Hello Drupal World!
Yes! I’ve finally done it. I’ve moved my website to Drupal, which is so much better than my old 3co stuff. Tons of great modules out there and those I couldn’t find for Drupal 6, which was recently released, I ported. Well not all of them, there are still some I’m really looking forward. On the top of my list are definitely the spam module and the Akismet module. Minutes after my move I got my first spam comment…
Well let’s see how I might get involved into Drupal development. I already filed some patches for the following modules:
- Marksmarty: better GeSHi support and some other minor things, but it doesn’t seem to be what the maintainer wants. I’ll have to move it into another extra-module then. Also some work to separate Smartypants and Markdown into distinct modules. Furtheron I’ve added support for PHP Markdown’s no-markup mode. This as well needs some more work. Maybe it will be dropped again and the pristine Drupal HTML Filter will be used, lets see.
Spam: started porting it to Drupal 6 but I think I based my work on the wrong branch. Needs much more work.
Get Content Type: added RSS feeds, my Blog and Code Snippets section are based on this module. My patch was accepted and committed already.
Filter by Node Type: ported to Drupal 6, works like a charm; patch didn’t get any reply yet
It’s crazy how easy development of Drupal modules is. I love it! Stay tuned for more Drupal related geekery.
Comments
Want to comment? Send me an email!
Comment by DUI Attorneys California (not verified) (2008-07-01 00:40:00)
Drupal is a nice platform to create sites on, you will come to like it very much. I think that akismet is a great module and works well for wordpress and drupal. Comments are a pain, but they help refresh your content on your site, so I try to approve as many as I can.
Comment by Milian Wolff (2008-07-01 21:03:00)
You really have to try out Mollom. It’s so great, not one spam comment in months!
See: http://drupal.org/project/mollom And: http://milianw.de/blog/trying-mollom
Comment by Josh (not verified) (2008-06-06 18:07:00)
I come more from the design camp but I have been seeing the power of learning how to leverage a CMS.
I have recently begun looking into Expression Engine and Drupal.
I am not a php coder….is this a problem if I want to use Drupal? I am not against learning php but it’s not an overnight thing and I don’t want that to keep me from getting on with the projects.
Any input for me?
(BTW…if you comment back to me will I be notified by email that you have responded?)
Comment by Milian Wolff (2008-06-08 17:41:00)
Hi Josh!
Drupal can be extended with modules on a point-and-click basis. The easiest way for you to create a new Drupal theme would be the Zen Theme which lets you fiddle with the CSS while it does the background stuff. Additionally Drupal supports so called Theme Engines, i.e. you could use Smarty instead of PHP for templates. Also take a look at the Drupal Theme guide.
So no - in general you don’t need to write any PHP for Drupal as a designer. But I’ve heard some people still complaining about theming Drupal. I personally find it very refreshing but this could mean it’s a more developer-centric setup. Dunno - you’ll have to try for yourself. Or just take a look at one of the existing Themes. The little PHP you’ll need when writing a template is very basic. Loops, conditionals and function calls should be all you’ll need. No web designer should do without this minor understanding of programming. But I’ve heard that for Drupal 7 the developers are planning to make theming even easier, especially for non-developers.
And regarding Expression Engine: The only good things I can say about it are it’s great marketing machinery and the visually pleasing default templates. But compared to Drupal it’s features are dwarfed and it’s costs become disproportional. You should also read this article about The Open Security Model which directly compares Drupal and Expression Engine.
I personally suggest to use Drupal strongly. It’s simply the way to go. And it’s free!
Comment by Josh (not verified) (2008-06-08 20:07:00)
Milian,
Thanks for taking time to compose a meaningful response. I am reading over the links you send me.
Have you worked with EE before? I just getting familiar with EE’s terminology and proprietary technology…ie weblogs and template tags. Can you offer me a simple analogy in Drupal speak for these EE concepts?
I have determined for instance I would need about a dozen weblogs to house the data for various parts of a site I am architecting. In addition to these weblogs I have outlined field sets (with custom fields) that would allow the content makers to interface with to enter and upload their content to the specified template being served. So how does this translate to Drupal thinking?
Again, I appreciate your response and thoughtfulness. I’d very much like to continue discussing the Drupal CMS.
Regards,
Josh
Comment by Milian Wolff (2008-06-08 22:34:00)
No, I’ve never worked with EE before. So I’m not sure what exactly you are talking about. Maybe you’ll find answers in one of the Drupal handbooks. But nevertheless here’s what I can guess:
This sounds to me like a subset of what taxonomy can do in Drupal. It can do a lot and is a very powerful tool. As far as I know no other CMS gives you as many freedom in that regard. This paper might be of interest here.
If on the contrary you mean weblogs as different websites and not as “various parts of a site”: Drupal supports running multiple sites from a common installation, no problem at all!
Drupal has a module called CCK (Content Construction Kit) which “allows you create and customize fields using a web browser”. Look at the other modules related to CCK and you’ll find Views and Content Templates. I’ve never used any of these modules but heard quite some praise so they should be pretty good. Especially Views and CCK seems to be a powerful combination.
Comment by Pablo (not verified) (2008-02-21 01:20:00)
Hey,
nice to see more people using Drupal as a blog software :) The time I converted nearly nobody used Drupal for blogging. And now.. you see drupal blogs everywhere.
And I’m missing those two plugins, too. But with the need of a preview before commenting (just like you have it), not a single spam comment got on my site since I switched to version 6.
Well.. drupal is just a great system, to use AND to develop.
Cheers, Pablo
Comment by Milian Wolff (2008-02-21 01:41:00)
Yes, comment reviewing is good for the time being, but can be a bit tedious. With my old CMS I got like 50 spam comments a week and not one real comment… So something like Akismet or the Spam module for a bit of automatizing would do good.