Why leave MT4 (Movable Type)? It's fine as-is, and it'll take a moment to explain why I didn't spend more time with MT4. It's great as a blogging platform, and many use it as a simple CMS. I used it for Web pages and to manage The Blog. The MT4 templating language didn't take long to figure out -- but why spend time learning new markup/code?
The Quevin.com home page was different from sub-pages, so there were some conditional template tags, and The Blog was a separate site entirely. So I had to flip between sites to manage everything. These aren't compelling reasons, and I believe it will become clear as I explain what Drupal is doing for me instead.
Drupal 6 has been a journey to discover and learn. What first eluded me was the template structure. It's easy to add them, but how about creating my own? I want complete control of my XHTML, CSS and of all the content within -- including title tags and meta data. Not to mention, be able to organize categories (taxonomy) for The Blog and other content.
It's Easy to Learn & Follow
It didn't take long for a Web Developer/Producer like myself to grasp the PHPTemplate theme engine, how to override the "*.tpl.php" types, and specify different layouts for even the most descriptive nodes or blocks. Drupal offers complete control, all within a framework that works for me.
It uses individual something.tpl.php files to theme Drupal's theme_something() functions. Drupal's themeable functions are documented on the Development Plumbing site. Every file contains an HTML skeleton with some simple PHP statements for the dynamic data. Thus, PHPTemplate is an excellent choice for theming if you know a bit of PHP: with some basic PHP snippets, you can create advanced themes easily.
I didn't start from scratch with my "theme," but used an existing one (named "Celju") and modified it with my own XHTML and CSS. I later realized the importance of "template.php." This holds all the theme's functions. This helps you override anything from core. For now, I'm using a "page-front.tpl.php" for the Home page, and "page.tpl.php" handles all the rest.
More specifically, I can override how my "nodes" look within the page too. Nodes types are basically types of content, and "blocks" are pieces that fit elsewhere. These don't often change, unless you're pulling an RSS feed or something else that refreshes from the site, like "Recent Blog Posts." My "Free Website Evaluation" is also a block.
A Cloud Of Options To Choose From
Drupal's modules supply functionality that I believe surpasses the capabilities of MT4, and many other Blog and CMS platforms. There are 2,265 contributed modules in the Drupal code repository right now!
My Favorite Drupal Modules
- Administration Menu - Quicker administration.
- Blog & Blog API - Helpful for blogs, and multiple blogs, as well as using 3rd party tools for blogging like ScribeFire.
- Taxonomy - Essential for categorizing your blogs and pages.
- ShareThis - Helpful to encourage people to share your content.
- Backup and Migrate - Very useful if you develop locally (MAMP) and then migrate to a live server.
- FCKeditor - I find this better than TinyMCE for WYSIWYG editing, though I prefer Marksmarty.
- Meta tags - Customize meta data on every page, as well as useful to customize page titles.
- Pathauto - This helps create SEO-friendly URLs.
- Views - Organize lists of content however you like.
- And find even more at
Drupal is easy to install and use. No programming knowledge needed! It really only takes about two hours to get acclimated. There are lots of features, such as custom search engine friendly URLs(SEF), categories and search function. As I mentioned, there are lots of modules to add even more functionality to your site. Drupal is flexible, and you can easily turn your drupal installation into a forum, faq, blog, wiki and many other types of web sites. It's also FREE to use, as it is open source. You can freely install drupal and modify the source code to fit your needs. There are also lots of users & community, which makes it easy to find solutions to your problems. The large community guarantees that Drupal will have a bright future.
