A while back I wrote about my first weekend with Drupal, which after exploring other content management systems and a little bit of soul searching, I decided to use for the International Transplant Nurses Society site.
While I had already built the site according to a Dreamweaver/Contribute model with custom PHP/MySQL functionality for certain features, a new set of requirements entered the picture that called for features that either I would have to learn to develop, consuming much time and energy, or that I would have to hire another developer to produce.
But what if???????I thought???????there??????s a CMS out there that could support my strict adherence to web standards while offering the flexibility and scalability I required. After looking into Joomla and Mambo, Drupal seemed the most appropriate for my project for its community focus.
Fast forward two months??????
After probably a bout of being over cautious, I relaunched the site, now powered by Drupal. It??????s pretty much the same site as before. In fact, I haven??????t told my client yet that about the switch???????kind of a test to see if they notice. So far, nope.
The toughest part about going to the CMS is developing within web forms instead of Dreamweaver. It??????s not because I use Dreamweaver as a crutch (I??????ve been hand-coding since 1996), but it??????s hard to give up the site management tools and CSS support.
I realize it??????s a trade off, and I??????m looking forward to tapping into Drupal??????s many modules that will help me deliver a much more integrated and professional site than previously planned.
But at the moment, it still feels a bit awkward. Though overall, I??????m very happy with Drupal. And I imagine as I go forward I??????ll get more used to it.
The only giveaway that the ITNS site switched to Drupal would be that it’s still using the Drupal favicon ;)
And the post on partially hydrogenated oils is food for thought. (Unfortunately, I love Panera’s bagels.)