After reading your article, I think I have swayed towrds Drupal.

Thanks for the article

I think one of the key benefits to Drupal is that there is an amazingly enormous amount of functionality behind it without ever actually needing to write a single line of code. That, still, blows me away.

One of the most incredibly powerful tools you’ve left out of this post is CCK. I consider CCK, along with Views, to be absolutely indispensable to a drupal site. To be quite honest, I am hoping that someday CCK and Views are core modules for the actual creation of content types and site pages, but that’s a long ways off (like v7/8 ).

As a long time WP user, it’s been pretty staggering working with Drupal so far. One thing, however, that has been a NIGHTMARE compared to working in WP is that themeing in Drupal is pretty much the most difficult time I’ve ever had themeing anything. Sheesh.

This post came at a most excellent time for me, as I’m preparing to move my site into launch. As I’m getting this Ready to Go, for our winter quarter, the question that has come up most clearly, is one of simplicity (the KISS factor) v/s built-in functionality (the candybox factor when reviewing the extensive Drupal modules pages, and all their amazing possibilities).

And in reference to Gardner Campbell’s Theme Parks and Sandboxes article which you recently linked (thanks, what a great read), it occurs to me that there is something between a Sandbox and a Theme Park – & that’s a big box of Legos (and when it comes to a platform like Drupal, it’s a really Big Box).

So I’m deliberating … Is it best to leave a site like this a Sandbox, or to develop it into a box of Legos?
e.g. – re sharing weblinks among users – what are the advantages, one way or the other, from the educational perspective – of creating formal respositories of weblinks which users can contribute to and build up over time – v/s merely permitting users to share a link or two here or there in Blog posts? To creating Bibliography pages where users can assemble Useful References, to merely permitting conversations such as this to be shared in Blog postings? One might argue that by creating things such as Links Repositories and assembled Bibliographies, something of durable value is created, which future users will be able to access, and they will not need to “re-invent the wheel” as such. But wait a minute – what we’ve really done, perhaps, is permitted the early users to create a Theme Park – albeit out of Legos – for the “benefit” of future users, and redirected the attention of future users from the Sandbox functions of the site – which is where the real learning occurs.

I’ve decided to go Simple, so I’m constructing another site just for myself with all the features built in (just ’cause I can’t keep my hands off of all the toys …).

I’d love to hear others’ thoughts & experiences.

Will Taylor
National College of Natural Medicine
Portland, Oregon

I’ve been working on just this very thing, presently in prelaunch for our community, & have recently upgraded it to Drupal 5.3.
We’re using Moodle as an LMS, but are in the process of converting from a relatively fragmented course-by-course curriculum to a more integrated, problem-based curriculum – so are wanting to augment the excellent course-support provided in the Moodle platform, with a platform that bores across the curriculum – permitting journaling/blogging, portfolio development, access to multimedia learning objects, permits learner group development & support, &c.

I might add to your list, to meet the needs of a learning community such as ours, a good aggregator that can create site-wide-accessible as well as organic-group restricted aggregated feed pages. I’m using SimpleFeed, as the built-in Aggregator module seems to break my installation. The Bibliography module also looks promising for our needs. (the Drupal module archives is a bit of a candy box …)

Thanks for the reference to Anarchy Media Player! I’ll let you know how this works for us.

Am still waiting for a simple solution to single sign-on for a Drupal/Moodle installation, this would be great to provide a more seamless experience to the user.

Will Taylor
National College of Natural Medicine
Portland, Oregon