Drupal

drupal

Get Used To Paying For Web Systems

Posted Sat, 07/17/2010 - 11:54 by awakenedvoice

For years the people who utilized web-based systems to build websites have been spoiled by no-cost options such as Blogger, WordPress and Ning. As interest in these types of services has grown and the systems have become more complex the costs to run the services have risen as well. These factors have lead to more premium options where you are asked to pay a few dollars for additional storage, extra features or no ads on your site. Some services have chosen the freemium model offering a completely free tier of service with certain limits that can be removed or extra features available for a fee. Others have chosen to go 100% premium perhaps offering a short free trial period and then requiring a monthly payment to continue using the service. Completely free options are few and far between these days but that is a good thing in my opinion.

Blogger (which is owned by Google) is still 100% free but its features are limited when compared to many newer, premium services. Blogger is still great for creating blogs but if you want to move beyond the blog to create a web system then you'll need to look elsewhere. WordPress.com runs a freemium model. You get your blog for free and can pay to remove ads or add features such as video uploading or custom CSS. WordPress.com is still very much a blogging platform although the number of features (mostly premium ones) has increased over the last couple of years. Ning used to run on a freemium model but on July 20th they go 100% premium with plans starting at an affordable $2.95 per month.

Ning won't find themselves alone in the premium web system market. Most new services are launching with fee-based services. Squarespace has been around for a few years and they're business model is a premium one. They've met the competition by offering point-and-click design tools, a very detailed and feature-rich web based interface, strong native analytics and an iPhone application. Squarespace has also been aggressively advertising on some top tech shows such as Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech. Their hard work has attracted a recent round of funding that will help Squarespace take on their other well funded competitors.

While Squarespace and Ning are built on proprietary platforms WordPress.com is built on the WordPress open source package. It might seem a bit strange to charge for something that is available to download for free but it is now very clear that there is a lot of value in having someone handle the infrastructure, upgrades and other advanced services for a fee. Many hobbyists might not care about things like that but businesses and even individuals who are serious about web publishing and building communities do care and are willing to pay to reduce their hassles and increase functionality. So it's no surprise that the Drupal platform has spawned a pair of pretty high profile web-based services with Drupal Gardens and Buzzr. Both allow customers to build out sites using web based tools. Both allow new users to try out their service while at the same time being focused on converting site builders to paying customers.

Buzzr has enterprise pricing that covers up to 49 websites. Drupal Gardens does offer a free level (with ads and 1GB of storage) and premium tiers (ad free while offering more storage and bandwidth) for $20 and $40 per month. Based on the pricing differences it's obvious that Buzzr is more of a business-to-business offering targeting web development shops while Drupal Gardens is more oriented towards individual web developers as well as those who are very new to Drupal. Both expand on the very basic Drupal interface to add tools and options that make building sites faster and easier.

So the trend that I'm seeing is that new services are launching with paid tiers from day one while existing services are expanding their features and charging for the new functionality. These are good trends. Maintaining a quality web system costs money. There are wonderful economies of scale with web technology but those economies don't matter if no one is paying the bills. There are a number of competing services and that gives customers a choice. If service A is going to charge a monthly fee than they had better deliver something more than either the (quickly dwindling) free options and the other premium options in the marketplace. The revenue gained from charging a fee makes it easier for all of these services to grow without having to worry about how to pay the bills and keep investors happy. Having to pay would stink if there was no competition and the feature sets remained stagnant. That's not happening though. Rich media support is improving. Bandwidth and storage allocations are improving. Over time I think that customers will get more for less as the economies improve and the user base of these services grows.

Here's the bottom line. Do not lament the fact that you will probably have to pay to have an ad-free website or blog. If you value your content and the people who consume it or if you hope to build a web-based community or web-based business then $5, $10 or $25 per month is a small price to pay for a site whose technology is managed for you. That means you can focus on distributing your content, expanding your community and building your business.

