We're very busy at Raincity these days, but optimistic because we've hit upon a brilliant platform in our pursuit of Web 2.0: it's called Drupal.
Keeping up Standards
It's long been known that Raincity focuses on Web Standards such as CSS and XHTML. Blogs fit in very nicely with that, as we learned with The Standard. We even started offering a Blogger template design service to highlight our expertise in CSS design.
We soon realized that design is just a shell that serves content, important yes, but sites are meant to be used not just seen.
What we really needed was a dynamic content publishing platform just like Blogger (but more!) that would output standards-compliant code, display nicely in CSS and help us do away with the drudgery of hand-coding pages.
We came across Drupal from an introduction by Roland Tanglao from Bryght (hosted Content Managed Sites) way back in the fall of 2004 and what a fortuitous meeting that was.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is an open source, extensible CMS written collaboratively in PHP. ...no really, what does that mean?
It means you can use it's web-based interface to build almost any manner of site in about an hour. Okay, an hour is a bit optimistic unless you're Boris Mann, Kris Krug, Richard Eriksson, or Roland. There's some getting used to yes, but you can start building with the basic features in the span of a few hours even on your first time out. Take that Dreamweaver!
Because it's open source, Drupal rolls out new versions when the user community deems it appropriate. No deadline-driven, quota-crazy bugware bound for patching like some software giants I know.
It's Free? How Good Could it Be?
Really good, actually. Drupal puts the Dynamic in Dynamic Content.
Features:
- Standards-compliant XHTML and CSS support
- Cross platform
- Easily aggregate Dynamic Content
- Web interface, develop from anywhere
- RSS feeds for some or all of your pages? you got it. Just check a box.
- Dynamic Menus and Sitemaps built from your key terminology
- Blogs, individual or the multi-user variety
- Sophisticated Permissions control
- Forums, FAQs, Glossaries, Search, and more...
Who is it Good For?:
- Individuals (no need to call your web developer to upload content. What am I saying?)
- Businesses (e-commerce features, press releases, business blogs)
- Non-profits (it's free!)
- Education, Research (capacity to serve thousands of users, group-author content)
- Clubs and Associations (calendars, community-driven moderation, events)
- News and Content Driven (RSS!)
- Political and other Causes (CivicSpace anyone?)
More Special Sauce:
- Organic Search Engine Optimization
- Fully Featured yet exceedly extensible (Amazon, Google, Flickr support and more)
- Many free Themes and Modules
- Massive user community for support
- You need Web 2.0, you just don't know it yet
We Be Doin' the Drupal
As we indicated earlier, we're working on the Drupal platform in a big way. Raincity and Drupal both use the raindrop in their logo (it was meant to be). The Raincity crew has a number of self-initiated Drupal projects coming up in the near future, including the Raincity version 4.0 (due out in about a month, I promise!).
On top of that, we've become partner/resellers with Bryght, and who better to team up with (Drupal IS their business)? The first example of three recent collaborations is Kris Krug's 2010 Daily Vancouver Olympics site, the first of many if this announcement is any indication.
More is due, but that's for future posts.
How You Can do the Drupal Too
If you want to set it up yourself, you're free to do so: Download the latest version of Drupal straight from the source (excuse the pun). Many hosting services offer Drupal support right out of the box too. Look at your own host; you may be pleasantly surprised. Otherwise try Site5, they have it for sure. OpenSourceCMS has a truly risk free setup, if you want a quick test drive.
If this is your first time setting up a CMS you might try contacting a friendly representative at Raincity (it'll be Rob, ha ha!), or talk to the Bryght boys directly (just make sure you tell them you read it at The Standard).
Our friends at Bryght just happen to have an open Beta to help you get your feet wet with the platform. All the setup is done for you, yay! If you just want to see what's possible, visit Ourmedia.org, UrbanVancouver.com, or NorthernVoice.
Any way you choose to go, it benefits the movement in the end (cough, we do Drupal Templates, cough). And you do want to be part of Web 2.0, right? Find out why...