integrating a new component in an old website ?

Question

hi,

I have an old website and I've been asked to implement a small forum to display in a specific website block.

I've implemented this forum with Drupal and now I need to integrate it into the old website.

I was wondering how to integrate it:

• should I just create a 1 to 1 copy of the old website page and add the Drupal forum
• or should I use an iframe to include my Drupal work in the original old page ?

What's the best approach ?

I'm not even sure if the old website and the new Drupal installation is going to be stored on the same server.

Thanks

Answer 1

Not knowing the details of your situation, I would prefer to customize a theme in Drupal to match the visual design of the old site, copy the navigation to link back to the main site, and then add a "Forum" link to the navigation of the old site pointing to the new Drupal forum. That solution will keep both sites fairly independent, and you won't need to worry about Drupal navigation and other things showing through like you would if you did it in an iframe.

But this is just an advice, to give a proper answer I'd need to know more about your old site - what technology it is using etc. Perhaps it would even be possible to include the main site's navigation into Drupal, instead of copying, thus reducing redundancy.

Answer 2

Just do the whole thing in Drupal, you'll have less to maintain and you'll achieve consistency for later changes.

Answer 3

There can be a lot of factors that may determine a good approach.

It's a no brainer to combine the old site into the Drupal system when:

1. The old site and the forum can share the same theme
2. The content to the old site can easily be ported to Drupal
3. The content on the old site changes frequently (or would if it could)

Maintaining content through a (Drupal) CMS can be much simpler and less error prone than static HTML files.

If you have to create two different themes and section the Drupal system it becomes more involved, but, of course, doable! Drupal has some powerful multi-site capabilities.

If you have to incorporate multiple-themes or implement it as a multi-site then you might look at the Domain or Sections modules