Drupal Chart in a Sock Heel (emmajane.net)
I’ve been building this site for the upcoming Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering, Waves of Resistance/Toujours Rebelles, using “brand new to me” Drupal. In less techie terms, Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS), with the benefit being that non-professionals can learn to use this tool to build dynamic websites that they have full control over and can allow others to access the process with them.
It has definitely been a steep learning curve for all those involved (even me who has been working on-and-off in the internet world for a number of years), but working with an open-source project has been most rewarding. And now my love of Drupal has turned into a need to show my Drupal pride, especially since only 7% of Drupal users are women (we have our own support group over at Drupal Groups). So as soon as I can breathe a sigh of relief that the Rebelles2008 website is fully functioning I will cast these on: Drupal Socks and a Drupal .ico hat. Maybe soon I can too call myself a Drupal Ninja!
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seven comments
I can't wait for Toujours Rebelles, this is what I am looking for this fall!
Posted by Karine
August 31, 2008, 9:49 PM
What made you choose Drupal over other CMSes? I've tried Joomla, which also has a steep learning curve. You like Drupal for yourself, but would you recommend it to others?
What CMS is the Shameless blog using?
Posted by Restructure!
September 1, 2008, 2:15 PM
Hiya Restructure! I haven't worked with Joomla, but know others that have. I got hooked on Drupal for this project because that was required of me to use for the contract, so there was never a choice I made about which CMS to use. I also have a close friend who works in Drupal and sings it's praises. I have no idea what CMS shameless uses, but if the web editor is around and reading maybe they'll chime in.
xo
Posted by Diandra
September 2, 2008, 3:23 PM
Shameless runs on the Django framework.
Posted by Wesley
September 2, 2008, 7:10 PM
Thanks!
Why was it rewarding for you? I find that when I learn some software, etc. with a steep learning curve, the feeling of mastery itself is rewarding, even if the actual software kinda sucks with bugs and problems and stuff. I wonder if we'd be so forgiving if it was closed-source.
Posted by Restructure!
September 3, 2008, 12:57 AM
Drupal and my experience was and is so rewarding because it's open source. So, there are bugs but nothing a quick google search and an entire community of debuggers have already fixed and you can just reinstall the module or theme and ta-da! All good. And I didn't even have to pay for it!
The other thing I found rewarding was the drupal groups, this built in community of others working on the same project and helping each other out in good fun and ethic. I don't feel that closed source allows us any of that. xo
Posted by diandra
September 3, 2008, 11:42 AM
Having dealt with both closed-source and open-source software, I have to say that developing for open-source platforms is usually a lot easier, especially if they're popular. Documentation is plentiful, people share neat tips and tricks more readily, the communities seem more helpful in general, and because you can look at and improve the code yourself, it's a lot easier to fix problems yourself if you're a resourceful programmer.
The trade-off is closed-source products usually come in a neat little package that you can just install and forget about. But if you like getting your hands dirty, open-source software is often more rewarding.
Posted by Wesley
September 3, 2008, 10:44 PM
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