So what is Drupal, you say? Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. In "non-geek speak" that means - "it's a tool that we use to build websites"!
Last week I attended a class in Front End Development of Drupal as well as Capital Camp DC, which was a conference with about 275+ techies who learned all things Drupal!
3 things I learned:
- Drupal has some of the coolest websites out there and it's fairly simple to use. Here are some of the sites across the world, including many of our government websites: http://drupal.org/success-stories | http://www.whitehouse.gov | http://www.capitalcamp.org
- The White House uses the American public to help with its site as "contributors"! It's about "open-government" and Drupal is an "open-source" product where everyone contributes to the product.
- Because Drupal has a large community of contributing developers, the content continues to get robust with each module. Anytime the module needs to be fixed, many developers help to fix it so that it will work for everyone. A great example of how everyone contributes to the success of the product. It doesn't belong to any one person, it belongs to all of us.
1 thing I squared away:
- Drupal is the way to go for a Content Management Systems. I've always been kind of scared of open-source because you have to rely on documentation from other developers. But after attending the conference, I realized that everyone is willing to help. It's not about one person, it's about the overall success of Drupal. I connected with a few people and all of them are ready to dive in and help me to make it happen. Yay!!
Things I need to work on:
- Getting Drupal 7 installed and working on our server. I currently have Drupal 6 running on our server, but it's always been something that I struggled figuring out. Turns out that's what they fixed in 7 so now the new version is easy, peazy! Or so, that's what it looks like. They demo'd putting a site up for a Book store in 20 minutes with images, a checkout and navigation.
I can do this, I really can do this! :)
1 comment:
I'm so excited after reading this post because your own excitement is so palpable! It sounds like this was a truly worthwhile experience and the best part - in my opinion, is that you met some new people that you can call on for when you need help. How great is that? I love it when that happens. I'm so glad you were able to go!
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