[clue-talk] Updating the ol Website

[erik at ezolan.com]

> Well, then you won't like my recommendation...
>
> Use Drupal and the Swish-e indexer.  I'd be surprised if you, on your
> own, can create the features/looks/usability of a CMS like Drupal.

One of my competitors uses Drupal. It's just not meant for the task we're
using it for and I wince every time I visit his boring, yet slick looking,
site.

I'd be surprised too. I've pretty much outlined my whole site in my
previous email. How many features of Drupal am I going to use? Useability?
There are two functions my site serves. Show the user the newest stories,
and help the  user find an old story. They do this, download the zip, and
get off the site ASAP. I'm try to emulate Google's philosphy. What am I
going to use an API for? How many features do I need?

Drupal looks interesting, but it's way beyond what I need. And it looks
like I'd spend as much time trimming things down as I would building my
current site up.

To look at this another way. One of the reasons I made my site was that
the original site people used to go to had been abandoned. I had a chance
to look at the code behind it before it completely went away though. It
was 4 *short* BASH scripts. The owner would update some flat files and
then run the scripts to generate static HTML. Ok, it was 1996, but you
don't need a lot of code to do something like this.

> As Sean points out, Swish-e already does most of this.

Hurm. It looks interesting. I'll put it on my to-do list once I update the
look of the site.

> I'd just recommend just using drupal and one of the many XHTML/CSS
> themes that come with it.  Then use your own CSS-FU to tweak to your
> heart's content.

I'll look at the example templates to get ideas on what to do for the
site. I haven't taken any kind of design courses or classes,

I do appreciate you taking the time to suggest Drupal. It's been years
since I've looked at it, and I needed to check it out. I'll probably
install it and play around with it anyway, it's looking pretty sharp.