Is anyone using Drupal?

[Tom Thayer]

 

I'm seriously considering Drupal to replace OpenText as our main CMS. Anyone have any thoughts, suggestions or criticism on using Drupal in higher ed?

[James Duguid]

Tom,

I would highly recommend moving to Drupal.  I made the move earlier this year and have been very pleased.  The Drupal community is incredible, and with resources like drupal.org, other community sites, national and local conferences there are plenty of options to learn what you need for your projects.  I would also suggest that you get in touch with Acquia to learn about their support options if that's a route your looking for.

 

I've started with launching our new mobile site with Drupal, but I'm in the process of moving all of our sites to Drupal in the next year.  Hope this helps.  Let me know if you have specific questions that I can answer.

 

Thanks,

James

[Tom Thayer]

James,

Thanks! I have been talking with Acquia about their options, are you using them? and if so are you happy? Thanks again.

[James Duguid]

Tom,

I'm not working with Acquia right now.  But it's good to know that, that support level is out there if needed.  It was one of my deciding factors.  Their hosting system is incredible, I hope that I'll be able to move the university to that eventually.  

 

James

[James Fuller]

I am a one man shop and I use Drupal without the support of a consulting company. I would also highly recommend it. The community is great, with drupal.org and IRC chats that are nearly always active.

 

I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

[Jay Massey]

Guys, 

We am considering Drupal for a large scale cms solution.  Is anyone going to be at the Drupal Summit in Atlanta on September 30th?  I'm going. Hope to meet with Acquia too.

Jay

[James Duguid]

Hey Jay,

I'll be going to the summit and the camp on Saturday.  I'll keep an eye out for you and introduce myself.

 

James

[Chris Wiegman]

We've been using it since the beginning of last year. While it has served us fairly well we will probably switch away from it in the long term. Major upgrades are too much of a headache and not far off of switching to another CMS entirely. That said we're going to try to find something that will last a little longer next time.

[Kris Martin-Baker]

We're looking at it. I like it a lot - once you are over the initial learning curve it's very easy to set up and customize. Chris has a good point about upgrades. Since development is all volunteer, some modules may or may be updated when you need them to be.

[Jonathan Woolson]

Recommend talking with the folks at http://www.sunyjcc.edu and http://www.geneseo.edu who have been using Drupal for some time as their main CMS.

[Jonathan Woolson]

Also recommend asking Alfred State about their use of Drupal: http://www.alfredstate.edu/

[Jordan Lindstrom]

Hi Tom,

I'm not sure if you've made the call on this already, but we just build our new site (www.bastyr.edu) in Drupal, and quite happy with it. It integrates well with our CRM (civiCRM), and they seem to roll out pretty swift upgrades.

[Jonathan Woolson]

Great Drupal site design and flow, Tom!
How many people (FTE) are you using to support that Drupal install?
We're looking at Acquia hosting.

(Aside: My friend Amanda is a widwife who graduated from Bastyr last year -- she was our doula.)