Drupal Needs a New Home

reardonsteel writes "All of the Drupal websites were offline for about two days because of a server meltdown at the organization's hosting provider. The main Drupal website is back up with a single temporary page and they've announced a fund-raising drive to raise US$3000 for a new server to be hosted at the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University's server farm. Drupal is the leading open-source (written in PHP) content management system and is used to power tens of thousands of websites, blogs, community sites, etc." At this point, all they need is an actual server, too: the OSL has agreed to provide rack space, bandwidth, power, backup facilities and support.

Comments

WTF?

[n3k5]

if you need some sort of "content management system" to power your website, you probably aren't the type of person who should be having a web site. It only takes 30 minutes or so to custom build something that does exactly what you want it to [...]

Are you saying every web site out there should run on software written ad hoc, only for this one site, and every developer who needs more than 30 minutes to build it is an untalented loser?

[...] rather than spending probably hours configuring some bizarre conglomeration of weird things, that you'll then have to spend hours trying to figure out the code, if you have to make changes at that level.

I see, so you were unable to find one of the CMSs that run admirably right out of the box/package and offer lots of great features, and now you're pissed at CMSs in general and refuse to touch any of them again? There are several open source solutions you can get into at the source level in just one afternoon, which pays off in days and weeks of time saved every time you need to make a change or set up another site. I particularly like systems like Antville and Textpattern that let you change large parts of their own code right within your site itself. These aren't full blown, enterprise grade CMSs, but as these take months to develop, that's not what you're thinking of anyway. In 30 minutes you can write a little CGI script, but that won't offer validated HTML and CSS that works with pretty much every user agent, secure user accounts with multiple levels of privileges, etc. etc. Furthermore, your notion that only software developers should have web sites is just plain bonkers.

Or maybe there was some misunderstanding you could clear up?

Re:.....wtf

[Salamander]

It only takes 30 minutes or so to custom build something that does exactly what you want it to, rather than spending probably hours configuring some bizarre conglomeration of weird things, that you'll then have to spend hours trying to figure out the code, if you have to make changes at that level.

Bull. I used to write all of the code for my own website. It probably took me about a week of full-time-equivalent work, and it worked OK, but that's still a far cry from half an hour. Don't give me any of that crap about it being because you're a better programmer, either. I work on kernels and distributed systems for a living, and have done for over a decade. Web programming is something I do as a break from real work because it's so easy by comparison. Nonetheless, all you can get in half an hour is something that sucks. If you want something that's modular and maintainable, that takes more time. If you want something that's database-efficient, that takes more time...and flat-file-based systems are even worse so don't go there. If you want something that's standards-compliant, that takes more time...and your main page generated 130 errors when I ran it through the W3C validator. If you want it not to look like crap (again unlike your site) that takes more time. If you want to have features like markup in comments and comment preview, decent archive management, categories, and search (again unlike...) that takes more time. If you want to do all of those things and have it be secure, that takes more time; not knowing how to implement features securely is a poor excuse for having a low-functionality site. Do all that in under the week it took me, and I'll be impressed. So far, not even close.

My guess, based on your comment, is that you're another victim of the rewrite bug that often afflicts junior programmers. Writing code is not necessarily more efficient than reading other people's, but it is generally more fun so kiddies always want to rewrite everything in sight. What they end up with isn't usually any better, though. Most code that's written as an excuse not to understand something that already existed sucks far worse than what it replaces. That's why most of the people who roll their own website never even have the balls to make the result available for others to see. They know that it's a lot easier to claim superiority than to prove it.

if you need some sort of "content management system" to power your website, you probably aren't the type of person who should be having a web site.

That's the most offensive thing about your post, and why I went out of my way to be offensive right back. Sure, maybe you and I can (with varying degrees of success) write code to do the things that a typical weblog does, but why should we be the only ones to have sites? Why shouldn't high-school students and grandmothers have them too? Sure, most of what they write is crap, but so is most of what geeks write (including here). What purpose is served by having someone who might be able to contribute code in some other domain that you know nothing about have to learn your most treasured skills as the price of entry to the world of website ownership? What if their contribution is something other than code - like scientific knowledge or political insight? Aren't those valuable too? Thinking that everyone should value what you value is beyond elitist, and contrary to the spirit of free enterprise. It's just a crutch for insecurity, not a valid or useful attitude. It's almost as pathetic as posting fake-IQ-test results to your blog.