Early dooce® v6 Nerd FAQ
November 19th, 2007This will be a quick post, as we’re still watching the server and making sure things are working. Bear with us while we make the transition. I hope to answer some questions about the new dooce® redesign that we’re getting from readers from the geek side of things.
Why Drupal?
The site needed a robust framework that could handle a diverse and changing set of criteria. We could have gone any number of ways, but making the switch from a primarily static page site to a dynamic one steered us quickly towards Drupal. It’s open source and has the flexibility we were looking for. There are a lot of great platforms out there, but I had been watching a handful up close, including Drupal, for several years. It seems that in the last couple of years, Drupal has had a ton of work done on it, to it and with it. The development community around it solves similar problems to those we have in terms of server nerdery with dooce.com. Again, any number of solutions would have worked, Drupal seemed the best fit after a few years of watching different systems morph, rise and fall.
Did you have help?
Oh yes we did. Heather did the design comps, I did the first rounds of CSS and slicing and added a couple of small touches that Heather art directed and we hired some awesome developers. We needed help with theming in Drupal (it’s notorious for being cranky) and after seeing Merlin Mann launch 43folders on Drupal, we used a couple of the same folks because we were tackling similar issues; database migration, theming and caching. I can’t speak highly enough of the 43folders redesign and how inspirational it was in the decision to migrate platforms.
On the theming front, we hired RoopleTheme who steered us through some challenges (new content types and templates for Daily Chuck, Daily Photo and Daily Style) as well as did the backbreaking work of taking my HTML/CSS work and getting it to function inside of Drupal. Bill from Roople also had some tricks up his sleeve with using Drupal’s blocks and modules. Really tasty. The second need was to migrate our Movable Type MySQL database into something Drupal could use as well as set up a testing server and move stuff from there to the live site. We also needed some help with caching and some custom module work for functionality and found a great help in Ben Durbin, who made last night’s launch the easiest ever. There’s no way Heather and I could have pulled this off without these guys. Ben is one of those maddeningly awesome people who can answer obtuse questions from weird people with ease. I am not sure I possess either the technical knowledge or the verbal prowess to describe the tech mastery he pulled off, but if I was really rich I’d pay him loads of money to make stuff every day. Hire both of these people immediately.
Have you noticed huge issues moving from static pages to dynamic?
Drupal’s caching mechanisms as well as server setup have yielded a slightly bigger bump in server usage, but nothing like I thought we’d see. Opening comments will be the real test.
Where’s the feed?
Working on it. Will likely be live tonight. You can re-subscribe if you want, but we’ll be doing a redirect later that should keep your subscription intact. Just be patient.
Where are the Next/Previous links?
Coming. Heather and I had to have a talk about how people use them. There was discussion about moving through categories versus moving through content. Given the work that was done to aggregate all of the old content and blog settings, we were unclear about how they should function. Your emails have helped us decide the direction to go. I’d love to have them live tonight, but not sure if it’s something we can get to given some other issues that need addressing. Hold tight for them, they are coming.
You should have used [insert favorite CMS]
Perhaps. Perhaps. So far, so good. Very happy with our choice and wish no other vendors anything but success. Keep on making great software. People are always looking for better, easier and faster. The Onion uses Drupal as does Avril Lavigne. What really matters is making Heather’s awesome content easier to read and easier to find and read.
I am now going to explode. o
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November 20th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I understood what you said all above as many said they didn’t. Your sweat has totally paid off, the site is gorgeous and better organized. I will spend more time reading content on the site, rather than just from google reader! Love it! Well worth the wait!
November 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I would love to hear about all the cms/platforms you considered before choosing drupal.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am
@Matt, I looked at WordPress, Textpattern, Joomla, Typo, Drupal, Ellington, Mephisto among others. Obviously, I had used later versions of Movable Type on client sites.
@all: the old feeds should be working today.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Jon,
Seriously, Dooce dot com looks fantastic!
The new site looks great! Don’t change a thing. It rocks! So when does Chuck get his own website?
Tim
November 20th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi,
I like the redesign, and the fact that RoopleTheme didn’t talk you into tables for layout. 8^)
I’m (a small) part of the way through a Drupal site build, trying to grok the php code for theming and what makes what show up and where. It’s moving ahead slowly, and I think it’ll be good when done, but my there’s a learning curve. And soon the next major version will be upon us, with yet more learning.
