Dragonfly has been the core of our websites for over 10 years and we're sincerely grateful to everyone who's contributed their time and effort to the project. However, the time has come when we're starting to look at migrating to either Joomla or Drupal. If anyone here has experience of migrating to either of these platforms I'd be grateful if you could drop me a line, thank you.

If forums are the major focus of your site, you might be better off migrating to VB suite - might cost you less in the long run.

Thanks Phoenix, I appreciate the advice. We do have a lot of forums but they're not particularly busy, the focus is primarily on content. However, I'll certainly take a look at VB suite (I assume that's vBulletin Publishing Suite?)

Just curious (from the perspective of a content module provider) as to what content features that you feel are missing, lacking which make DF non-competitive with Durpal/Joomla?

Perhaps too late to make any difference to your decision, but perhaps a chance to correct a shortcoming all the same.

Thanks.

I had the same questions LB...

Yes, a very fair question. The honest answer touches on various issues including ease/sophistication of adding, editing and displaying content, availability of a wide range of current and future extensions, a more modern look and feel (actually hugely important to our target market) and last but not least just a desire for confidence that if something goes wrong or we need something developed we'll actually be able to find someone to do the job.

Don't get me wrong, in the strictest sense Dragonfly meets our needs for functionality (and the impressive security has always been a major plus) but as time goes by there's a growing sense that we're being constrained in the directions we can go. It works, and works well, but the grass just seems to be getting greener and greener elsewhere.

macavity wrote:

The honest answer touches on various issues including ease/sophistication of adding, editing and displaying content, availability of a wide range of current and future extensions, a more modern look and feel (actually hugely important to our target market) and last but not least just a desire for confidence that if something goes wrong or we need something developed we'll actually be able to find someone to do the job.

Have you "kicked the tires" on Pro_News? It attempts to address the first 3 issues - although whether the method employed suits is obviously a personal view - and goes some way to easing the last in that many features can be added via templates alone.

It's still under active development, main reason for lack of big changes recently is that most of the enhancement requests have been implemented! So I would still be interested in your feedback even if you didn't see it as a long tern solution for your site.

I confess I haven't tried it, I'd always assumed it was simply a replacement for the News module but looking at your site I see it covers more than that. Is it fully tested for use on a 9.1.2.1 (production) site?

Pro News is an excellent Module made by LB and his team, see it in action:

www.greenday2k.net/

www.greenday2k.net/Noticias.html

I have renamed to "Noticias".

It'll even run on 9.0.6.1 although a small (supplied) tweak is required (for pagination).

It has been in use since before 9.1 was released.

Besides the aforementioned pagination, it has tests for pre-/post-9.2.1 block handling so it can cope with the latter, other than that it doesn't care which 9.x you have.

Its main feature is multiple Sections (each with its own Catgeories) so you can have multiple "classes" of articles, only 1 of which needs to be an actual replacement for News, the rest can be used for anything. Or it can run alongside News... All controlled from a single Admin interface. And just a few clicks to move (or copy) articles between Sections.

You can even have different domain names each with its own - different - home page!

Just ran a count and there are now an amazing 92 configuration options available in Admin!

As well as the extra built in admin functions (promote forum posts to articles, upload multiple images to coppermine, upload pdfs, etc.), you might want to also try my enhanced NBBCode (from my site) as this adds tables, lists, etc. - to all modules not just Pro_News - and further eases administration/posting (assuming it will work with 9.1: That I haven't tried).

And with the Series 3 templates, for which you need a contribution to the project to obtain (creating some effective marketing spiel for the project might be a good one ), you get a very space efficient footer for each article, replete with links to 72+ social networks!

Optional templates exist for "Featured Content Sliders" of various configurations for images or entire articles, and Blogs. And if you have a need for a "PDF Page Flipper", fund raiser or kickstart, or LightBox-like template then me know as versions of these are already working in at least demo sites.

Oh, and there's only 1 known problem without any solution - that I know of - and that's an issue with posts to CPGNuCalendar across timezones. And it is being worked on, albeit slowly.

Worth a look? Other CMSs may have more features - I have no idea - but doubt that they have it all in a single uniform-interface module. And as posted earlier, I'm always open to enhancement ideas and requests.

Any detailed questions or advice on deployment happily answered - for anyone - over at layingback.net.

