Featured site: evolt.org

Evolt.org is delighted to announce that it has moved its main site from a bespoke solution to Drupal. When we first launched evolt.org, content management systems cost USD $100.000 and more, so we took the revolutionary step of building our own (and later open sourcing it). For the last 6 years, evolt.org had lived on a custom built CMS, migrating from MS Access and Windows NT, to Oracle and Linux to MSSQL and Windows 2000 along the way. The previous evolution was launched in December 2000 (yes, really), and had served evolt.org extremely well.

However, over the last couple of years, we've increasingly wanted a few things that our previous system couldn't do without much more developer time than we had available, particularly:

• Support for Internationalisation (i18n) and Localisation (l10n)
• A new front end, based on CSS layout

and it occurred to us that we'd be better off standing on the shoulders of non-evolters in producing new functionality, so we didn't always have to code everything ourselves from scratch. We also felt a desire to use free tools that were within the reach of every evolter, rather than the (no less capable) proprietory (and pricey) software we'd previously used.

The solution was obvious: move from our home-grown CMS to a packaged Open Source one. A number of evolters had had good experiences with Drupal, so that's what we chose, running on Debian.

Now we're running on Drupal, we benefit from security updates, fixes and new functionality, leaving us to concentrate on evolt-specific bits. Finding time to work on the evolt site is often hard for our all-volunteer workforce, so this is obviously tremendously helpful, and as evolt.org is all about exchanging skills and experiences with our fellow web developers, this very much feels right, as well as useful.

Our solution

We've created a customised install (rather than just a simple template edit), to faithfully recreate the design and HTML mockups created a long time before Drupal was chosen. We have installed a small number of modules for the launch functionality, but expect to be adding more over time.

We'd also very much like to be able to contribute improvements back upstream, whether that be code, or simply suggestions on making Drupal even better.

Getting to Yes

To build consensus for the Drupal solution among the wider evolt community, we built 2 temporary sites as proof of concept demonstrators:

1. Minimal functionality mockup of an evolt theme
   This challenged the stereotype of Drupal sites are Bluemarine (although similar accusations can be aimed at most CMSs, usually equally invalidly), and showed that we could make the site look the way we wanted. It also started people visualising how the site could be, and therefore making the mental jump to the future state.
2. Full Drupal install with basic theme
   This enabled members (particularly those with admin rights) to understand how the non-public face works and have a play with it, engaging them in the potential functionality. We installed a few fun sample modules to start building enthusiasm for not having to code generic stuff for ourselves.

While a few members did get stuck in the mentality of It won't be exactly like the current site on launch day, most people got it quite quickly. While we did get bogged down by our (all volunteer) developer community having Real Life™ get in the way, we finally launched it at the weekend, to general approval.