21 thoughts on “Should Performancing convert to WordPress?”
I am not a fan of Drupal at all. I’d go WordPress, but then you probably knew i would say that.
@Jeff: You’re probably discussing far more here than is necessary. Some of this doesn’t need to be discussed in the open.
No, not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying what Marcel is saying. The Perfomancing Blog goes to WP, everything else stays in Drupal. I’m not even saying to port existing blog content. I’m saying start a completely fresh WP blog at “http://performancing.com/”.
This is far far simpler than the original plan to port EVERYTHING into WP and related products. bbPress, for example, doesn’t hold a candle to the community features of Drupal. But as for having PM (Private Messaging). The main thing I’ll miss is the “discussion tracker”. However, that could be mimicked with a custom plugin. (Though the processing power and database requests required to run it might not be worth it.)
That’s all I can see that we’re losing. But if it’s technically achievable, we still have the old Drupal community features, including the personal blogs. Though it’s hard to say whether any new members should be allowed to sign up, given that moderating the spam is a time-consuming headache.
I enjoyed Drupal on Performancing. But Drupal is more time consuming to use, especially the upgrades.
Just some ideas
Why not let Drupal be the community and let WordPress be the blog.
Wordpress is a better blog
Drupal is can be a great community.
Move your official blog posts to WordPress
Add CAPTCHA for Drupal posts
Add Akismet for Drupal and WordPress comments
Actually, it still works like that. If someone’s content is that good, I, James or Ryan can promote it to the front page. You make a good point in that it would make for a good ego boost. Either we are not doing a good job promoting that feature of becoming a member of Performancing or it’s just another method of spam which we have to combat.
And I’ve spent the past couple minutes, looking into Drupal 6.2 which is leaps ahead of what Performancing is currently using and for the hell of it, perhaps the best thing to do with Performancing is to simply upgrade from our current version ALL THE WAY up to 6.2. Then revamp from there.
But my line of thinking is that, the only people who should be publishing anything should be the authors of the Performancing site and no one else.
Jeff, I don’t particularly agree with that point. As a long time reader, I think part of the charm of Performancing is that anyone can write on their personal Perf blog and, if it’s good enough, it just might be picked up by the editors and put on the front page. From personal experience that is valuable ego boost. At least, that’s how it used to work. Does it still work like that? If that’s no longer the case (a valid editorial decision in and of itself) then I guess the user blogs are less important.
Raj, you make plenty of valid points. You have written for Performancing.com so you know as well as anyone else who has written for Performancing about the backend of the site. The way I see it, WordPress is the best platform right now for publishing, but not exactly community ( I should say, community in the sense that this drupal installation/performancing has had to offer). There is of course, WPMU which would allow the Performancing site to be a WordPress powered site while allowing new users to create accounts giving them access to their own blog off of the performancing domain, but I really don’t understand the need for that as you have mentioned in your comments above, most of the user created blog posts on Performancing right now are considered spam anyways.
After using this Drupal install for the past month, I can see that it does things that a default WordPress install doesn’t do such as private messaging, various posting options and the ability for users to have their own blogs. But my line of thinking is that, the only people who should be publishing anything should be the authors of the Performancing site and no one else. That makes things much easier to manage and maintain as well as keeping the spam limited to the comments section, which Akismet has been known to do a damn good job of filtering out.
As for community, There steps in which we could take to develop a WordPress version of Performancing which would still offer plenty of community support. Comments being the main form, with options to submit articles, rank posts, rank comments, featured comments, featured users ect.
The thing is, everyone realizes that moving all of the awesome stuff that Performancing currently has into a working form without breaking anything and especially without turnings performancing links into a bunch of 404s is a task which would make anyone thinking about just push it to the side and continue to use this legacy install. No doubt would it become a serious project but if Performancing could simply export it’s (tags, comments, posts) with proper attributions I think that would be a huge step in the right direction. There are things which would have to be sacrificed. What those are and what happens to that stuff is up to Ryan but I don’t see a straight copy and paste job from Drupal Performancing over to WordPress Performancing.
