I set up my test Drupal site on WOS (WebServer on a Stick; see this post on my blog for info about WOS). I”m still exploring options, and having a server on a USB stick makes it easy to test stuff.

To answer your questions:

1. By accommodate, do you mean it sets up a user-friendly navigation structure for the pages too?
Drupal has an incredible number of options. You choose whether or not to display menus and what to display in those menus. You specify a location for the menus you have chosen. So, your navigation structure is up to you, and you customize it by making selections and entering choices on Drupal’s administration pages./ I currently have my test site set up (with only a few pages) to display the static pages at the top of my left sidebar by category.

2. Does Drupal have a lot of plugins and themes? I’ve run across quite a few, but I have no idea whether Drupal measures up to WordPress in number of plugins and themes.

3. What do you find easiest and hardest about the software?
The installation was straightforward and easy. The adminstrator’s interface is fairly simple as well. I think making effective use of Drupal requires a good deal of forethought and some serious planning, because there are so many choices. And I don’t yet have a handle on the best ways to select and customize themes in Drupal. I expected to have an easier time customizing Drupal because of my experience with WordPress, but that’s not the case, probably because of the multiplicity of Drupal options. You can put almost anything anywhere, and it is tricky making sure the final appearance is what you want.

You can’t beat WordPress for blogging, but I’m still interested in Drupal for its CM features and its book collaboration module, which I’m thinking could be useful for team brainstorming as well as doc editing and reviews.

FWIW.

I’m really impressed with the STC West Coast Canada chapter’s site. Kevin did a super-professional job creating it. I see how you have restricted certain areas of the site. Similar restrictions are possible with WordPress. I was about to faint when I thought you’d integrated the STC membership login with the job postings login. I wish I could figure out a way to do that with WordPress, so that people would have a single sign on between stc.org and stc-suncoast.org.

Both Kevin and Rahel have been singing the praises of Expression Engine for quite some time. I’m curious whether paid software will win out over open source in the long run. WordPress has thousands of enthusiastic developers creating new plugins and themes every day. There’s even a WordPress podcast. Does Expression Engine have the same community, or is that community limited due to the cost requirement of the software?

Also, can you do things like add Top Commenters (as you see in my sidebar)? Or integrate Akismet and a math plugin to filter spam without requiring users to sign in? Are there plugins like WordPress-Feedburner plugin that automatically reroute your feed through FeedBurner? What about creating an index like you see if you click the Post Index link at the top?

I’m just curious. I need to learn more about Expression Engine and Drupal, but I barely have time to keep up with what I currently have going.

I have another question. I noticed you restricted job listings to Canada West chapter members only. Did that bring more revenue to your chapter? Our chapter was very split over that issue. It was about 50/50, with half believing that restricting jobs created more value for membership, and the other half opposed for other reasons. I can see why it can be frustrating to belong to the STC, but not be able to view job postings outside one’s chapter.

Thanks for sharing about Drupal. I assume the link in your name points to the Drupal site you set up? I did write a little bit about Drupal the other week, but I want to really explore it in-depth some time.

Most of the features you mentioned can be done in WordPress too, except for the forum. You said Drupal easily accommodates a large number of pages. By accommodate, do you mean it sets up a user-friendly navigation structure for the pages too? WordPress supports thousands of pages, and setting up parent and child pages is easy. It’s just that it might require some custom styling of the navigation structure because most themes aren’t set up specifically to be content management systems. WordPress is best when your primary focus is blogging.

Can you share more about your experiences with Drupal? Does it have a lot of plugins and themes? What do you find easiest and hardest about the software?

For example, a Drupal site can accommodate a large number of static pages as well as a dynamic journaling blog. Want to add a forum as well as a blog. No problem. Want to customize a theme? Edit the style and template pages at will. Want to restrict access to certain pages? Set up group or role access privileges and assign users appropriately.

I set up a quick prototype (on my localhost server) with some typical taxonomic categories and customized a theme to include the STC logo with 6-8 hours of effort. Of course, that was something less than real proof-of-concept

You can read more about drupal at http://drupal.org/. It’s an interesting option to consider for a chapter website, I think.

http://www.stcwestcoast.ca

We had a consultant (Kevin Shoesmith http://www.venncommunications.com/) implement the Expression Engine backend for us. It’s not as easy to set up as WordPress, but we had some requirements that (at the time and perhaps now too) required something more than WordPress. Can change now!