These Things Matter to Me
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Video: Drupal vs. WordPress. Presentation given at LUGRadio Live USA, 2008. San Francisco, CA
This weekend Selena and I spoke at the charming and hospitable LUG Radio Live USA, in San Francisco, CA. The topic was Choosing between Drupal and WordPress. It was very civil. A few people have asked for the video of our presentation, so I've uploaded it above with a Flash embed. More ambitious full-on video file to come later.
This weekend Selena and I spoke at the charming and hospitable LUG Radio Live USA, in San Francisco, CA. The topic was Choosing between Drupal and WordPress. It was very civil. A few people have asked for the video of our presentation, so I've uploaded it above with a Flash embed. More ambitious full-on video file to come later.
Labels: cms, drupal, lug radio live, lugradio, lugradiolive, lugradiolive2008, open source, usability, wordpress
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Drupal Therapy. Introduction: Drupal is like the Holodeck
(So, BTW, Amnesty.org just relaunched, using Drupal. via Dries.)
Last year I started using Drupal. I made it into a blog server. It is a fine blog server. For hosting multiple blogs by multiple authors, it might even be my favorite. But because I had previous exposure to Wordpress and its elegant admin panel, I couldn't help but be majorly disappointed by the administrative interface of Drupal. What made it worse was how little anybody talked about its horrible interface. The only people who seemed willing to talk about it were the people who tried Drupal and left.
I stuck with Drupal. I love Drupal. I think it's the best tool for building many types of web applications, but many parts of the administrative experience are ridiculous. I think many people in the Drupal community know this, and are working to change this, but we are likely a few versions away from any of the major turn-offs being healed.
In the meantime, I'm going to give back to Drupal. Not by beating it up about its shortcomings, but by acknowledging them, and working around them. By guiding people through them. People who have poked around Drupal and wrinkled your nose: You are not crazy. You are not stupid. Drupal doesn't make sense at first. But if you walk away, you are turning away from an amazing, amazing tool that likely does anything you were thinking of doing, but more!
Drupal is like a beautiful mansion. No. It's like a the holodeck. No. Drupal is like a holodeck mansion. If you want a loft, it can be an urban loft for you. If you want a beachfront property, bam! It's beachfront property. Drupal can adapt to your desires. But there's one problem. Drupal is a holodeck mansion without a door. There's a little doggy door. You have to get on your hands and knees and crawl. You're going to get very dirty. You might even scrape yourself. But once you've made it inside, there's nothing like it.
Stay tuned for Lesson One in Drupal Therapy: The beginning's not a good place to start.
It will help if you have the ability to use a virtual machine.
(So, BTW, Amnesty.org just relaunched, using Drupal. via Dries.)
Last year I started using Drupal. I made it into a blog server. It is a fine blog server. For hosting multiple blogs by multiple authors, it might even be my favorite. But because I had previous exposure to Wordpress and its elegant admin panel, I couldn't help but be majorly disappointed by the administrative interface of Drupal. What made it worse was how little anybody talked about its horrible interface. The only people who seemed willing to talk about it were the people who tried Drupal and left.
I stuck with Drupal. I love Drupal. I think it's the best tool for building many types of web applications, but many parts of the administrative experience are ridiculous. I think many people in the Drupal community know this, and are working to change this, but we are likely a few versions away from any of the major turn-offs being healed.
In the meantime, I'm going to give back to Drupal. Not by beating it up about its shortcomings, but by acknowledging them, and working around them. By guiding people through them. People who have poked around Drupal and wrinkled your nose: You are not crazy. You are not stupid. Drupal doesn't make sense at first. But if you walk away, you are turning away from an amazing, amazing tool that likely does anything you were thinking of doing, but more!
Drupal is like a beautiful mansion. No. It's like a the holodeck. No. Drupal is like a holodeck mansion. If you want a loft, it can be an urban loft for you. If you want a beachfront property, bam! It's beachfront property. Drupal can adapt to your desires. But there's one problem. Drupal is a holodeck mansion without a door. There's a little doggy door. You have to get on your hands and knees and crawl. You're going to get very dirty. You might even scrape yourself. But once you've made it inside, there's nothing like it.
Stay tuned for Lesson One in Drupal Therapy: The beginning's not a good place to start.
It will help if you have the ability to use a virtual machine.
Labels: amnesty, apologetics, cms, drupal, drupal therapy
Monday, January 22, 2007
And which do you choose, a hard or soft option? Drupal 5.0 is out, does Internet, Intranet, content, collaboration!
(original screenshot snagged from Drupal.org's 5.0 screenshot page)
What's Drupal? Drupal is open source software. Drupal can be used to manage blogs, communities, newspapers, magazines, forums, wikis, on-line video channels, and other kinds of content. You've probably visited a site powered by Drupal, and not even realized it! ('Da Drupes is humble like that.)
A new version of Drupal, Drupal 5.0 was released last week. What's new since Drupal 4.7, its last major revision?
(This is a compressed Flash movie of the "What's new in Drupal 5.0" video. Consider downloading the larger, but much higher quality mp4 here.)
While it's easy to find out that software like Drupal is being used when it's running a famous public website, it's a little harder to know when it's being used internally, in corporate, community, and organizational intranets. As it turns out, Yahoo! uses Drupal internally, and outlined the process. Based on this awesome Drupal case study from IBM, one can only assume they use it for collaboration stuff as well.
Related links:
(original screenshot snagged from Drupal.org's 5.0 screenshot page)A new version of Drupal, Drupal 5.0 was released last week. What's new since Drupal 4.7, its last major revision?
- There's a web-based installer! (It's not as nice as the Wordpress installer, but it's easier than Drupal 4.7's.)
- The administration panel/ tools is totally reworked since Drupal 4.7. In a good way.
- The new core theme lets you change color stuff dynamically with CSS
- more!
(This is a compressed Flash movie of the "What's new in Drupal 5.0" video. Consider downloading the larger, but much higher quality mp4 here.)
While it's easy to find out that software like Drupal is being used when it's running a famous public website, it's a little harder to know when it's being used internally, in corporate, community, and organizational intranets. As it turns out, Yahoo! uses Drupal internally, and outlined the process. Based on this awesome Drupal case study from IBM, one can only assume they use it for collaboration stuff as well.
Related links:
- Drupal project lead Dries Buytaert's personal blog (powered by Drupal, duh)
- Drupal superstars Lullabot
- The Digg.com Drupal 5.0 announcement thread. (for the patient and thick-skinned)
Labels: cms, collaboration, collaborative, content management system, drupal, enterprise, enterprisey, internet, intranet, open source, oss, software, sysadmin, video