Something that I have yet to mention is the Performancing forums. I’m not sure what Ryan should do with those but as far as I can tell, the forums are dead or at least not as active as they once were. I am sure there is plenty of archived content worth saving within those forums so if we were to migrate over to WordPress, it would probably be best to migrate to a WordPress/BBPress bridge type of installation which of course would make things that much more difficult.
Were talking Drupal into WordPress, Drupal Forum into BBpress, Making sure that WordPress and BBpress can work together without breaking or causing more errors than anyone knows that to do with.
All in all, I would have to give kudos to any single person or team of people who would undertake this project and pull it off successfully. But I really believe it can be done and that it is not impossible.
That is, there ARE very compelling editorial reasons, but to explain them invites criticism – often by people that never comment on posts otherwise.
Don’t forget that porting from Drupal to WordPress is NOT an easy task. So it’s by no means a cop-out that Performancing has not changed. Also, Performancing is a community, which Drupal served well. However, the current Drupal install makes it difficult to upload images, making the blog less visual overall. There are other issues as well, and I felt, ironically, that when I blogged here regularly, I couldn’t give my best performance, despite the name of the blog.
My feeling is the main blog should be WP, but that we retain every section currently in existence in Drupal. If that can be achieved technically, since the current home page in Drupal form has to change its URL (from, say, index.php to index2.php). So that way we’re not losing any of the community features. (So many of the “personal” blogs are spam anyway.
That said, I’m thinking Ryan asked members out of politeness – something he didn’t have to do. There are numerous reasons to switch to WP and there’s really no reason to air them to members. Ultimately, it’s an editorial/ publishing decision. Someone is always going to be unhappy about change, others will welcome it.
Are there any actual problems with the Drupal install? As an example, does applying security updates take too long or create too much uncertainty? Do new writers find it difficult to adapt to the backend? Does Drupal make the site slow, or tax the backend database too much? etc. etc.
I think you get the idea.
If everything is working fine albeit a little ‘different’ to what you’re used to, you need a very compelling reason to go to all that effort to shift platforms, port old (but very valuable) content across and make sure it’s all working as seamlessly as it was before.
There may well be compelling reasons for a shift but I don’t seem them yet.
Plenty of valid points have already been made. There are numerous issues which will need to be addressed if we are to port Performancing over to WordPress and those are:
Forums
Private Messages
Content archived from multiple authors
tags
functionality which was addresses through drupal modules
I as a writer would much rather use WordPress for content creation than anything else right now. Of course, I’m a wordpress fanboy so it would be hard for me to chime in here without a bias. But using a standalone version of WordPress would be good if we are focused on publishing great content. WordPress MU would be good to use if we wanted to continue having registered users have their own blog attached to Performancing. In my eyes, unless you are WordPress.com or a competitor, having users have their own blogs is just another administration headache which doesn’t aide in the publishing of content to the front page.
Performancing has been around since 2005 and as Ryan said, legacy has kept it from being moved to anything else and the sites backend has been stale for quite some time. I believe Performancing could be revamped with a move to the WordPress platform.
…I have to agree with T.Eastman that you’re really going to make sure you have your ducks all lined up in a row before you switch over. Performancing has been around a significant amount of time and there’s a lot of data and content that would have to be converted/ported over successfully. That in itself is not an reason not to undertake the switch but making sure you do all your homework prior to the actual conversion from one platform to another is absolutely essential so take your time.
And what about the forums?
With that said I’d have to think that in the long run you’d be much happier administering WordPress and the performance thereof.
Anxious to see what your decision will be.
Personally, I think using a CMS like Drupal or Joomla is overkill for a blog. I have sites using both Joomla and WordPress, and the WordPress site is by far the easiest one to manage and use. I also like the automatic archiving by month that is built into WP.
With that being said, be wary of doing the conversion if you choose to do so. Drupal’s database structure is different from WordPress, so make sure you have someone who really knows what they are doing to give you a hand.
Todd
I love wordpress and it was the first thing I used when I created my blog. It simplifies my life and make things so much easier. If it is a really big hassle to move to another platform (like you have to rename posts and stuff)… then you shouldn’t move. Maybe there might be a program that helps you convert from dupral to wordpress, who knows.
