drupal

The Main tab for a Drupal deployment script configuration.

Tonight I gave a presentation to the Waterloo Region User Group about choosing a host for a Drupal based site. We talked about the essential requirements on top of the Drupal requirements, types of hosting, and our experiences with various hosts. I think the results of the discussion can be summed up as "you get what you pay for"! I've attached the presentation slides for anyone interested.

The essential features I noted as being important include:

I just released Restricted Search 1.1. This is a module for the Drupal Content Management System which allows individual nodes or entire content types to be excluded from the search engine. This is very useful in systems where nodes may need to be able to be accessed by users, but clutter up the search results due to their volume. For more information, see the project page.

I had an interesting thought: FileMaker is often used as a simple way to create forms for different types of data and methods to display all of the records. I wonder if a custom distribution of Drupal could be built to cater to this audience, by providing a local all-in-one install of Drupal, preconfigured with CCK, Views, or perhaps Simple Views. The biggest challenge would be to deal with custom presentations (FileMaker makes it pretty simple to do both layout and style, whereas with Drupal you have to do custom theming).