Great work, and an inspiration. Applause.
CW
November 20th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
The Dooce site is lovely. Nice job to all.
November 20th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I believe there’s an issue with the fonts, but that’s easily fixed (the font-family thing): http://www.maratz.com/blog/archives/2006/10/23/ie-7-quirks-round-one/
An example of how it looks like:
http://tinyurl.com/33bwtn and http://tinyurl.com/2sob22
November 20th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
ha ha, I love that I have no idea what you were talking about but you managed to make me hang onto every single word. Way to rock the geekery.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
[deleted for douchebaggery and cowardice.]
November 20th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I commented on dooce’s blog, but it’ll probably be lost in the avalanche of comments. There’s an Akismet module http://akismet.com/ for comment spam http://drupal.org/project/akismet if the captcha part becomes annoying.
Fantastic to see another high profile website switch to Drupal. Yay, Drupal! And, yay, Jon!
November 20th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Jon- One teensy weensy thing. I can no longer read the posts on my cell phone’s browser. I often check dooce from my phone so I’m a bit sad. It could have something to do with my Sprint web browser though.
November 20th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Shoulda used FrontPage.
Thankyew, I’m here all week, tip your waitresses!
November 20th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
There is some sort of Dr Seuss book in there about Rooples in your Drupals but just reading what is involved in getting the site to look as awesome as it does has made my ears bleed. From one itty-bitty reader in Aus, I think it’s rockin’.
November 20th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Jon- Dooce looks awesome! I love the technical side write up, it explains so much of what you had to overcome. I am very interested, and going to have to go play with Drupal, as my company just bought Ektron as a CMS; and it’s been quite the learning experience. Hope all the big hurdles have been crossed in this huge site renovation.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
The new site looks great and I think that Drupal was a good choice. I was wondering if you guys plan on leveraging Drupal’s user management/community building tools to make Dooce.com a more interactive experience for the readers? Obviously opening up the comments is a step in this direction.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
great new look to dooce!
November 20th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Bravo on the migration! You did your homework and from our (collectively, “the internet”) point of view, pulled it off flawlessly. Excellent.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Indeed, the new site (design, new features and content) is awesome.
And I concur that Bill over at RoopleTheme and Ben Durbin rock hard. They made my tiny slice of Drupal experience wonderful.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:52 am
I didn’t understand a word of it, but I BELIEVE. I especially like how you speak highly of your wife’s “awesome content.” Beautiful.
November 21st, 2007 at 8:54 am
Jon - when are going to move blurbomat to Drupal?
November 21st, 2007 at 11:01 am
Did you look at http://www.squarespace.com?
November 21st, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Okay, I already wrote Heather re the change but oh heck, I might as well go right to the source!
I don’t know computer programming gooblygook. What I do know, is that I like visiting Dooce almost daily. But now I can’t read it. The font in the posts is too small and sort of blurryish but, really just ridiculously small. The font on the Google ads are at least two, maybe three times bigger. I simply will not be able to continue visiting this site without a change in the font! Otherwise, the site looks great but PLEASE ENLARGE THAT FONT. Please and thankyou.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Mae, (and anyone else who has trouble reading small fonts)
Hold down the control key while pressing the + key to expand the text. That should fix your problem. The minus key does the opposite.
Jon,
Drupal’s a good choice if you decide to go the CMS route, but be careful, it can run slow ’cause its PHP. Caching is key–if you decide to learn any aspect of the system, learn caching.
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:55 am
I think the font size is fine…as Tim said, you can make it larger as needed. But I do think the font on the black section at the very end of the page…with the most recent archives…needs to have a whiter or brighter font for more contrast. The gray is lovely and tasteful but some of us have 48 year old eyes and need contrast LOL.
I didn’t understand anything you wrote, Jon, but I love how excited you sound about it. and how lovely you talk about Heather. (Eh…obviously I’m just here for the love, the laughter, and Leta!)
And to Heather, it looks very striking…LOVE the ‘Dooce’ logo. Again though, in my opinion the white on black could use a bit more contrast there too. (Probably just that I don’t have a huge monitor and spanking new computer though, huh? And old eyes, very old eyes.)
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Love Dooce’s new site. Great job.
Drupal is an excellent CMS (yeah! open-source software).
I think Heather should take you to a spa and pamper you after all that hard work.
p.s. Loved the purple-black theme and new addition of daily style. You guys rock the blogosphere.