In every business office you’ll find someone using a spreadsheet for a database; and someone else using a database app to do things that really should be done in a spreadsheet. There have been studies conducted to find out why. And the conclusions they reached were pretty obvious: People prefer to use the first application they have learned really well. And furthermore, they will try to shoehorn everything they need to do through that application – even if there are obviously better alternatives available.
I think the best thing to do is get yourself clear on the differences between a blog engine and a content management system. Then take a look at what you’re doing and what you plan on doing in the future. Once you do that, I think you’ll answer your own question.
Not to play devil’s advocate (I’m a WP user all the way,) but what about MovableType?
Almost all of our readers use WordPress. So why are we using Drupal
Maybe you should explain how these two statements are at all related?
The answer, quite bluntly, is legacy. That’s not a good reason
“Because my readers said so,” is an even worse reason.
The question itself is silly to ask outsiders. Use the whatever you like to use and that fulfills your needs. The backend application should be invisible to your readers, anyway. Is there actually something quantifiable here? Does Drupal make your visitor’s lives difficult somehow? Saying you’ve stayed with Drupal because of “legacy” is a cop out. You haven’t changed because you haven’t had any reason to. And now you seem to be trying to manufacture a reason. Which I suppose means yes, go ahead and switch.
I picked the third option, simply because it said to “consider” WordPress mu. I’m not sure if that’s the right option for you, but it’s something to look at. I use on a few sites and it’s great!
That being said, I would suspect that a standard WP installation would be your best move.
“Almost all of our readers use WordPress.”
I’m on Blogger. Am I teh only reader on that platform?
If Drupal means one has to fill in the subject himself then please convert:-)
I really dont think the platform matters. As long as full rss feed is provided I am happy enough
I started this poll because I think it’s just about time (or maybe a year past due!) for Performancing to convert over to WordPress. Almost all of our readers use WordPress. So why are we using Drupal?
The answer, quite bluntly, is legacy. That’s not a good reason. So how about it. Should we go the WP route?
21 thoughts on “Should Performancing convert to WordPress?”
I am not a fan of Drupal at all. I’d go WordPress, but then you probably knew i would say that.
@Jeff: You’re probably discussing far more here than is necessary. Some of this doesn’t need to be discussed in the open.
No, not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying what Marcel is saying. The Perfomancing Blog goes to WP, everything else stays in Drupal. I’m not even saying to port existing blog content. I’m saying start a completely fresh WP blog at “http://performancing.com/”.
This is far far simpler than the original plan to port EVERYTHING into WP and related products. bbPress, for example, doesn’t hold a candle to the community features of Drupal. But as for having PM (Private Messaging). The main thing I’ll miss is the “discussion tracker”. However, that could be mimicked with a custom plugin. (Though the processing power and database requests required to run it might not be worth it.)
That’s all I can see that we’re losing. But if it’s technically achievable, we still have the old Drupal community features, including the personal blogs. Though it’s hard to say whether any new members should be allowed to sign up, given that moderating the spam is a time-consuming headache.
I enjoyed Drupal on Performancing. But Drupal is more time consuming to use, especially the upgrades.
Just some ideas
Why not let Drupal be the community and let WordPress be the blog.
Wordpress is a better blog
Drupal is can be a great community.
Move your official blog posts to WordPress
Add CAPTCHA for Drupal posts
Add Akismet for Drupal and WordPress comments
Actually, it still works like that. If someone’s content is that good, I, James or Ryan can promote it to the front page. You make a good point in that it would make for a good ego boost. Either we are not doing a good job promoting that feature of becoming a member of Performancing or it’s just another method of spam which we have to combat.
And I’ve spent the past couple minutes, looking into Drupal 6.2 which is leaps ahead of what Performancing is currently using and for the hell of it, perhaps the best thing to do with Performancing is to simply upgrade from our current version ALL THE WAY up to 6.2. Then revamp from there.
But my line of thinking is that, the only people who should be publishing anything should be the authors of the Performancing site and no one else.
