960.gs system. Hoping that it works out well!
 
Subscribing. I am likely to be building my next massive database-driven in D7.

CLKeenan let's get together. As we speak I'm writing my requirements for contractors and it's gonna be big, long, and ugly. 47 pages of mockups (I used Balsamiq for that).

Sorry that right now I don't have any input though. My requirements are basically to go for functionality, dump the shit to screen in DIVs, and we'll style it later.
 
Never used Dupal but I just had the unfortunate experience of migrating a Joomla site.
g.gif
 
Subscribing too. Don't like WordPress, Joomla is devil spawn. Don't know a thing about Drupal. Still looking for a goto cms for when it's appropriate.
 
Eh, it just feels too clunky. And at its heart it's a blog platform, not a website platform. And it was never built specifically for seo. I know that's all changed with the huge development community and you can make it do whatever you want nowadays but meh. Never done it for me.
 
You could also try this one - Twitter's Bootstrap | drupal.org

If you use a theme that supports the color module, you will be able to allow your logged in users to customize the site's color according to their convenience. The appearance will only be visible to them when they are logged in.

I am using Drupal for couple of years now. You have a good Book module that comes default in the core and can easily arrange the chapters, subchapters etc. I love this for creating simple guides.

Check the aegir and drush modules. It makes maintaining large number of drupal sites a breeze. And it was drush that made me stick with drupal as you can do most stuffs on command line with simple commands (not for shared hosting though).

But main problem I have with drupal is that the sites require real power + RAM to run, unless you are willing to setup APC, memcache etc on your server. And running it on a shared hosting (cheaper ones) could result in blank screen once a while. The boost module solves this, but the module is not suitable for dynamic contents.
 
nmridul said:
You could also try this one - Twitter's Bootstrap | drupal.org

If you use a theme that supports the color module, you will be able to allow your logged in users to customize the site's color according to their convenience. The appearance will only be visible to them when they are logged in.

I am using Drupal for couple of years now. You have a good Book module that comes default in the core and can easily arrange the chapters, subchapters etc. I love this for creating simple guides.

Check the aegir and drush modules. It makes maintaining large number of drupal sites a breeze. And it was drush that made me stick with drupal as you can do most stuffs on command line with simple commands (not for shared hosting though).

But main problem I have with drupal is that the sites require real power + RAM to run, unless you are willing to setup APC, memcache etc on your server. And running it on a shared hosting (cheaper ones) could result in blank screen once a while. The boost module solves this, but the module is not suitable for dynamic contents.
Click to expand...

Yah, definitely hear you on the performance implications of a server that isn't configured to run Drupal. But, if you're serious about your site, there shouldn't be any reason not to set up APC, memcache, JS/CSS aggregators/minifiers, Boost, etc.

There's also some cool new hosting companies tuned *specifically* for Drupal. Check out Faster than the blink of an eye | Omega8.cc | Aegir Drupal Hosting on Steroids | SJC NYC LON AMS SIN or www.getpantheon.com. Those are for hardcore drupal sites
 
The problem I have with these kinds of setups is the huge overhead that you end up acquiring for relatively minor advantages.

I do not know your coding background but I like codeigniter as the base of my code mainly because its so light weight and then expand on that.

I finished a heavy DB oriented site this Monday. It took about a month of prep work but at this point not only do I like the end result I am also confident I can tweak things as needed.

For some reason I always like having control of all aspects of my site. Drupal takes that away from you. Its pretty much the same reason why I drive stick instead of automatic, I want to have better speed control.

The drawback? Takes longer to develop usually.

Just my $0.02
 
I'd say that Drupal is probably one of the most scalable and flexible CMSs out there. Have you had problems with it in the past? It has made development for me much easier.
 
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