Drupal

I've been researching and trying to decide on a content management system (CMS) for years. I'm currently using a combination of Blogger, Del.icio.us, JSON, and PHP includes as my CMS for Deflexion.com, but my plan has always been that eventually I would put all my writing -- Infinite Ink articles, Deflexion.com deflexions & reflexions, Usenet postings and other public postings -- into one big searchable accessible mashable CMS. For a while I thought I would use MediaWiki, but then I decided I wanted the data to be in plain text files and was thinking of using DokuWiki, MoinMoin, or PmWiki, all of which use plain text files. Now, thanks in part to IBM developerWorks' series about Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site, I'm leaning towards Drupal. I've been paying attention to Drupal for a while, but my high regard for IBM combined with Drupal's features and maturity have pretty much convinced me to go with Drupal.

If anyone has thoughts about whether I should or shouldn't use Drupal, please post a comment. I'm also interested in tips for setting up my Drupal site, for example, I'd like to know your thoughts about:
  • MySQL vs. PostgreSQL?
  • best way to use clean URLs and search friendly (non-numeric) URLs? There is discussion about this here, but I don't know how up to date it is.
  • what modules do you recommend, for example, what do you think of the Views module?
  • setting up Drupal on viaVerio Signature, viaVerio VPS v2, the upcoming viaVerio VPS v3 (which I'm βeta testing), or DreamHost. I'm interested in all these types of accounts because I and people I support use all these types of accounts.
  • any other tips, advice, or warnings!
To learn about Drupal, see the Drupal section of my portal in the Deflexion.com sidebar.
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Don't let anyone tell you Drupal is easy. Easier than other open source cms yes, easy - no.

Allow Drupal core has fairly slid pgsql support contributed modules tend to be focused on MySQL. So that choice may be shaped by which, if any, contrib modules you use.

As long as mod_rewrite is enabled and .htaccess allowed for the directory where Drupal is installed clean_urls usually just work when you turn them on. You can move the
rules from .htaccess to apache conf if you have the ability. path_auto module does an excellent job of autogenerating the clean url according to a pattern you define.

I'd seriously suggest you learn Drupal core before playing with cck, views, category or anything else that Drupallers rave about.

HTH
 

 

Everything the first commenter said, plus:

Only use Drupal if you want to learn and tinker, then learn and tinker again when the new version comes out. :)

You will require the Views module. As stated before, get your site altogether running because you will need your concentration for each. Once you have it all together and realize there is still something missing, then install views.

Get excited, because you are in for a real nice treat.

I do understand that text files are good to a point, then bog down as they grow in size. SQL is really cool.
 

 

Thanks for sharing your, writing, Nancy. I've been a fan for years! I took a bit of interest in your thoughts on Drupal and thought I'd give you some feedback.
I'm very pleased with Drupal. It's got a low threshold between writing and publishing which is important to me. I haven't really seen advantage of using postgres- over mysql. For me the community support for mysql was important and eventually when I went live it was what my hosting service provided.
You could say I fell for Drupal. It works great with delicious (daily link rolls) and blogging tools like scribefire. The spam module lets me keep it fairly open. cck and views are modules I'm still trying to understand. The Image module is great and I don't
really need that much more outside the core.

Keep up the good work. You make the web a happier place. Good things to you! Jonas
 

 

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