In an effort to save time when I put together sites for people, I’ve been working on a universal engine I can use. It is modeled loosely off the MercuryBoard code and, for the most part, has served me pretty well. Recently, I’ve tried to revamp it with more object-oriented code, integrating PEAR and a few other niceties. Still, the more and more I use it, the more I realize it saves me very little time. In fact, it actually costs me time when I have to go back and update the sites. It seems, sadly, the idea of a flexible CMS or framework is just too abstract for my skills.
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!