Aug
13
Death by Drupal – An Introduction
Here, drupal weeps. A taste of your own medicine, eh?
To paraphrase Churchill, drupal is the worst possible content management system, apart from all the others.
At some point prior to my arrival at One Economy, a consultant was hired to determine which CMS the corporation should adopt. Some x weeks and y thousand dollars later, the answer was provided. 42. I mean drupal.
Skip forward eighteen months and we are now, to paraphrase Macbeth, in drupal stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. One Economy currently operates no less than 9 sites and services in drupal, with The Beehive (localized, internationalized and web services integrated) at the bleeding edge and The Public Internet Channel not far behind. For a single organization – rather than an agency – that’s plenty. What we’ve done with this CMS is nothing short of amazing… and yet hardly a day passes when I do not curse its name.
Rewind to 2006. My only previous experience of drupal had been to install it, follow the instructions that appear on the homepage following a succesful install, then wonder what the bloody hell was going on. The system has a prima facie opacity akin to the moai sculptures of Easter Island. My reaction might best have been described as bemusement modulated by impatience, an emotion not in the least bit mollified through discussion with then colleague and drupalista, Katrin (aka nonsie, for those of you in the know)…
Me: Hey, Katrin – you use drupal, right?
Katrin: (wondering where this is leading) Yes…
Me: It’s a CMS, right?
Katrin: Yes.
Me: What can you do with it?
Katrin: Anything you want.
Me: So it’s not just for community sites? [This was 2006]
Katrin: No. Anything you want.
Me: All types of content? Say, our corporate site… we could do our corporate site in drupal?
Katrin: Sure.
Me: OK, well, I’ve just installed it. I’m poking around with it. Only…
Katrin: Yes?
Me: Well, I’ve written an article and I suppose I want to categorise it.
Katrin: You can use menus.
Me: Menus?
Katrin: Or taxonomy.
Me: Taxonomy?
Katrin: Yes, taxonomy. It’s a module. Oh, and you’ll need CCK too.
Me: CCK?
Katrin: Yes, CCK, the Content Construction Kit. It’s a module.
Me: Umm, OK… thanks. Oh, one more thing…
Katrin: Yes?
Me: I’d like to add a photo to my article.
Katrin: Ah. You’ll need image assist possibly, but that depends on imagemodule which creates images as nodes. Or you could use imagefield… Do you have imagemodule?
Me: I don’t know. Do I? What’s a node?
Katrin: Probably not. It’s a contrib module. A node is like a page… Why are you looking at Mambo?
A Balloon Mouse - technically impressive, yet fragile, quixotic and unappealing. Remind you of anything?
And that’s pretty much where I left things until my first day here. To my enormous good fortune, Katrin was hired too… and I’m not entirely sure where we’d be without her. At the same time, it’s a bit like watching a children’s entertainer fashion animals out of balloons, since
- in the hands of anyone else, the balloons are likely to explode, and
- one cannot quite escape the feeling that balloons are neither the most expressive nor the most accessible nor the most flexible nor the most aesthetic of artistic mediums
One of the issues facing IT managers in the position of selecting a CMS is a lack of information pitched at a level between the marketing fluff and insider geek babble; indeed, it’s an issue I whine about constantly at the Internet Strategy Forum, and a gap I intend to address in this next series of articles – a series which will, for me at least, also serve as a kind of cathartic therapy. Drupal is amazing. Truly it is. And, at the same time, it has driven me perilously close to the rocky shores of madness. Here’s why, in seven easy pieces…
- it looks awful – or costs a packet
- it’s not plug and play, unless you’re Stephen Hawking
- it’s full of non-modular modules
- maintenance will make you cry
- the framework is idiosyncratic, the learning curve is steep
- usability hell – or why you’ll never bypass the webmaster bottleneck
- the social anthropology of drupal
I’ll also mention what there is to love about drupal, despite it’s manifest inadequacies, if only so I’m not lynched at the next drupalcon (see 7, above).
