Drupal and Back-End Complexity
I am currently working on the school website and we are still in the process of deciding which structure to choose (we know we are not using Joomla! Or hand coding). Drupal has become a viable choice and is currently the top choice for a website. However, I have a problem with CMS in general. I would like to develop a fairly complex and customizable background app for teachers to interact with individual students, including the design of shared / custom calendars, ad privileges, etc. I currently have a bit of experience with HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and could wrap some JavaScript and AJAX stuff around me if needed. However, would such a complex application work with Drupal (in that I could create one for specific purposes)?
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Drupal is a great CMS and framework. The difference it has from other CMSs like Joomla and Wordpress is that it is designed to be extended and customized in different ways, both visually and in the sense of the application. It has traditionally been geared more towards developers than end users. At this point, any Drupal modules are site building modules. They provide generic APIs or functionality that must be configured or used by the site developer or developer. This makes Drupal more complex, but much more flexible in the long run.
For some example sites and apps built with Drupal, check out:
- Acquia Drupal: http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-drupal
- Open Atrium: http://openatrium.com/
- News Management: http://managingnews.com/
- World Bank website: http://data.worldbank.org/
- The Whitehouse: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
There is also a list of some of the publicly available Drupal sites here: http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites
And API: http://api.drupal.org/
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"I would like to develop a rather complex and customizable back-end application for teachers to interact with individual students, including the design of shared / custom calendars, ad privileges, etc. Currently I have some experience with HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and I could work around some JavaScript and AJAX files if needed. However, would such a complex application work with Drupal (in that I could build it for a specific set of my goals)? "
You don't need to do all of this. Just install Views, Calendars, Date and Organic Groups. This should solve 98% of what you wanted to do.
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Once you get past the steep learning curve, Drupal is great for complex functionality. There are already many Drupal modules available to help you interact with your teacher / student.
- Calendars: http://drupal.org/project/calendar
- Group Discussions, etc .: http://drupal.org/project/og
- Advanced trigger / actions: http://drupal.org/project/rules
The best Drupal sites require a combination of existing modules and custom code, so be sure to check out the Drupal API . Note that many modules provide their own APIs as well.
http://stem.betrproject.org is a site we recently created with Drupal that has similar functionality to what you are offering. This site allows teachers / mentors to interact with students in specific areas of study or interest.
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