John Locke's blog

I think the discussion has come up at least twice on every mailing list I'm on: Why don't we move this discussion to a web-based forum? When it came up for the umpteenth time on the Seattle Tech Startup list earlier this week, I jumped in with this comment:

Mel asks:

Why would I use Drupal instead of Microsoft Expression Web to create a website?

I actually had to look to find out what Expression Web is--I hadn't heard of it before. It looks like a successor to FrontPage, something similar to DreamWeaver for creating static web sites.

So to rephrase, why should I build a site on a content management system, instead of using a tool that lets me build a site directly?

We regularly import content from old web sites and systems. One recent client had thousands of documents that we needed to copy from the old site, so we wrote a scraping system to import the ones that fit a certain template into Drupal, and just copy the existing documents into sites/default/files.

Using the Filefield_sources module, you can associate an existing file with a filefield, using IMCE or other files uploaded through the file system. However, we hit a problem: if you try to browse to an existing file, Filefield returns an error when you try to refer to it:

URLs are a critical part of all web sites, not just Drupal. However, in Drupal, the URL of a page determines a lot about how the page is built.

Damon Cortesi ( @dacort ) over at Untitled Startup recently wrote up a summary of recurring payment services provided for startups. It's a decent analysis of current payment services that offer a hosted recurring billing solution, if you don't have a merchant account or want to handle your own e-commerce. If you're writing a software-as-a-service platform from the ground up, and would like to outsource the payment side of things, these are good options.

I have a confession to make. I'm absolutely terrible at making estimates. No matter how long I think something is going to take, it always takes longer. Even if I double, triple, or even quadruple my original guess.

And it's hurting my business. Why? Because I do everything I can to deliver what I promised. And I end up losing money, instead of making money. Instead of renegotiating with the client, I work nights, weekends, and pay my employees out of my own pocket to deliver. I go months without a paycheck, rarely get a day off. Does that sound like any way to run a business?

I finally did it... long after my old Palm V died, I finally got a smart phone, the Nokia N900. I've had it just over a day now, and thought I would jot down my impressions/thoughts so far.

Chris Wilson over at Slate claims that the new Whitehouse.gov move to the Drupal content management system is the "triumph of hope over experience," basically slamming Drupal as not up to the task for a variety of, well, silly, ignorant reasons. He points to a migration of Recovery.org to Sharepoint as evidence.

There are basically 3 models for getting web applications built:

• Proprietary platform
• Custom code
• Open Source
  

I get this question all the time: What's the difference between Drupal and Ruby on Rails, or another framework?

Quite simply, Rails is something you build an application in. Drupal is an application. So chances are you're one major step closer to building a web site that does what you want it to do, if you start with Drupal.