About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post titled “I Hate Drupal.” It’s turned out to be one of the most popular and enduring posts on this blog. The post continues to draw traffic and comments despite its age.
Why then, you might ask, did I lose my mind and recommend and implement Drupal for a recent client? You’d think I’d have known what I was going to do to myself based my previous Drupal disasters — and make no mistake, Drupal is always a disaster. But, no, I signed up for the full Monty Drupal nightmare.
This middle-of-the-night cold-sweat wake-up includes the high-priced prima donna Drupal developers who come at you with knives if dare to question Drupal. Sentenced to Drupal Hell, you have to sit still while they endlessly repeat how wonderful Drupal is — and keep smiling as they miss every deadline and under-deliver when they deign to deliver at all. And you know, even as your nightmare continues, that your suffering won’t be complete until you make the simplest change in the content — which necessitates editing content in raw, white-space removed HTML.
In the end, the client’s management team hated the website. I hated the website even though in the end it worked well enough. The investors hated the website. I can only assume visitors hated the website, too. Or at least that was what the conventional wisdom settled on as the “truth,” no matter how good the actual content was. I labored to find Drupal developers who were competent and affordable to try to “rescue” the mess, to no avail. They kept leaving me holding the bag. Drupal’s blogging capabilities — something that’s hugely important for a new site — were so bad that the first thing I did was convert the client’s blog to WordPress. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t make the Drupal blog look, feel or act like a “normal” blog, much less one with the capabilities of WordPress. I am certain no Drupal developer costing less than a $50,000 contract can, either.
But now — finally — I am acting on my convictions. My new client needs a new website. And this time, this time, it’s gonna be a WordPress site. I am working with a talented designer, someone I know I can trust. I’ve been with WordPress since the early, dark days. Unlike Drupal, which is permanently mired in a troubled adolescence, WordPress has matured into a sleek, fast, mature adult. I can’t wait to get started on the new website.
Fellow Drupal haters: I fell off the wagon for reasons I still can’t explain. But never again. NEVER AGAIN. Don’t let it happen to you.
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