(Continued from previous comment) The last issue that comes to mind (I'd call it a con, but it's so much more than that) so flummoxed me that it deserves its own paragraph. Namely, it is how to handle posting of stories. Shall we let people post using HTML, or try to help by providing support for other languages like Textile or Markdown? How will we allow for migrating stories from FF.net and other archives, and how will we allow for people who want to copy and paste from Word and rtf and openoffice documents? The truth is, reformatting stories is hard work, and converters that don't mangle your story's appearance can be hard to come by. This is one of the main reasons why I still post to fanfiction.net: almost all my writing tools (MS Word, OpenOffice Writer and Scrivener) have had the ability to export in .rtf, which keeps everything displaying just how I want it without muddying the waters with bad HTML and XHTML. Reformatting stories is not how I want to spend my time, and goes from feasible (with drabbles and stuff under 2000 words) to absolutely maddening (seriously, imagine reformatting a 100,000 word story by hand- which I might end up doing because most programs do such irritating things to files during HTML conversion). And writing in html or other markup languages is out of the question, since I like to see how my stuff looks as I'm writing it.
Now, Drupal provides some answers with modules that allow for Textile, Markdown and even wiki format to be used in posts, but I wasn't able to find an rtf converter of any sort that I could plug in to Drupal. Also part of the issue is that Drupal doesn't come with a WYSIWYG posting format; you have to intergrate TinyMCE or one of the other posting interfaces. I haven't tested those interfaces so far, so don't have an opinion to offer on them, but I will say that there is a reason people use writing programs, and accommodating the output of such programs will definitely be an issue.
Apologies for the tl;dr if stuff I've said has previously been mentioned, and sorry if I sound like I'm ranting or being negative. Drupal is a great tool, make no mistake, but it takes some getting used to.
PS: If Drupal books are needed/desired, I'd be happy to send the one I have (the one by David Mercer), since I've pretty much wrung the use out of it myself.
Sequel to previous comment, in which I rant a bit about posting formats
Now, Drupal provides some answers with modules that allow for Textile, Markdown and even wiki format to be used in posts, but I wasn't able to find an rtf converter of any sort that I could plug in to Drupal. Also part of the issue is that Drupal doesn't come with a WYSIWYG posting format; you have to intergrate TinyMCE or one of the other posting interfaces. I haven't tested those interfaces so far, so don't have an opinion to offer on them, but I will say that there is a reason people use writing programs, and accommodating the output of such programs will definitely be an issue.
Apologies for the tl;dr if stuff I've said has previously been mentioned, and sorry if I sound like I'm ranting or being negative. Drupal is a great tool, make no mistake, but it takes some getting used to.
PS: If Drupal books are needed/desired, I'd be happy to send the one I have (the one by David Mercer), since I've pretty much wrung the use out of it myself.