On to Drupal Part 1 – the search for a portal CMS

Posted by in IT on 28th Apr 2005 | 6 comments

When I checked out the leading CMS packages on OpensourceCMS a few months ago, I settled on Mambo for my own website because of its active user/developer community, and most importantly, because it’s also incredibly simple to use. Eventually I even recommended Mambo as a CMS for my school, and it now powers my school’s website.

But when I started working on a project to develop my department’s portal, it soon became clear to me that Mambo isn’t the best CMS for everything. Mambo is excellent for powering easy-to-use corporate-style websites, but its features when it comes to a community-driven portal is limited at best. I researched the portal-type CMSes out there and at one point even considered the likes of phpBB, which power some nearby schools’ own portals, but I simply needed more flexibility.

And then I came across the blogs@UPEI and weblogs.ucalgary projects which had one thing in common..Drupal. Now I had tried Drupal before, and dismissed it as being overly complicated. But when I saw it being deployed in such a massive scale, and then saw some really good examples of Drupal-based community sites, I thought “Maybe it’s time I take a second look.”

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found..

(to be continued in Part 2!)

  • http://cyberdash.com/ charlie

    As you dig into it, you’ll find that it’s Drupal’s flexibility that you might have perceived as “complex.” Because it’s very flexible, there are more administrative choices to make in setting up a site; I also describe it as a big box of Legos. So on the first go round, it could be more difficult than working with something like Mambo. But after that first site setup, once you learn how it works, it becomes *much* easier. Then whether the site is itself complex for users to use depends more on the decisions you make than on Drupal itself.

    So I’ve been using it for a variety of sites, all education related in some shape or form. For example,

    my personal blog

    academic community weblog

    education professional organization site

    class site

    If you’d like some tips, let me know.

  • Syamsul

    Thanks charlie.

    After spending some time with Drupal, that’s exactly what i’ve found! I’m surprised that there isn’t a user community that’s as big as Mambo’s yet! Perhaps that’ll change when more stock templates become available for download from the Drupal site – it’s mostly about the “looks” for newbie users, and even newbies don’t want to have their websites looking just like everyone else’s! :)

  • http://cyberdash.com/ charlie

    “it’s mostly about the “looks” for newbie users, and even newbies don’t want to have their websites looking just like everyone else’s!”

    Yep. That and the fact that most newbies just don’t know what to do with it when they first install it. I tried it once, gave up, then went back to it six months later and got the “ah ha!” experience after digging into it a little bit. However, once you setup the site for others, it won’t be a problem for users. My class site is part of a set configuration that I created and used in workshops with about 40 teachers this past year. Approximately 25 went on to use it in their teaching and absolutely loved it.

    BTW: You may be interested in the end of the semester survey I gave to students on my site. My students are mostly juniors and seniors, so I asked them to compare their experience with Drupal to WebCT.

  • Syamsul

    Thanks for the link. It seems that most of the students found the Drupal experience superior to WebCT, except for the ability to post grades online, which Drupal lacks. Is there a module or some other workaround to implement this, and quizzes? I am presently using Moodle for my classes’ e-learning, but am open to trying out other platforms.

  • http://cyberdash.com/ charlie

    No grade or quizzing modules for Drupal yet. I teach writing, so I don’t miss either of these very much in my classes. The one side benefit, though, is that with teachers new to Drupal that I’m working with, I see them learning how to take advantage of it for managing content content, facilitating communication, and engaging in discourse–posting syllabus and assignments so that students can discuss them, gettings students to post to and read each others’ blogs, peer response on drafting and projects, using the mail module for announcements instead of a listserv etc.–rather than merely as a course administration tool for bookkeeping and handing out course materials (which seemd to be my students’ most common experience with WebCT). Perhaps that’s a good thing :)

  • Ramdak

    Have you looked at Drupaled.org? I remember seeing some discussion there about a quiz module.