Drupal

Another project from the Population Research Institute. This site showcases their line of funny videos exploding the myth of overpopulation, while also explaining the research behind their conclusions. As with pop.org, the design is theirs; I build their mockups in Drupal and CSS. Also like pop.org, this site began on Joomla, but I moved it to Drupal.

Not long after the move, I saw the power of Drupal modules yet again, when they decided to run a T-shirt design contest. Could I set up a way for visitors to vote on their favorite T-shirt design? A quick search on drupal.org, and I had a good, solid module that would do just that.

DrupalJoomla

When I first started working with the Population Research Institute, their website relied on a proprietary content management system. Their site offered hundreds of articles, but they were full of hard-coded formatting like fonts, heading sizes, and colors (such as purple). Many hours of Perl and proofreading later, PRI had a new Joomla site with a clean, consistent look.

Joomla served them well, but fortunately, by the time they discovered the real constraints, I had discovered Drupal.

DrupalJoomlaPHP

St. Mary's Messenger is a new Catholic kids' magazine (ages 7-12), and most of our energy goes into the print version. (I'm also the editor and layout guy.) But we know the web site is our crucial tool for keeping in touch with our readers.

I was very happy to migrate this site from Joomla to Drupal. In past years, with Joomla, I had to write custom PHP scripts whenever we wanted to get custom feedback (e.g., a drop-down list of answers) from potential readers. Today, with Drupal profiles and CCK, it's almost too easy.

DrupalJoomla

A good example of a site that starts out as a "simple brochure site," but soon requires a few special touches. I helped this client feature a video (hosted on Vimeo), and set up a large photo gallery (hundreds of photos).

I originally set this up in Joomla. When we revamped the festival the following year, I happily migrated it to Drupal 7.