Drupal - A Review and Some Recommendations
When I initially setup a website for my consulting firm I decided to use Drupal. After months of letting the site lay dormant (I was too busy actually working) I decided to take some time to get it running. I must say that I am impressed.
What I Need
As with all websites it is important to have a clear idea of what you want out of the website. I split to split this into two separate lists - what I need now, and what I want in the future. In this post I will go into what I need now.
- Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics.
- Provide an easy way for prospective clients to contact me.
- Provide an easy way to update the site.
- A blogging mechanism.
How I Got There
Visitor Tracking via Google Analytics
Visitor tracking is important to any business. It provides a way to see a few things - Are people actually visiting the site? How long are they staying? Who is talking about site?
Setting up Google Analytics is easy enough - add some Javascript to the theme and be on your way. What happens when you want to switch the theme? You have to go back and update the theme. I don’t plan on changing the theme to often but why do it if I don’t have to?
The Google Analytics Project provides the ability to use Google Analytics without having to worry about the theme. It also provides lots of other useful features:
- Role Tracking - Only track the types of users you care about. Do you really need to track what your team is doing? Probably not.
- Profile/User Segmentation - This only works for people who have accounts on your site, but it’s still a nice feature. It gives you the ability to see which users did what or even track where the users are from!
- Download Tracking - If your site offers downloads, this is a must. Imagine the following situation: You post a PDF of the requirements for a project you’re working on. You can validate whether someone, in particular, the certain user (or users) has looked at it. Great to know if you’re worried about your project schedule.
Provide an easy way to prospective clients to contact me
Why have a website if the visitors can’t inquire about your services? I provide a simple page with contact details and mailto: links but that’s rather boring and doesn’t provide many features. So I wanted a form that users could use. Now, I could write my own form to do this but every time I wanted a new form, or I wanted to change an existing form I would have to update code. Being a programmer, this isn’t really difficult, but I wanted it easier.
The Webform module provides pretty much everything I want. With no programming involved at all I was able to create a form that collects all the information that I’m curious about. It also provides more nice features - it will automatically email the form, store the results in the database, and it also works with the Captcha project to prevent Spam.
Also be sure to check the Webform Report project. I haven’t worked with it enough to write it up, but it does looking like a promising reporting tool.
Provide an easy way to update the site
This feature is default with Drupal. I would go so far as to say that Drupal is simplicity. Don’t get me wrong, there is a learning curve involved but just click around inside of Drupal for an hour or so and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.
A blogging mechanism
Another great feature of Drupal is its blogging mechanism. Again, it’s another feature that comes with Drupal. Each user can have their own!
Finalize
So far my experience with Drupal has been great. I have been able to find modules for all the things I’ve been trying to accomplish. And I’m certain that I could write my own module if I can’t, especially after looking over the Developer’s Guide.
Linked List
The list below provides an easy way to get to some of the websites that I’ve written about.
Sunday, October 14th, 2007