Drupal Gardens Expands Web System Options

Posted Sun, 03/07/2010 - 10:32 by awakenedvoice

Drupal GardensA significant new service has launched into beta since I posted my Hosted Web System Comparison a few months ago. The service is called Drupal Gardens. Drupal Gardens is a product of Acquia which specializes in commercial support of the open source Drupal content management platform.

As the name implies Drupal Gardens is a hosted version of Drupal, or Drupal in the cloud. This gives you access to the functionality of Drupal without having to create a hosting account, upload files and manage databases. In that sense it's a service that is very similar to WordPress.com. If you're not familiar with Drupal I suggest that you see my Beginners Guide To Drupal which provides an overview of the capabilities of the platform.

Drupal Gardens is built on top of Drupal 7 which is currently in alpha and available for download. Drupal Gardens is not just a recreation of Drupal 7. It includes a new point and click theming tool (pictured below) that allows non-designer types (count me as part of that group) the ability to switch and customize many elements of their theme very easily. This functionality is similar to what is offered by Squarespace. There's also a WYSIWYG editor (using CKEditor) which is something not included in Drupal 7 core.

Drupal Gardens Themes
Drupal Gardens Theme Interface

Because Drupal Gardens allows you to build sites that range from basic blogs to full communities it is more of an alternative to services like Squarespace and Ning than Wordpress.com or Typepad. I have added Drupal Gardens to my Hosted Web System Comparison so you can see how it measures up to all of these services. Since it's early in the beta period you can expect that features will expand as Acquia processes feedback from the community.

Drupal Gardens is employing a freemium business model which allows you to create a site for free that has traffic limits and advertisements. For either $19.95 or $39.95 per month, per site you can remove the ads and expand traffic limits. This may seem pricey to those who are used to paying $9.95 per month for shared hosting that allows for multiple sites. You have to consider that when you pay for a service like this you're paying for the simplicity, convenience and performance that you won't be getting in a shared hosting environment.

There's a unique element to the Drupal Gardens service that I haven't yet found with other hosted web systems. If you get to the point where you want to move to your own hosting you can export your entire site and migrate it to Drupal on the host of your choice. I know with WordPress.com you can export the posts and the comments but I don't think you can take the files with you as well. So that's definitely something to consider. 

At the present time rich media support within Drupal Gardens is limited. You can upload and automatically resize images for inclusion within posts. There's also a media library that allows you to access your previously uploaded images. In my limited testing so far I have not found a way to easily create image galleries. Uploading and handling of audio and video are still a question mark? I haven't seen any indications of how these will be handled and what limits for file sizes and total storage allocated will be in effect. So if you're site is going to be a media heavy effort you'll probably want to keep an eye on the Drupal Gardens blog to see what they announce.

There's no doubt that Drupal Gardens is going to be a contender in the hosted web system space. The service is still in the early phases of development so it may not be ready for your new production website yet. The good news for those who want to give it a try is that the platform is free at all levels til the end of 2010 so you can assess the readiness and your level of comfort without any risk. Right now you'll have to do with a yoursite.drupalgardens.com web address but they should have custom domains up and running in the near future.

Current Drupal site builders should consider having a look at Drupal Gardens as a way to preview some of the features available in Drupal 7. Drupal Gardens may also end up being a good option for serving clients who need community sites built and deployed quickly. For those who are new to Drupal this is probably the best way to get acclimated to the interface and features of the Drupal platform without having to install databases and get into all that technical stuff.

A PlaceTo Learn Drupal

Posted Fri, 05/30/2008 - 04:27 by awakenedvoice

My obsession with the Drupal platform has expanded from the occasional screencast to a Drupal guide for beginners and now a new website. I've been working on Learn By The Drop for a few weeks now. It's a place to learn Drupal. I'm posting tidbits of information (which I'm calling drops) to help the average Drupal user get more out of the platform.

If you head over to Learn By The Drop you'll find audio, video, images and plain old blog posts that will hopefully help to transfer my (limited to tell the truth) knowledge of Drupal to you. Hey if I can make Drupal work then so can you. That's the point I guess. Enjoy!