Thanks to you both. I'm out of the office for a couple of weeks but will take a closer look at Pro_News when I return. In the meantime, just a few quick questions?

@greenday2k: You've done a great job (IMHO) with your template. Although it's not the look I'm after myself, and I still think Joomla presents better options as far as visual "wow factor" is concerned, I'd be interested in knowing who you worked with (or if you did it yourself).

@layingback: A few things (if I may!)

- Does installation of Pro_News involve any changes to core DF files/tables?
- Is there the facility to include more than one image per article and if so how can the author specify where the image appears within the article (or is this predetermined via a template)?
- Is my understanding correct that Pro_News allows ordinary users to submit articles which can then be reviewed by an admin before publication?
- Perhaps a strange question this one but does the URL used by Pro_News always contain a directory name (as it appears to do at greenday2k's site, e.g. www.greenday2k.net/Not...id=7.html) or can individual articles be reached without a directory being specified for the Pro_News installation, in other words in much the same was as the original Content module works, e.g. www.domain.com/index.p...tent&pid=2

Many thanks in advance.

macavity wrote:

- Does installation of Pro_News involve any changes to core DF files/tables?

No. It just adds 4 of its own, all with pn prefix, for sections, categories, articles, and (article) schedules. Configuration info is held as additional records in the existing DF files, as other modules do.

macavity wrote:

- Is there the facility to include more than one image per article and if so how can the author specify where the image appears within the article (or is this predetermined via a template)?

2 images, 1 in Intro part and 2nd additional 1 in full article only. Position is by template. Upload is automatic on Preview/Submit. Also able to include user determined number of images from a coppermine album via a menu list, up to 10 on full article page (32 for Series 3 templates), up to 32 on (multiple) subsequent pages. Position again by template: 2 provided (down right side, or across bottom). Note that this also gives way of displaying coppermine albums but avoiding the somewhat dated and "busy" look of coppermine. (Of course this is in addition to images added through BBCode as for News, etc.)

macavity wrote:

- Is my understanding correct that Pro_News allows ordinary users to submit articles which can then be reviewed by an admin before publication?

Yes, it has most options of News, except Topics (although links to these can be maintained the standard templates don't use them). But it also gives you the option to allow members of (trusted) groups to post directly without needing approval. There is also an option to allow users to have their own "member's page" again managed by group.

macavity wrote:

- Perhaps a strange question this one but does the URL used by Pro_News always contain a directory name (as it appears to do at greenday2k's site, e.g. www.greenday2k.net/Not...id=7.html) or can individual articles be reached without a directory being specified for the Pro_News installation, in other words in much the same was as the original Content module works, e.g. www.domain.com/index.p...amp;pid=2.

I think you're referring to LEO on (first case) and LEO off (2nd case) which is outside of Pro_News and a standard DF config option.

You should be able to just install Pro_News alongside News, set up a few Sections and Categories and explore. There are separate View, Post and Admin access options on each Section, so you can experiment in private. Import of old News articles will bulk import into the default section, and you then (group) move to final new Section. But this can be done (or re-done) at any time, or as said before you can leave News running for old articles. Or do both if you want (to preserve URL links).

Feature list is huge, even if I listed it all here it wouldn't make sense to you yet. Suffice to say that I and others build entire websites using just Pro_News for all content, and I think you should start to get the full picture of its scope. You aren't going to learn everything that you can do with it until you've invested some time, but that's what the Pro_News community at layingback.net is for. Very relaxed, informal and helpful, I believe.

Many thanks for those answers (the directory issue is related to LEO in a sense but actually refers to .htaccess redirects - too long a discussion to get into here!)

I'll certainly take a longer look at Pro_News when I get back. If I'm honest, it may not be enough to stave off a move to another CMS in the longer term but it might just extend (or improve) our use of Dragonfly in the meantime.

[quote="macavity"I'll certainly take a longer look at Pro_News when I get back. If I'm honest, it may not be enough to stave off a move to another CMS in the longer term but it might just extend (or improve) our use of Dragonfly in the meantime.[/quote]

I'm not bothered either way, I just felt the need to raise a question when you remarked that DF was limiting on the Content side when compared with other CMSs

layingback wrote:

I'm not bothered either way, I just felt the need to raise a question when you remarked that DF was limiting on the Content side when compared with other CMSs

Erm, yes, no offence intended! I've found it a very useful discussion. Thank you.