How Drupal Will Save The World, and other things that seem like they’re only for nerds, but that shouldn’t be
The Green Wheels website is moving to a new home at www.green-wheels.org, and as part of that move, we’re transitioning the site from our old content management system (CMS), to a new one, Drupal. A content management system makes it easy for Green Wheels people to log in with a password to change and add stuff. It’s exciting to get everyone involved in content publishing, but unfortunately CMS implementation is easier said than done.
With nerd and non-nerds alike, I just wanted to share some articles and resources I was inspired by:
- How Drupal will save the world (by Jeff Robins) - Good article describes how powerful and useful web-publishing through a CMS can be for the civic sector, but also makes the case Drupal needs to be made much easier for newbies (I hear ya, Jeff!)
- NetSquared, remixing the web for social change - they’ve sponsored a lot of good and inspiring projects here.
- TechSoup, the technology place for nonprofits - This one’s on my feed list in Google Reader now! We need something like this for Humboldt Count — a supporting organization to help our great nonprofits utilize insanely great tools, many of which are practically free. I’ve been calling for this for some time. If anyone wants to set up a group to help make this happen, email me.
aaron :: Jul.10.2007 :: Information tech ::
Glad to find your blog. I read the article ‘How Drupal will save the world’ and liked it very much. I also read all the comments. It’s interesting that the overwhelming sentiment in the comments is similar to what I wrote to you about Drupal. It’s a great tool. But it’s not for the faint of heart. But it keeps improving. And each time we do a new site with it we learn a lot. But I don’t think it will ever be the single tool every project.
Free tools are great. But even the simplest tool will require a developer to install, configure, create or modify a template and, if necessary further customize Drupal, WordPress or any free software. And then they need to train the staff to use the thing. Few non-profits will have an in-house IT person capable of these chores. So, unless there is a group of volunteer developers willing to donate a ton of time there will still be cost involved.