Granted, I could easily replace WordPress for the sake of my blog here (and probably still will at some point), but that’s not why I was planning to learn it. I wanted something that would allow me to crank out new pages quickly without constantly restarting from scratch. I do have a very weak framework I’ve written to try to achieve this, but every time I start a new site, I feel compelled to re-do at least part of it, so in the end I don’t save any time. In fact, I lose time because I have to re-learn the changes I made for each site when I need to maintain them.

A while back, I started looking into frameworks to use at work. I’m still enthralled with Symfony, but it’s way too hard to just jump in to. In order to take advantage of all of its niceties, there’s a lot you need to learn. It’s almost like learning a new language on its own, which is fine and all, but it doesn’t help me get things done quickly. It’s hard to be motivated to learn new frameworks and techniques unless you have something to work on, and any new projects I have need to be done in a timely manner, so I can’t take too long to jump into something new.

Anyway, one other framework that stood out when I we were doing our research was CodeIgniter. Not because it’s better, but because it has more of an a-la-carte mentality. Don’t want to use the full MVC design pattern? No problem, just use the parts you want to; you can use it as a simple controller mechanism only if you so choose. Don’t feel like getting into a full ORM? Skip it, they have a built-in ActiveRecord style interpreter, which means you don’t need to create your own class for each table in your database. Of course, ou can write your queries completely by hand if you choose to too. Best of all, no command line magic to make your code work, and on top of it all, the entire framework is 3.3MB with the user guide included, under 2MB without it.

I’ve spent a couple nights reading through the documentation (which is pretty well done) and I already have a good understanding of how it all works. And, since it’s almost Christmas again, it’s time to get my annual list manager online again. So, I’ve got a new tool to play with and a simple project to do it with. As a result, Drupal’s on hold while I work on that. I’ll report back on how it goes.

I’ve spent some time reading about Symfony, which looks like an amazing project. I’m positive I can make it do anything I would need, but the learning curve is pretty steep and I’m worried that the time I’d take to learn it wouldn’t really pay off in the end. I like a lot of the concepts, but I’m just not completely sold on it.

So what does that have to do with WordPress? Well, I’ve recently revisited a project that I spent some time with in the past but never really did much with. That project is Drupal.

While it’s not nearly as flexible as Symfony is, it seems like a very useful platform for putting a site together. I followed a quick tutorial last week that outlined just how easy it was, and after reading through their Getting Started guide, I’m pretty sure it can be bent into anything I might need. To me honest, most of the sites I’ve put together didn’t really need much of anything.

But, again, how does this relate to WordPress? Well, I’ve grown tired of WordPress, and it seems like Drupal would make for a great blogging tool. I have no doubt that I could add a lot more than a simple blog should I choose to as well, which makes it that much more appealing. From what I’ve seen, it also runs significantly faster than WordPress does, which is always a nice perk.

So, in an effort to spend more time using and learning Drupal, I’m planning to port all of my WordPress posts to Drupal and use it exclusively to run this site. Worst case scenario, I end up with nothing more than a blog running on Drupal. That’s not too different that the blog I have running on WordPress now, so that’s not too bad of a worst case. Look for the change to happen soon (hopefully this week). You’ll know when it happens as it’s unlikely I’ll spend the time working on a theme just yet, so this site will live in default Drupal mode while I continue my Drupal education. Fun stuff!