Switched to WordPress and here’s why
In my first post on my new blog I mentioned that I decided to use Drupal for my main blog site. As you can probably notice by the footers on this page I'm no longer using Drupal and decided to go back to WordPress. I noticed several people at the last Corvallis Beer and Blog asked me about it. That made me think I should write a blog post about my journey, or at least the short version of it.
There were several reasons for this but it basically boiled down to using the right tool for the right job. Drupal is an amazing platform for managing and generating dynamic html content. Its plugin and theming system is one of the best out there. Unfortunately, I'm no Drupal guru (even though we host them at the OSL) and had several issues getting some things working like I wanted.
So why WordPress? Well, it seems like everyone in my region raves about it plus I tried the 2.7 version and saw how simple it was to administrate and setup. The ability to install plugins without ssh'ing into the machine was a key feature that I just loved. Here's a few of the things that I really like about WP.
- Installing/Upgrading plugins easily
- Categories/Tags are easy to setup
- TinyMCE is installed and works flawlessly
- Comment spam is easier to handle
- The editing flow is less busy
- Found a theme that is simple, elegant, and easy to customize the header image
While I agree Drupal can essentially do all the things above, it requires more researching, googling, tweaking, and trail and error to get it right. I spent a week or two combing the interwebs trying to find a defining site or blog post that explained everything. I found several sites that had decent information, but it wasn't explained in a manner that made sense to me. The whole concept of taxonomy is just strange to me and in WP its stupidly simple. To me Drupal is like the Gentoo of blog software. It's great and awesome if you know how to tweak it and use it properly, but for a blogging n00b like me, its just too much hassle for me to do deal with. I think Drupal has some great documentation, its in no comparison to the simple ones like Gentoo has (which is a large part of why people can install it).
So what does Drupal need to do? A few simple things would have made my life easier:
- Create a page or site describing in detail how to setup similar features that modern blogs like WordPress have (categories, tags, etc)
- Implement module installation via Drupal
- Implement module upgrades via Drupal
- Create a Blog centric theme similar to K2
- Make it easier for people to use Drupal but keeping it simple for normal bloggers
I may go back to Drupal someday but I need to understand it more. I really think Drupal is an awesome project and its ability is far superior than any other CMS out there. But for a blog its just a bit too hardcore for the average blogger. Hopefully that will change in a few years.
Come see me play my trumpet!
That's right, come see my musical talents next Tuesday night from 6:30 - 8PM at Charlies Rhythm and Brews in Albany, Oregon. This will be our first gig ever as a group! We've been working hard since last September or so working out a set and we're finally ready for the big scene. The group I'm in is jazz combo called The Infallible Collective. The group details are as such:
- Trumpet - Me!
- Electric Upright Bass - W.G. “Malkiel†Davies
- Guitar - Doug Meyers
- Drums - Kevin Van Walk
We'll be playing a mixture of jazz standards (with a twist!) along with some originals compositions by the group. The style of Jazz we'll be playing will range from ’50s & ’60s bop to Latin Swing & Bossa Nova to modern trip-hop and jams. It should be a good time! I'll be posting a Facebook event about it soon.
See you there!
Another great Beer ‘n Blog in Corvallis
Beer and Blog at Fireworks was awesome tonight! Thanks so much to Ocean for getting the pizza's lined up for us. It never ceases to amaze me about the tech community here in Corvallis. It may be smaller than Portland, but its certainly just as full of energy and ideas!
Tonight I overheard some discussions about getting other user groups going on a more regular basis centered around ideas created at Beer and Blog. I'm excited to hear new ideas like this coming out of these meet ups. It was certainly one of the goals and hopes I had when I decided to organize. Related to that, I'm planning on heading up to Portland on Saturday and help at the Calagator code sprint. While I don't plan on helping with much coding, I do hope to get some feedback on some usability questions I had regarding a Corvallis Calagator based site I was working on. The Corvallis tech community is facing the same problems Portland had, but on a much smaller scale. There's getting to be more and more events happening and people need an easy way to track it.
I'm actually hoping to utilize Calagator as more of a community driven calendar that includes events such as live music, arts events, and other community related events. While I'm personally interested in a unified live music calendar, I'd love to see it used for a more wide range of events.
But back to Beer 'n Blog tonight! It almost turned into a disaster for me tonight. I had just gotten to Fireworks when my pager started going off in a frenzy. By the end of it, my iPhone had about 100 text messages on it. I soon noticed that a group of servers in a set of racks next to each other appeared to have a power failure of some kind. Thankfully one of my students was still at work and took care of it. Almost everything came back online without any help from us which is amazing. I'm still waiting on the full story on what happened but it appears one of the electricians working on the power upgrade had tripped something on the power rail those servers were on. Talk about a headache! :(
Even though we didn't have a real "topic" driven session tonight, I think a lot of people got help with their blogs and learned a few new tricks! Next week we'll have Dawn Foster from Portland at Cloud 9 for a talk about Yahoo Pipes. I can't wait!
A new era has begun
Yesterday was the inauguration of President Barack Obama, our next President of the United States. Its so refreshing say that! I'm thrilled to see change in our government with progressive ideas. While I'm interested in seeing the important issues that plague our nation get resolved, I'm also interested to see how our new President will utilize information technology, specifically the use of open source. Throughout his campaign, it was known that he uses several open source technologies such as Apache and PHP for his main website and as well as change.gov. Its refreshing to know that he's keen on realizing how important technology is on improving the nation. His first step was updating and improving the whitehouse.gov website by including a blog and several RSS feeds. While a minor detail, I think it'll become very important in the years to come for his administration.
The grass roots campaign he ran was incredible and proved that the power of a community of people is powerful. The nature of his campaign acted almost like an open source project in the sense that it was a group of volunteers that had a very specific goal. CNN even noticed that correlation on election night by mentioning The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an essay describing the open source theology.
I can't wait to see if Obama will do anything that would help promote and support open source in government and beyond. I'm very interested obviously because that's what I do with my job, but I also feel that its important to help save tax payers money. I'd be ecstatic if his administration noticed what we're doing here at the OSL and would help us out, but that's a pretty far fetched dream. I have a feeling that he has far more important tasks to worry about, but one can dream.
Congrats President Barack Obama, you've proved to all of us that with determination and planning, anything is possible!