Drupal is one of the most popular and free content management platforms used to build sophisticated web sites. A new service, Drupal Gardens, provices a hosted and simplified version of Drupal so you can start without the installation and configuration tech tasks that put this out of reach of most users. Drupal Gardens is not “magic” but it does create an opportunity that did not exist a year ago, and it clears many roadblocks that can stand in the way of a person with a vision for what they want to create.
A content management system or platform allows a person creating a website to combine many types of content from different sources without having to write code. My community website, http://westwoodblog.org was built with Drupal and required no “programming work.” But it was not easy. It did require a great deal of technical troubleshooting and persistence.
There are many things I would like to change about how WestwoodBlog looks and works. I end up doing many, many Google searches to find technical descriptions of what to install and how to configure it. It would be terribly misleading to imply that a non-technical person could have created WestwoodBlog. You cannot escape the time or expense required to work with Drupal effectively. But Drupal Gardens may change that.
This detailed review of Drupal Gardens provides a nice step-by-step illustration of building a site. But as you will quickly see from that review, you still kind of need to know what you are doing. It’s easy to start, but hard to finish. As soon as I started trying to implement more advanced things, I found myself right back in the same old Drupal administration pages I have become familiar with on WestwoodBlog. I became sidetracked trying to figure out how to embed an RSS feed from a Twitter list into the news aggregator–whoa! TMTI: too much technical information.
Drupal Gardens is a bridge to your proof of concept site. In 15 minutes I had a new website up and running. I successfully leap-frogged over things that took me DAYS to get past when I was first setting up WestwoodBlog. I was able to start thinking about more difficult aspects of the website I wanted to create instead of dealing with the systems administration challenges. When I’m ready to deploy, I could export the site and work with a developer to optimize it.
Without Drupal Gardens…no matter what sort of “one-click install” your discount hosting provider may have, you are going to run into a roadblock when installing your own Drupal. It will be stupid stuff–can’t figure out why it can’t read the database…uploaded something to the wrong folder…lots of little annoyances get in the way and it’s like trying to pack up the minivan with 3 little kids for a vacation trip. You never leave on time and then somebody needs a diaper change. Drupal Gardens gets you on the road fast.
Drupal Gardens will be at the July 14 Mass Innovation Nights. Vote for them to present and perhaps we can hear first hand about their vision for bringing Drupal to the masses.
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Thanks for the write up. We certainly will be making it easier over time as we move from private beta to open beta and then out of beta. For example in our near-term plans we will be making the initial set up of feature settings much easier to address the issue you brought up re: configuring your twitter feed.
Keep up the great work and keep the feedback coming!
I’ll need to look into their service right now I am using dreamhoster Demostrate Drupal in San Diego
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