[CentOS-devel] Website Version 2, next steps

Thu Feb 24 03:22:04 UTC 2011
Cia Watson <ciamarie at my180.net>

On Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:13:53 +0100
Andrea Veri <av at gnome.org> wrote:

> 
> Il giorno 23/feb/2011, alle ore 19.00, Karanbir Singh ha scritto:
> 
> > On 02/23/2011 01:06 PM, Andrea Veri wrote:
> >>> Suggestions for a solution for the web site - please no "Joompal3,
> >> 
> >> Drupal:
> >> 
> >> 1. it has feeds support and they are easy to implement
> > 
> > On the flip side : if primary content on the website is going to be 
> > generated / project based rather than lots of text / cms style
> > content; then do we need much more than a few static pages with the
> > right css thrown in on top - and let the apps run as they do with
> > the same css ( as much as possible ).
> > 
> > Would drupal in this case not be a total overkill ?
> 
> Going with static pages would be nice yes, but it is not really
> easy to maintain. We would need a git repo with special permissions
> and whatever. Drupal with its own account management can simplify
> this duty and allow multiple people to edit only part of the content
> available on the website. (i.e we have the administrator role that
> can modify modules, and pretty much everything, we do have the editor
> role that can modify just stories and other minor things)
> 
> On a drupal istance adding and managing content is really easy, while
> doing a website from scratch (css, html, php, ...) can take more time
> to be developed and can take some of us to disagree on how the
> website will look like. (building a website requires a project and a
> lot of work to organize the content itself and its structure, while
> this won't actually happen with Drupal, since any of us have seen or
> played with a working drupal istance before today and know how and
> where the content is managed)

As a small website owner who uses Drupal and having moved from static
hmtl I am considering going back to static html with css (once I learn
a few more css tricks), and then adding phpbb for the very low-volume
message traffic on my site. I do like Drupal but imho it's a pita to
keep updated. Of course it would depend on what modules you use, also. I
have pared down my module set to as few as possible, but sometimes an
update requires having to learn how to re-do permissions for the module
or other settings that are introduced have to be configured, or they
don't play well with the content. 

One example of not playing well with the content is the 'footnotes'
module; which I plan to remove as soon as I can go through my few
articles and hand-code the html for the few footnotes I have. On the
'input type' for content the default is filtered html, then there's
full html and a 3rd option is 'footnotes'. Even if there aren't any
footnotes on a page, unless I select that input type all the formatting
for the paragraphs disappears and everything runs into a big blob of
text. I haven't worked very hard to see if it's a bug I should report
or not, I'm just reminded of the issue when I post something. 

So, if you're using 'basic Drupal' with no modules or very very few of
them, it might not be an issue. But for my small site, the maintenance
and changes that come with it that have to be dealt with have me
looking to other options.  Initially setting up the css and possibly
other things might be a hassle, but over time it might be the way to
go.