I’ve really enjoying playing with Drupal the past few weeks. We’ve done a site redesign at SLA, and now our DrupalEd install is our front page. I’ve learned a ton about Drupal, and while it does have a steeper learning curve than a lot of other systems, it is insanely flexible and powerful.

I’ve learned how to configure menus, ported the homework checker from Moodle (the first piece of real interactivity between Moodle and Drupal at SLA), configured a Upcoming Events calendar so that we can have that as a sidebar on the side of our page, posted our Student Handbook in wiki-style format, created a private faculty handbook wiki that we will continue to build together over time, and generally tweaked the site so that it closer and closer to what I want our web site to be. (And as soon as we have a student who is willing to take a stab at designing a sleek custom theme, we’ll redesign the look, too.)

As we continue our work with SchoolTool, and as both SchoolTool and I play with interoperability between SchoolTool, Moodle and Drupal, we will move closer and closer to the Killer App that I’ve been dreaming about. I’ve no doubt now that Drupal is the absolute right pick as the content management system for that app.

(oh… and just a huge shout-out to Bill Fitzgerald of FunnyMonkey. He is as patient and available mentor as a person could want with Drupal. If you need a consultant or you have specific needs for a DrupalEd install, hire him. He is a teacher first which means that a) he can teach how to use this stuff, and b) his solutions make sense for schools and the classroom. Without the changes in Drupal that he has made by creating DrupalEd, there’s no way I would have seen the power of Drupal in schools. And without his patient mentoring, there’s no way we would have been ready to move Drupal to be the front of our website. Thank you, Bill!)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: SLA, drupal, open source, killer app