This site is powered by Drupal 6.
I really know Drupal 5 like the back of my hand. I know Drupal 5 very well, especially it's quirks. To make a Drupal 5 installation emulate what I get out of the box in Drupal 6 is very time consuming, and only produces nominal results. I can get Drupal 5 to sing pretty well, and produce a fast site - BUT NOT LIKE DRUPAL 6!
I really don't gush on all things Drupal (there are of course, pros and cons to everything), but Drupal 6 is just about everything one could need in a socially based/membership site: an easy install, easy configuration, it's stable, better menus, more under the hood - better blocks, better contributed modules (Not all but most!), better usability, better extensibility (all but a few projects that have not been ported). Drupal 5 is my bread and butter, and I can give you more modules with it, but Drupal 6's performance tips the scale for me big time.
So, for my new site, I decided to evaluate Drupal 6 and see if it would fit the majority of my and my clients needs. Long story short, it does! I have finished in just a few days what took me a month in Drupal 5 - and with a lot less modification and tweaking. You have to understand, I could rattle on about benchmarks and show you a chart about what's faster, but ultimately it is the experience you have that is important. The experience from D5 to D6 is on an order of magnitude.
There are things I still do not like in Drupal 6 (Mostly small things, like having to put a node on the front page, without a darn hack!) - don't care for the syslog, throttle, forum, sort of shy away from the aggregator (even though it generates my front page feeds), the autocomplete is a little awkward sometimes - and I am finding that the taxonomy module is just not worth it without some add-ins and over-riding of things - but the core of Drupal 6 is just amazing - and that speaks a lot to me.
Drupal 6 is Awesome!
My site runs on WAMP
WAMP stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP. I set up my own web server, and serve locally from Denver. I know I'll get in trouble for this, but please, do not use IIS (Internet Information Services) for Drupal. I have found that IIS produces too many read/write/delete errors and is in general much slower when dealing with transactions, like form submission. Sorry, but after having years of experience with Windows, I just don't recommend WIMP (Windows IIS MySQL PHP) when using open source php javascript based products. Windows server is great, just use Apache instead of IIS for your open source - use IIS like it was intended - as an asp.net server.
My system:
- Windows XP SP3
- Apache 2.2.10
- MySQL 5.0.51a
- PHP 5.2.6 (I recommend 5.0.15 for using LDAP and AD)
- Aspell 0.5.x (to run my spellchecker)
- nnCron (to run my cron)
All that and Drupal seems to run very quickly! I'll get more into how I set up everything in another blog, but for right now my set-up seems to be pretty good! Note, I am not compressing my CSS files yet, as my site is still in development.
I am using some very powerful modules
6.x-1.1 - This makes it easy to hide Drupal's clunky admin section and replace it with fly-out menus. I still wish they would go to a more robust version that includes a javascript rollover delay, but it is a very very good module!
Adsense 6.x-1.0-beta3 - This is for google's adsense - generate some revenue why don't ya?!
CCK 6.x-2.1 - Custom Content fields, like text areas, list boxes, etc. This is the core of creating custom content for your site that is easy for others to use!
6.x-1.12 - I use devel for it's cache clearing menu option, and the ability to back trace. Devel rules.
6.x-1.8 - This is how I put content into a "light box" so you can stay on the same page and see the results. Useful for displaying images or other websites!
6.x-1.0 - This is the heart of my mailing system.
6.x-1.0 - This allows for content subscription - I like to re-skin this a lot.
6.x-1.0 - This is how you make groups in Drupal. Awesome module!
6.x-0.x-dev - Allows for subgroups in OG groups - a must have!
6.x-1.0-alpha15 - this changes the forum to allow for graphic images, it's a fine module: but Drupal's forum is not necessarily the greatest.
6.x-1.1 - This allows classes to go on blocks! Brilliant! This should be added to the core!
6.x-1.6 - This is one of my favorite modules that adds captcha to sites and acts as an anti-spam patrol. love this module!
6.x-1.1-dev - I actually prefer xStandard, but this is a great module and totally worth it! You can do so much with this, and you do not have to load any third party software, just copy over the tinymce file and it's plugins. The only problem I have is that some of the scripts leak and overrun, or I have seen things crash the browser.
6.x-1.11 - This is a required module for the messaging system.
6.x-2.0 - Tracks visitors to my site - I'm not sold on most things google yet, but this is a keeper.
6.x-2.1 - This is how you make content work for you, this is an essential Drupal module. This is one of the most complex things you can use - it is amazing and robust and the new interface is genius!
6.x-1.13 - This adds a rating system to my site (You can rate my blogs if you want, so I can get feedback) - LOVE IT!
6.x-2.0-rc2 - The back end for five-star.
All of these help me to be more productive on my web site, with not too much work. It sounds like I'm being a fan boy, but Drupal 6 is pretty amazing. Drupal natively adds jQuery - so I can add any additional jQuery add-ins whenever i want, with no core hacking. The blocks and menues are now much easier to use (but I really don't use too much of Drupal's menu system yet.) The whole core runs faster, and appears to be more secure (Now if I can just get SSL to cooperate, then I'll start recommending Drupal for eCommerce). As a web developer, I can now take your design and just run with it - the CSS and page.tpl make a little more sense (although there are still some layout things that will require some creative coding). AND this allows YOU to take control over your site. With some training (There is still a learning curve) you can get a lot out of your site!
So, what I have done is created a fairly powerful web site for medium traffic businesses (y'know around a few thousand hits a day) and a great base for a very fast enterprise level site (I would still personally get into a CDN for major sites) - Drupal can give a lot of functionality to the technically UN-savvy.
That is what I am happy to provide: a good site that you can extend in the future. In my experience, successful web clients understand their strengths and weaknesses and use their core strengths to their advantage on the web. If you are a brick and mortar company, and you need to start a web presence, it is more important to figure out how your market is going to use your web services. It is just not necessary in most cases to put out everything in one sweeping web roll out. It is more important to figure out what your market will use and put out the best applications for that. With Drupal you can go from zero web presence to a lot of web presence and offer a lot to your clients with little added coding.
My experience is that there is no such thing as "A simple web site". What Drupal will help you do is simplify many of the common web 1.0/2.0 tasks, and allow you to have a more simplistic approach to maintaining your site! By adding in 3rd party applications, you can extend Drupal into using an Association Management Solution, add in proper eCommerce (Drupal just does not quite handle enterprise level eCommerce natively yet) - and still maintain the Drupal wrapper. It's very interesting what can be accompliched by using frames and Drupal together with third party apps. There are solutions out there! Let me help you find them.
Comments
I love this article
When you said My experience is that there is no such thing as "A simple web site" I laughed a bit. Alot of plain and simple sites out there, the thing is i think alot of drupal users see cool features and eventually will put them on their site (maybe not even be nescesary). I love this article. Greetings http://www.infoads.nl
sean callahan
do you guys recommend usng drupal over wordpress chopped up?
Not that I am the best judge of Wordpress...
But, in my humblest of opinions, Wordpress just wasn't built to do what Drupal can. Wordpress has some great features, and they definitely have stepped up their game, but as a developer I find it tedious to work in their API (I wouldn't even call it that). I try not to be a fan boy, but I do find that Drupal allows me personally, to have the basics of what I need in a CMS, and I can extend it from there.
But, I would use Wordpress for a blogging site, if you didn't need anything else!
Knowledge is power.
Thanks for this grate post.
Thanks for this grate post.
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