so i’ve been working on getting this drupal system up and running and i’ve run into many snags.

first, there is an ebuild in portage, but it sucks hardcore. it installs the modules, but does not execute their database scripts. some packages for the modules that are required are not installed. it requires a mail transport agent. there has been bug after bug in getting a basic system up and ready.

after getting it so users can at least make an account, i’ve come to the realization that drupal is mostly likely overkill. it allows for each user to have an account, and all kinds of features. you can rearrange the menu that the user sees, change the theme, install hundreds of plugins that each require tweaking. plus, the idea of everything being a “node” seriously pisses me off. figuring out how to just have 1 front-page and content posted there was more hassle than it was worth.

user blogs are just nodes and you have to alias those. the administrative user is just a regular user and you have to do some complicated tasks to get users correctly setup.

i worked on getting this all up and running on sunday and monday, and basically have nothing to show for it. you can see what i have setup here, but i would not recommend making an account. there is still a problem with the user registration and getting that to work was proven to be more than it’s worth.

so, i’ve revisited the idea of finding a decent content management system that fulfills my needs and i’ve run across 4 that _might_ do the trick (more investigation is required): geeklog, b2evolution, mambo, and e107. for now, they all seem to meet the basic need, but mambo and e107 do not appear to have spam protection. that may prove to be a problem. mambo has media uploading but none of the others seem to provide such functionality. i am going to install e107 first and see how that works, then try mambo, then b2evolution, and lastly geeklog (simplest of them all).

i’ll post more when i have something that i’m satisfied with.