I updated this site yesterday, from Drupal 4.7 to Drupal 5.7, with much help from Eric. We decided not to move it up to 6.x, since 6.x has some incomplete modules in its core. (If I'm misstating that, it's on me, not Eric, btw.) I thought I'd summarize my experience with the process a bit, since I know there's a lot of interest in Drupal among librarians.
I do sort of think Drupal is overkill for a personal blog, but this is what I'm using, partially because I wanted to get experience being the sole administrator of a Drupal site, and probably more importantly, I could rely on my spouse's expertise with it. Still, I think if I had it to do over again, or if I was recommending software to someone like myself--comfortable with technology on GUI level, but not so much on command line, and without a lot of time or energy to devote to learning that side of things, I'd probably go with WordPress, another open source tool. It seems to me that the former is a full on content management system, with lots tools I'll never use, while WordPress is meant for blogging--and also has many tools I'll never use.
Anyway, if you or someone you love is using Drupal as a blog, perhaps you'll be interested to know which modules I am using.
- archive
- attachment
- bueditor
- captcha
- cck
- commentmail
- commentrss
- computed_field
- date
- drupal
- event
- excerpt
- filefield
- filemanager
- flickr
- forward
- front
- image
- link
- month
- pathauto
- porterstemmer
- recaptcha
- relatedlinks
- spamspan
- syndication
- tagadelic
- technorati
- tlc
- views
- xmlsitemap
You can learn more about any of the above by beginning with the root http://drupal.org/project/ and then adding the name to the end of the URL, e.g. http://drupal.org/project/attachment
I had originally thought I might document the process, but didn't drive it well enough to explain it to someone who knows the same or less than me, and I wouldn't know what to explain vs. leave out for someone who knows what they're doing so that she could get something out of it without tearing out her hair.
Sometime soon...a new theme. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Comments
laura (not verified)
Fri, 04/11/2008 - 1:43pm
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I need to start playing
I need to start playing around with Drupal some more, because I'm guessing I'll use it for some project somewhere down the line.
If there's a way to either a) get full posts to show up via RSS, not just snippets or b) add navigation that will let you go from one post to the next without going back to the main page, or both, that'd be great. I think I get behind on your blog a lot because it's kind of labor-intensive for me to read it.
jenna
Fri, 04/11/2008 - 2:22pm
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That's funny. I prefer
That's funny. I prefer snippets to the whole post in my feed reader. I probably could switch it so you could get the whole thing, but I'm not sure I would. I wonder how other folks feel?
Last and next pages should be possible. I'll have to look into that.
But seriously, labor intensive?!? Because you have to click twice?!? I know it's inelegant, and perhaps inexcusably unslick, but don't make me give you the same harangue I do students about how back in the day people had to come to the library, look in indexes, go to the card catalog, go to the stacks, and then somehow reproduce every article they wanted to use--uphill, both ways, in the snow, so that they shouldn't whine now if now once in a while they need to click two or three links and fill out a form to order an article from ILL, which will even come to them as a pdf...
Not that I ever did library research as an undergrad theater major!
Jo Mikan (not verified)
Tue, 01/06/2009 - 1:01pm
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But now that the learning is
But now that the learning is over and you know how to administer such a powerful CMS do you feel better off for it? I am just learning WP, but I would love to have Drupal under my belt in case I wanted to create a community portal for my little town or something.
Take care,
Jo