Beginner's Guide To Drupal

Posted Sat, 04/12/2008 - 20:32 by awakenedvoice

Drupal LogoThis is something I've been working on for a few weeks now. There are many Drupal learning resources out there. I even point to some of the best ones I've found in this document. The Beginner's Guide To Drupal is meant to be a starting point for people who are very new to the Drupal platform.

I've found that a desire to learn is the most important trait that you can bring when getting started with Drupal. So if you're at all interested in finding out more I recommend that you take some time to review this document.

Beginner's Guide To Drupal - PDF

Social News With DayLife API

Posted Tue, 04/01/2008 - 02:26 by awakenedvoice

I met Vineet Gupta at the recent DrupalCampNYC event. Vineet is a technology evangelist and engineer for Daylife. Daylife is a social news site that is providing application developers with tools that allow them to include dynamic news in websites by leveraging the Daylife technology platform.

I've been keeping an eye on Daylife since their launch because they provide a very unique and visually appealing way to keep track of a wide range of topics in the news. More recently they've launched news widgets and have a robust API for developers to hook into. Vineet recently put a call out to the NYC Drupal Group to encourage module developers to leverage their platform.

Vineet and I stepped aside for a few minutes so he could introduce Daylife and the idea behind their platform to the community.

YouTube Video

Drupal Media Management

Posted Mon, 03/31/2008 - 04:15 by awakenedvoice

The Drupal platform has always lacked in one area that interests lots of people. The inclusion of rich media (video, audio, photos) into Drupal sites has historically been achieved by node focused solutions. Modules like Video and Audio attach media to specific nodes. These modules work well for certain implementations. But the issue of a media file being connected to a specific node limits how you can use that media.

Lately I've begun to think that some sort of a media management system, one where files could be uploaded and managed separately from nodes, would make a lot of sense. I've noticed that the community is having similar ideas which are evidenced in the development of new modules that allow for more powerful media management features. In particular I've notice the Asset and Media Mover modules.

As luck would have it I ran into the lead developer on the Media Mover module Arthur Foelsche (also www.civicactions.com) at DrupalCampNYC. Arthur took a few minutes to explain the future of media management on the Drupal platform.

YouTube Video

DrupalCampNYC4 Session Audio

Posted Sun, 03/30/2008 - 18:03 by awakenedvoice

I recorded a session that took place yesterday at DrupalCampNYC4. Day one was a pretty relaxed day with a lot of networking and small groups sharing information. There was also an intro to Drupal session that was full. Some of us who weren't in the Drupal intro session got together for a wide-ranging discussion about Drupal. Topics covered in this discussion include:

  • Moving updates from a dev site to live site without mucking things up
  • Getting answers from the Drupal community
  • Integrating Drupal with 3rd party services like Google Analytics
  • The management of modules

Run time on the audio is 1 hour and 5 minutes.

Play Now

Download

MP3 File (Right-click and "save as")

See You At Drupal Camp

Posted Sat, 03/29/2008 - 05:07 by awakenedvoice

I'm going to be at DrupalCampNYC 4 tomorrow in Brooklyn. I'm going to learn more about this platform that is getting a higher profile every day. I hope to turn some of that knowledge around to you. Some of that turnaround will be more immediate and some will be turned around over time. I'll try to phone in a report on my Utterz channel and maybe upload a picture or two there. I'm also bringing video and audio capture tools.

One topic of discussion that I hope to engage in revolves around Chris Pirillo's Open Source Community initiative. Chris plans to build on Drupal core in order to create a more user friendly implementation process for the platform. I think this is a great idea but it should not create a fork in the road that forces people to choose between Drupal A and Drupal B when they want to use the platform. Drupal already has a robust community and I think that the effort that Chris proposes would be best located and documented amongst the resources in the central Drupal community repository at Drupal.org. Chris may very well be planning to do that so I'll be keeping an eye out to see what his next step is.

