I’ve just spent the last week switching RandomTweak over to Drupal after trying it out on my development box for a couple of weeks beforehand.

It wasn’t quite as easy as WordPress is to get a the site using the same features as it was before (tags, syntax highlighting, adsense, etc), but it does offer a lot more flexibility and options for enhancing the site (user/author profiles, contact forms, etc).

Most of my time was actually spent on fixing up the content published under WordPress and fitting it into the new site – there were a couple of automated tools for this, but they were a bit flakey and caused a couple of problems which would have needed more editing again. I’m looking at a way to improve the automated migration so that it’s more useful and more under control.

The next site will be this one – there’s more content here to deal with, but it’s simpler (mostly). The tricky part will be migrating the image and photo albums over – although, I might not be able to do that automatically, either, and may end up just doing it progressively. The main reason is that I always had a vision of how these albums should be organised, and the best gallery plugin (NGG) for WordPress forced me into a different system. We’ll see, anyway.

I reckon it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m really ready to switch HorusKol over, as I need to get to grips with Drupal’s themes and blocks system, and then there’s the galleries. Still, I’m looking forward to it, and it should be good learning experience for when I start using Drupal on client sites.

The more observant among you might have noticed a change in the the site.

Given the rather stalled status of the blog development for Horus Kol, I’ve decided to take something off the shelf which gave me access to the features I was after. I decided on WordPress, as I’d had a little experience with that when I trialled it for my Random Tweak site. I had also had a look a couple of other alternatives, such as b2evolution, but they were either lacking in functionality, or were a bit too nuts and bolts (yes, I’m a developer, and I eat nuts and bolts for breakfast, but I’d much rather be posting on a personal blog and developing something else rather than continually tweaking something from off the shelf).

So, here we are. Getting the template to work took all of about an afternoon, and that was starting from zero knowledge on how to do it. No doubt, I will be making adjustments and pasting patches on the paintwork over the next few weeks.

I have added a gallery plugin, which I still need to tweak before I start showing any pictures off, and I have also found a neat little map plugin, but I want to play with that first before I can see how it might be useful. All of that will have to wait, however, since I’m tired and I don’t want to be cranky at the office tomorrow.