Aims of SoSLUG web site

One of the aims of the website is to promote all things Linux, and Open Source technology. The site content therefore is a reflection of members interests, and in this respect is free format, meaning articles can be about almost anything. The wiki pages, howto sections, and the tutorial (e.g. webstyle) portions of site, deal with more specific subjects and so their content can be easily slotted into a menu structure.

The website also needs to highlight events, new articles, forums and comments that the club is involved with; its this aspect which can help keep the site fresh. Whatever solution is proposed, it must be flexible enough to respond quickly and easily to changes, without presenting an overwhelming maintenance problem. Later on I use the analogy of a lending library. The management of book loans demands a different solution to the organisation of the books (or other content), on the shelves. The views module can provide this flexibility as its essentially an SQL query generator. You haven't forgotten that Drupal is a database have you!

Lastly, while contributors should be free to add content, this must necessarily come with certain (security) constraints, to protect the integrity of the site. I.e. to what extent should contributors be allowed to directly influence to menu structure and taxonomy of the site? (Taxonomy is just a fancy name for a collection of keywords). While both the menu content and taxonomy keywords can be organised into a hierarchical structure, that's where the similarity ends. They are distinctly different. To take the analogy of a lending library, it would be like dividing the books into hardback and paperbacks, and then arranging then on the shelves in alphabetical order of authors names; compared to organising them by category, e.g. fiction, science, art, music etc.

Using a menu to the exclusion of taxonomy, (or visa versa) would be like removing a libraries traditional card index, and would rob the site of its flexibility. The views module makes extensive use of the taxonomy module, as well as other fields (such as timestamps), within the Drupal database.