WordPress And Drupal Theme Resources

Posted Thu, 03/13/2008 - 19:43 by awakenedvoice

Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central has recently used his blog and podcast to rail against WordPress and Drupal. The Drupal rant occurred on his March 4th podcast where he announced his surprise at the funding of Acquia. A couple of days ago Todd took aim at WordPress in a blog post about his preference for Movable Type.

Cochrane's beefs with WordPress and Drupal are very similar. On WordPress he states, "Wordpress is nearly impossible to work with in the templating department." On the podcast Todd makes the charge (at the 43:45 mark in the audio)that, "It is the most unwieldly (sic), hard to skin, pain in the butt content management system I have ever used." As a result Todd doesn't use either platform and only gives a lukewarm endorsement for WordPress via a note in the footer of his post.

I understand that people have preferences for their favorite content management systems. I happen to use all three of these systems on a regular basis. I prefer to use Drupal for community building and WordPress for blogging sites. I use Movable Type to manage my family blogs, but I personally prefer Drupal and WordPress over Movable Type.

I do want to directly address Todd's charges that WordPress and Drupal are difficult to theme. He is 100% wrong. I know this because I have used and altered a wide variety of themes for both platforms. I'm not a graphic artist or a programmer and I've managed to figure out how to alter themes on both systems to create the exact look that I want. Here are a few reasons why theming WordPress and Drupal are easier than Todd states.

  1. Both systems rely heavily on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). If you're willing to learn some basic CSS then you can start changing layouts, fonts and colors for your site in minutes. I've learned a lot about basic CSS here.
  2. Both systems have lots of great base themes to work with. So you can start with a theme that is close to the look and feel of what you want and then edit the CSS and replace a few images to create a custom look. Start here for WordPress and here for Drupal.
  3. Both systems are well documented. There are many tutorials available to show users the basics of the theming systems. Start here for Drupal and here for WordPress.
  4. Independent theme designers are creating better themes than ever. You can find many free and some premium developers that create really nice, unique looking themes. Theme Artists and Roople Theme are two great examples for Drupal. Solostream, Shifter and Graph Paper Press show examples of excellent themes you can find for WordPress.

It's also worth noting that every new release of these platforms includes tools that make it easier to customize your site. The information that anyone needs to work with the themes on these systems is out there for free. And in addition to the resources I've mentioned there are many free tutorials and some books for purchase which explain what needs to be done. Drupal Dojo recently released a Drupal 6 Theme Screencast.

Those that claim Drupal and WordPress can't be themed by the average web user probably haven't tried or at least haven't invested any effort into learning how to do it. Like everything else that you want to learn to do, open source web systems require that you have enough time and patience to learn the basics of the system before you can expect to achieve what you desire. And if you don't have the time you can find many people providing services who can achieve what you want with either of these systems.

Todd's claims that WordPress and Drupal are extremely difficult to theme are ridiculous. The documentation is out there. The community support is out there. The tools are becoming easier to use with each new release. And there are people that you can pay to help you if you don't have the time or inclination to do it yourself.

Drupal Association Membership

Posted Mon, 02/18/2008 - 19:52 by awakenedvoice

Drupal Association MemberYesterday I decided to invest €22 (about $32) to join the Drupal Association. The mission of the Drupal Association is, "to help manage the infrastructure, funding, and promotion of the community-driven project in order for it to continue to flourish."

The money is well spent. The Drupal platform has become an integral part of most of my social media projects. Drupal has helped me to do things with websites that otherwise would have cost me a lot more time and thousands of dollars in costs for contract developers.

The Drupal community is a robust one and it's very important that the server power and technical knowledge is in place to keep the community running smoothly. I think that the membership system is a good way to support those needs.

What about WordPress? I use WordPress quite a bit as well. This site is powered by WordPress. As far as I know there isn't an official WordPress association accepting donations. If there were a WordPress association I think that would be a worthwhile effort to support as well.