Jeff, I don’t particularly agree with that point. As a long time reader, I think part of the charm of Performancing is that anyone can write on their personal Perf blog and, if it’s good enough, it just might be picked up by the editors and put on the front page. From personal experience that is valuable ego boost. At least, that’s how it used to work. Does it still work like that? If that’s no longer the case (a valid editorial decision in and of itself) then I guess the user blogs are less important.
Raj, you make plenty of valid points. You have written for Performancing.com so you know as well as anyone else who has written for Performancing about the backend of the site. The way I see it, WordPress is the best platform right now for publishing, but not exactly community ( I should say, community in the sense that this drupal installation/performancing has had to offer). There is of course, WPMU which would allow the Performancing site to be a WordPress powered site while allowing new users to create accounts giving them access to their own blog off of the performancing domain, but I really don’t understand the need for that as you have mentioned in your comments above, most of the user created blog posts on Performancing right now are considered spam anyways.
After using this Drupal install for the past month, I can see that it does things that a default WordPress install doesn’t do such as private messaging, various posting options and the ability for users to have their own blogs. But my line of thinking is that, the only people who should be publishing anything should be the authors of the Performancing site and no one else. That makes things much easier to manage and maintain as well as keeping the spam limited to the comments section, which Akismet has been known to do a damn good job of filtering out.
As for community, There steps in which we could take to develop a WordPress version of Performancing which would still offer plenty of community support. Comments being the main form, with options to submit articles, rank posts, rank comments, featured comments, featured users ect.
The thing is, everyone realizes that moving all of the awesome stuff that Performancing currently has into a working form without breaking anything and especially without turnings performancing links into a bunch of 404s is a task which would make anyone thinking about just push it to the side and continue to use this legacy install. No doubt would it become a serious project but if Performancing could simply export it’s (tags, comments, posts) with proper attributions I think that would be a huge step in the right direction. There are things which would have to be sacrificed. What those are and what happens to that stuff is up to Ryan but I don’t see a straight copy and paste job from Drupal Performancing over to WordPress Performancing.
Something that I have yet to mention is the Performancing forums. I’m not sure what Ryan should do with those but as far as I can tell, the forums are dead or at least not as active as they once were. I am sure there is plenty of archived content worth saving within those forums so if we were to migrate over to WordPress, it would probably be best to migrate to a WordPress/BBPress bridge type of installation which of course would make things that much more difficult.
Were talking Drupal into WordPress, Drupal Forum into BBpress, Making sure that WordPress and BBpress can work together without breaking or causing more errors than anyone knows that to do with.
All in all, I would have to give kudos to any single person or team of people who would undertake this project and pull it off successfully. But I really believe it can be done and that it is not impossible.
That is, there ARE very compelling editorial reasons, but to explain them invites criticism – often by people that never comment on posts otherwise.
Don’t forget that porting from Drupal to WordPress is NOT an easy task. So it’s by no means a cop-out that Performancing has not changed. Also, Performancing is a community, which Drupal served well. However, the current Drupal install makes it difficult to upload images, making the blog less visual overall. There are other issues as well, and I felt, ironically, that when I blogged here regularly, I couldn’t give my best performance, despite the name of the blog.
My feeling is the main blog should be WP, but that we retain every section currently in existence in Drupal. If that can be achieved technically, since the current home page in Drupal form has to change its URL (from, say, index.php to index2.php). So that way we’re not losing any of the community features. (So many of the “personal” blogs are spam anyway.
That said, I’m thinking Ryan asked members out of politeness – something he didn’t have to do. There are numerous reasons to switch to WP and there’s really no reason to air them to members. Ultimately, it’s an editorial/ publishing decision. Someone is always going to be unhappy about change, others will welcome it.
Are there any actual problems with the Drupal install? As an example, does applying security updates take too long or create too much uncertainty? Do new writers find it difficult to adapt to the backend? Does Drupal make the site slow, or tax the backend database too much? etc. etc.
I think you get the idea.
