Posted on August 8, 2008 // Short URL

Merlin Mann, Jon Armstrong (Dooce), Ben Durbin

Jeff Robbins talks with Merlin Mann (43 Folders and You Look Nice Today), Jon Armstrong (Dooce®), and Ben Durbin about running their successful blogs on Drupal.

Podcast:

Drupalize.Me Podcast

Tags:

podcast, performance, blog, Digg bait, dooce, 43folders, merlin mann

Comments

Rob Loach

The Year

I know you guys are doing some futuristic stuff, but it's 2008, not 2009! "Year: 2009". :-)

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Michael

distros

Merlin's comment at 00:54, install profiles has been talked about a lot in the past. I remember we went about doing these different personas and site profiles in Drupal 4.x and we were talking about the need for installation profiles. I hope this does get worked on some day.

Reply

Shrop

To Drupal or not to Drupal

Great podcast. Thanks for doing this one. It is great to hear end users talk about why they chose Drupal over other CMS/blogging platforms.

Shrop

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Steve Truesdale

On-the-fly distribution profiles

Eclipse is another open-source project with a massive community and huge number of modules - similar to how Drupal has evolved.

There is a very interesting site at http://ondemand.yoxos.com/geteclipse/start that allows you to search and pick different modules and download the resulting distribution in one download.

If something like this could be created for Drupal I think it would be a huge help in meeting the missing area between hand-picking modules, and getting an pre-configured install profile.

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bcswebstudio

what a dynamic!

Ok, wow, great episode, guys! Such a fun dynamic between everyone and some refreshing perspectives really came out.

The distribution-on-demand might be easier (for someone like lullabot) than some may think: because all good projects need a name, I would start there: DDB ("Drupal DDB Builder").

  1. DDB is a hosted Drupal instance with a DDB module that scans all installed modules for DDB hooks.
  2. A list of these modules and their descriptions is presented to the user with a checkbox, "install," "install, but don't activate," etc.
  3. Next, presented in a wizard fashion while iterating thru each selected module, a DDB hook on each DDB-aware module presents specific fields defined by the module's developer that allow the user the opportunity to seed values*.
  4. Once all DDB-aware modules have been iterated, the db is dumped, either the folder tree is tar'd and feathered or a bunch of wget's are queued up (to grab the modules from d.o.. come on, you followed along this far), and the user is presented with a single download.

* For instance, a series of basic pages can be built either with Lorem Ipsum text (if the developer doesn't expose the field as a form field) or by values entered on the form. Heck, even the User module could expose some fields, giving the user the opportunity to create multiple users (one admin, one user, say) to be available at launch.

Voila! Now.. already, I can make an On this date module, and I know there's a forms api tut somewhere tucked away..

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eigentor

Great episode

Great stuff. The guests make it really alive. And listening to those guys running REALLY pobular sites.

But though, Jeff: big chance missed to mention advanced forum. Though still being alpha, it adresses a lot of the "feel like a real forum" stuff.

Like "little known facts about Drupal history" :D

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dave

install profiles

It is great to hear some disusion about install profiles...PLEASE do it...please help the dummies like me..lol
In reference to a reply I posted on How Drupal will save the world.. http://www.lullabot.com/articles/how_drupal_will_save_world#comment-4274
From my perspective would be the most useful up front tool that Drupal could have.
All this talk about the backend interface, i see and hear it...but that is the least of the usability issues to me.

There just has to be a Drupal Super Hero that could make us a cook book.
And past that we would just have to figure out the back end, knowing that the pieces we will need are there and are somewhat compatible.
The more informed and skilled folks could still go the route of ala-cart...

I will shut up and go back to may cave now.
great discussion, thanks to everyone that makes Drupal happen

Reply

jersu

what did he say, about the designer?

Mann says he used two themers.

1) Criss Glass and
2) Rupal Theme? Roobal Theme?

What was the second one? I'm trying to look up his work on the web, and can't find it

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Anyusr

Embeded MP3 Art

I enjoyed the lullabot icon embedded into the mp3. It was a nice touch to see it when I started this podcast. I hope to see it again. Maybe even with the episode number!

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