A Love Story - How Drupal Cured My Mushing Madness

In the Beginning

The website in question, Sleddoggin.com, was a gigantic - static mess. Self built PHP apps were running simple classifieds, form submission scripts were handling submissions, PHP Includes were running rampant - and the list continued. In essence - I was spending more time fixing bugs and developing small applications; and little time interacting with the community, and compiling news pieces, articles, interviews, etc...I literally had hundreds of emails waiting to be converted into Event listings, classifieds, and site submissions.

At first - Joomla was the CMS of choice. I threw it onto my website - doodled for a bit; and tried to make it work. It didn't. It might be a CMS that works spendidly for others; but me and my needs, it didn't match well. It was out into cyberspace once more to research and find a better, perfect content management system. After much chatting & reading - I finally settled on Drupal. My match had been found.

Design & Behind the Scenes Work

In all honesty - I was a bit intimidated. My first few "versions" of Sleddoggin using Drupal were simple and scantily clad to say the least. No matter what I did - I couldn't get away from that "bloggy" post like feeling on my home page - and I just was not happy with the theme I had chosen. Weeks went by - I kept studying; and soon after - everything just "clicked." I understood Taxonomy, knew how I wanted to build my theme, which modules I needed - and how the layout of my site would work. Each and everyday I become even more excited by what I learn and find with Drupal.

As for the theme I first tried Marinelli. It's an excellent theme - but just wasn't quite custom enough. All in all - I've decided that you've got to pretty much build your own theme; to become happy - as every site has its own needs. Every community is different. You might recognize some trace elements of Marinelli in my latest design (e.g. beautiful header images) - but most of it is custom tweaked now. I'm finally to a point where I'm pretty much happy with my design. I've incorporated drop down menus (which still need a bunch of work), a nice home page image slideshow, sidebars - and my pride and joy; block views.

Views are amazing. The first few weeks of installing Drupal - all I did was drool over other webmaster's work; as I was purely ecstatic over the use of thumbnails, blocks, etc...These past few weeks - I've finally been able to grasp the understanding of how to get CCK and Views to function properly. I'll tell you straight up - it's changed my entire site. Literally.

I still have a lot of work to do. It will take a few weeks to get my CSS styles just right for my stories/pages, another week just in standards compliance, etc...Websites are always but a work in progress.

Conclusion

After redesigning the website, and implementing further use of Views/CCK - my website has grown tremendously. Visitors can easily grasp new content by visiting the home page - they can head out to the forums (I use phpBB), read a quick article, skim through an interview - all without missing a beat. It's wonderful. Drupal has brought so much order to not only my visitor's lives - but to MINE! I now can easily post a new story - all with the click of a button. No more laborious coding of seemingly useless materials (e.g. linking new articles to a static hub page).

I'm free of my previous troubles - and I'm so very glad I chose Drupal. Yes - I still have a good amount of work to do with the site regarding design and backend; but it's all just a walk in the park considering my previous ordeals.

I'm ALWAYS open to suggestions in how to make the site better - so if you notice any bugs, have a suggestion on layout/design - just let me know. I appreciate all feedback.

If you've got a question that I might be able to help with - please, by all means - type away! This community has given me much - and I'd like to give back as much as possible.

Cheerful Trails,

Christian

URL: http://sleddoggin.com

P.S. Would have written more - but it's time for bed. :-)