If everything is working fine albeit a little ‘different’ to what you’re used to, you need a very compelling reason to go to all that effort to shift platforms, port old (but very valuable) content across and make sure it’s all working as seamlessly as it was before.
There may well be compelling reasons for a shift but I don’t seem them yet.
Plenty of valid points have already been made. There are numerous issues which will need to be addressed if we are to port Performancing over to WordPress and those are:
Forums
Private Messages
Content archived from multiple authors
tags
functionality which was addresses through drupal modules
I as a writer would much rather use WordPress for content creation than anything else right now. Of course, I’m a wordpress fanboy so it would be hard for me to chime in here without a bias. But using a standalone version of WordPress would be good if we are focused on publishing great content. WordPress MU would be good to use if we wanted to continue having registered users have their own blog attached to Performancing. In my eyes, unless you are WordPress.com or a competitor, having users have their own blogs is just another administration headache which doesn’t aide in the publishing of content to the front page.
Performancing has been around since 2005 and as Ryan said, legacy has kept it from being moved to anything else and the sites backend has been stale for quite some time. I believe Performancing could be revamped with a move to the WordPress platform.
…I have to agree with T.Eastman that you’re really going to make sure you have your ducks all lined up in a row before you switch over. Performancing has been around a significant amount of time and there’s a lot of data and content that would have to be converted/ported over successfully. That in itself is not an reason not to undertake the switch but making sure you do all your homework prior to the actual conversion from one platform to another is absolutely essential so take your time.
And what about the forums?
With that said I’d have to think that in the long run you’d be much happier administering WordPress and the performance thereof.
Anxious to see what your decision will be.
Personally, I think using a CMS like Drupal or Joomla is overkill for a blog. I have sites using both Joomla and WordPress, and the WordPress site is by far the easiest one to manage and use. I also like the automatic archiving by month that is built into WP.
With that being said, be wary of doing the conversion if you choose to do so. Drupal’s database structure is different from WordPress, so make sure you have someone who really knows what they are doing to give you a hand.
Todd
I love wordpress and it was the first thing I used when I created my blog. It simplifies my life and make things so much easier. If it is a really big hassle to move to another platform (like you have to rename posts and stuff)… then you shouldn’t move. Maybe there might be a program that helps you convert from dupral to wordpress, who knows.
In every business office you’ll find someone using a spreadsheet for a database; and someone else using a database app to do things that really should be done in a spreadsheet. There have been studies conducted to find out why. And the conclusions they reached were pretty obvious: People prefer to use the first application they have learned really well. And furthermore, they will try to shoehorn everything they need to do through that application – even if there are obviously better alternatives available.
I think the best thing to do is get yourself clear on the differences between a blog engine and a content management system. Then take a look at what you’re doing and what you plan on doing in the future. Once you do that, I think you’ll answer your own question.
Not to play devil’s advocate (I’m a WP user all the way,) but what about MovableType?
Maybe you should explain how these two statements are at all related?
“Because my readers said so,” is an even worse reason.
The question itself is silly to ask outsiders. Use the whatever you like to use and that fulfills your needs. The backend application should be invisible to your readers, anyway. Is there actually something quantifiable here? Does Drupal make your visitor’s lives difficult somehow? Saying you’ve stayed with Drupal because of “legacy” is a cop out. You haven’t changed because you haven’t had any reason to. And now you seem to be trying to manufacture a reason. Which I suppose means yes, go ahead and switch.
I picked the third option, simply because it said to “consider” WordPress mu. I’m not sure if that’s the right option for you, but it’s something to look at. I use on a few sites and it’s great!
That being said, I would suspect that a standard WP installation would be your best move.
“Almost all of our readers use WordPress.”
I’m on Blogger. Am I teh only reader on that platform?
If Drupal means one has to fill in the subject himself then please convert:-)
I really dont think the platform matters. As long as full rss feed is provided I am happy enough
I started this poll because I think it’s just about time (or maybe a year past due!) for Performancing to convert over to WordPress. Almost all of our readers use WordPress. So why are we using Drupal?
The answer, quite bluntly, is legacy. That’s not a good reason. So how about it. Should we go the WP route?
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