Drupal Forum Review - General Features & Requirements
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| Web Site: | http://www.drupal.org |
|---|---|
| Download here: | Download Drupal Forum |
| Community Forum: | Support |
| Released under: | GPL License. |
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| Current version: | 6.6 (February 25, 2009). |
| Price: | Free. |
From Drupal Web site :
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including:
- Community web portals
- Discussion sites
- Corporate web sites
- Intranet applications
- Personal web sites or blogs
- Aficionado sites
- E-commerce applications
- Resource directories
- Social Networking sites
Drupal is ready to go from the moment you download it. It even has an easy-to-use web installer! The built-in functionality, combined with dozens of freely available add-on modules, will enable features such as:
- Content Management Systems
- Blogs
- Collaborative authoring environments
- Forums
- Peer-to-peer networking
- Newsletters
- Podcasting
- Picture galleries
- File uploads and downloads
and much more.
Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License") and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. If you like what Drupal promises for you, please work with us to expand and refine Drupal to suit your specific needs.
Review Updates
- March 25, 2009: Additional Modules have been added to the review to explain how to improve a default Drupal installation.
Server & Clients Requirements
| Server Requirements | ||
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Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
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Web Server 
Web servers host the forum software.
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Languages
Development language.
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Databases
Systems that store forum datas.
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| Browsers & Clients Requirements | ||
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Compatible Browsers
List of compatible browsers.
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Required Plugins/Technologies
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
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Localization
Languages supported by Drupal Forum.
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 Yes.
Supported Languages could be found here: |
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Drupal is known to work in every configuration which accepts the PHP scripting language. It means that operating systems and web servers that are supporting Drupal are not all listed here.
SQLite database should be normally supported in the next major release of Drupal 7.0.
Forum Threads & Posts
| Forum Threads | |
|---|---|
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Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
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Flat/Threaded |
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Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
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No. |
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Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
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Yes |
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Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
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Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
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Yes |
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Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
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 Unknown |
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Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
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 No |
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Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
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No |
| Posts | |||
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Post Editing Form
Details about the manner to post messages.
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Emoticons
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 Plugin |
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Post Editing Format
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
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Attachments
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
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Plugin |
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Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
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Plugin |
Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
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Unknown |
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Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
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Plugin |
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Key Features & Additional Tools
| Key Features | |||
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Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
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Users List
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
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Yes |
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Private Messages
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
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Plugin |
Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
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Plugin |
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Instant Messaging
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
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Plugin |
Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
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Yes |
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Calendar
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Yes |
Remote Control
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
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No. |
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Poll Creation
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Yes |
Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
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Yes |
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RSS/Atom Syndication
New posts and threads available using aggregators
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Here are a list of essential modules that complete a core installation of Drupal, for a forum usage:
- WYSIWYG Editors Module - Add TinyMCE, FCKEditor, markItUp WYSIWYG Editors to Drupal.
- Image Attachments Module - Post Attachments to topics (more particularly the image_attach module) and potentially add Thread Icon.
- FiveStar Module - Comment and Topic Rating.
- User Badges Module and User Titles Module - Add User Ranks to Drupal.
- User List Module - Add several Users List to a Drupal installation.
- Private Messages Module and PM Lite Module - Add an internal messaging system in your Drupal Installation.
- Smileys - Add emoticons to comments and nodes.
- Advanced Forum Module - A Module that rewrites some parts of the Drupal forum features, to improve and complete it. The Online Users List is part of this module.
- Quoting Module - Add the ability to quote other users comments.
The Flat or Threaded view of your forum will depend on the Drupal Theme you use.
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General Features &
Requirements |
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