Tracy Smith's blog

One thing I've always been interested in is Disaster Management and Recovery. I think it can be attributed to my ability to stay completely calm in high stress situations. In some instances, I can seem rather cold as I try to filter the emotion and start searching for a solution to the problem. Often this is countered by my since-of-humor during wee hours of the morning trying to resuscitate a file or web server. My interest in emergency management matches my utter amazement at technology in general. I often wonder how it is that GPS, Radio, Mobile, and Wi-Fi connections all just seem to work. It just doesn't compute in my head, but I've learned to accept it.

• This post was created while working at Quiddities. The original post can be found here: Drupal Training

Getting to Minneapolis

On Wednesday, I travelled to Minneapolis from Santa Cruz to attend Drupal training by Lullabot. I travelled via feet, car, 2 planes, tram, light rail, and feet again. Who knew that one could use so many different forms of transportation to get somewhere.

What is Drupal

Drupal is a content management system (CMS). It is an extensible framework that performs the basic CMS functions and allows us to customize code. It is setup so that you can apply customizations without “hacking” the core. By not “hacking” the core, updates and security releases can be applied without losing any previous customizations.

How is Drupal Different?

There are hundreds of CMS systems available to you. Joomla and WordPress are two options available to you. If you just want a blog, then WordPress if for you. Joomla is a great CMS out of the box, but leaves little room for customizations. An alternate is to have someone develop a custom CMS for you. While a custom CMS may do exactly what you want it to do, there are several disadvantages.