One of my friends from Vineyard Leadership Institute came to me a few months ago with a casual business proposition. Her name is Sylvia and she is the owner of a court reporting firm here in Columbus, Ohio. She knows I am good at creating web sites, so she asked me if I would be interested in revamping her current web site. Since I was going to be graduating from VLI in June, I figured it would be a fun way to spend some of the free time I would have during the summer. So I agreed to help her out and we’ve met a few times to learn about her website needs and to develop a scope for this project.

As I defined the scope, it became apparent that a content management system would be a requirement for this site. So I spent a couple hours evaluating a few products and I was extremely impressed with Drupal! I’m quite familiar with .NET-based CMS systems such as DotNetNuke, RainbowPortal, SharePoint, ektron, etc. I have well versed in Mambo, Joomla, and other PHP-based content management system. So, I thought I had seen it all when it came to CMS. Not so! The more I began to tinker with Drupal, the more I realized that this platform was on track to completely obliterate all PHP-based CMS systems AND make some of the enterprise-level content management systems cry for their mommy. OK, that was a hyperbole, but you get the idea.

So back to what I was talking about…. so I was picking out a CMS and Drupal was clearly the winner. I’ve been spending the last 3 weeks as a student of my self-concocted Drupal boot camp. Basically, I’ve been spending anywhere from 1-4 hours each day learning the system. Learning EVERYTHING I can possibly learn. The documentation for Drupal is surprising good considering the fact that it’s not a commercial product. I’ve bought a 2 books about Drupal to get me started. So far, the first one on the list has been a good resource to get me going with Drupal:

1. Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6

2. Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

And I will be buying two more books when they are released by the end of August:

1. Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

2. Practical Drupal: Evaluating and Using a Web Content Management System

So anyway, if you’re considering a CMS for a web site, test drive Drupal and check out some of the Drupal modules and Drupal themes available from the Drupal developer community. It’s quite an active community of developers, which is a very important selling point for me.