Vision

I set out with the vision to create  a site that had content feeds from all over the place with the ability to comment and discuss, I also wanted to build in image hosting.

Fairly obviously the content feeds should come from RSS and so I’d want to aggregate and display nicely. I had a search and most RSS display stuff seems to be client side using AJAX which I didn’t like very much. But I was sure RSS was the way. For discussion I wanted to use phpBB because I’ve been a member on phpBB boards and like the clean style and readability of it.

Drupal

I don’t know php so I set about looking for some sort of portal software to run everything and do the RSS aggregation for me. I came accross Drupal which was recommended as being simple to use.

It is, but it’s very limited – I had a specific look in mind for my site using multiple columns of RSS info (as is currently shown on the homepage) and that seemed almost impossible to do. I had a look at some plugins like “panels” and “tabs” and even got a bridge working between Drupal and phpBB that meant I could get private message notifications and user sessions working across the two bits of software. This didn’t work out though for a number of reasons:

1. The look and feel of the site was inconsistent between the homepage and forum which made it feel like two separate sites
2. The homepage, using drupal plugins for columns was a nightmare to configure – massively overcomplicated! Drupal is simple, but these plugins aren’t!
3. Drupal is too restrictive on styling and based on the complexity of the multi column plugins the idea of customising it filled be with a horror akin to being told I would have to listen to a Steps album!

Conclusion

Drupal is good to get a simple content management system up and running quickly, it’s also pretty simple to do something like RSS aggregation in it. I’m sure that with the patience of some saints you can customise it to do pretty much whatever you want as well.

For me it was just too restrictive and clunky. It’s great if you want a simple website up and running and have little to no knowledge. However if you’ve got specific design and functionality goals in mind and a bit of knowledge there are better options!