Every once in while we need to stop what we are doing and ask ourselves where we are.  Are we keeping up with the technology?  Are we keeping up with new web applications for communications?  If we do that, we may find that a lot of technology has passed by without so much as a “tweet” – better make that a “chirp”.   I recently woke up and ”my goodness” how the communication technology changed while I was dozing. 

Drupal, yeah funny name, was derived from the Dutch word for drop.  A University of Antwerp student, Dries Buytaert built the first version as a way for students to discuss technology and their own lives and activities.  He released the code behind the site and “droopal” was born so others could discuss technology in their own little “drop.orgs” or villages.  So begins my discussion of Open Source Web technologies that can help you build Web sites for the communication process. 

I just finished three months working on a Drupal ecommerce site to sell skin products.  I think the best way to analyze a software product like Drupal is to have hard requirements that you need to implement in Web software and demonstrate how it can accomplish the task.  Drupal performed remarkably well. 

Drupal in it base module 6.15 has all the elements for a Content Management System. Simply go to www.drupal.org and download the module, but that is where simple end.  Drupal is possibly better known in Europe that the U.S. because of its origin. Certainly a similar system called Facebook is better known in the U.S.  But Facebook is not open source or free to set up your own site to configure as you like.  You can, however, configure Drupal to be a social media application like Facebook. 

Drupal comes with several base functions (core modules) that you can “activate” by turning on a module in the site building menu.  Major modules include RSS feeds, Blogs, Polls, Search, Forum, Comments, and Upload.  So right out of the box you can develop a robust site.  The admin menu has five main parts that include Content Management, Site Building, Site Configuration, User Management and Reports.  And herein lies the major problem for most people with Drupal, Drupal has a complexity to its configuration that goes deep. 

For example, to create a Drupal site that does ecommerce, I had to add another major module called Ubercart (yes, a German based module) to handle shopping cart and checkout functions. The grand total of modules to configure was 110.  I referred to this vast array of modules as like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Drupal is working on a system to make the creation of  “custom” type sites like ecommerce simpler by selecting needed modules into a grouping called a “distributions” or install profile.  This should make site creation a little simpler, but my own testing showed most of those install profiles had problems during installation and failed

This blog is created under WordPress and a lot of Web developers are looking to WordPress, also an Open Source program, to handle Web Content Management.  Yesterday, I started a test to see how long it would take me to install, update to the latest version and get my blog configured.  Here I am 24 hours later writing my blog.  The install and update operations in WordPress are far superior to Drupal 6.15. 

In conclusion, if you need a custom Web site with lots of functionality, choose Drupal, but allow lots of time to get the configuration done.  If you need a blog or a simple site tomorrow, try WordPress.