Printer-friendly versionAcquia's Drupal Gardens went beta yesterday, and although I wasn't in the first round of people to get invited to help beta test, I did attend a webinar this afternoon where the major features were demonstrated and our questions were answered. I'm very excited about this service for a variety of reasons, and I'm certain it will change the way I do business as a Web developer. Here's how:
- Most obviously, Drupal Gardens makes it trivially easy for a non-programmer to set up a Drupal-powered site and tailor its appearance. Currently when I build a site for a client, I have to have them explain to me all the functionality they're looking for and draw me a picture of what they want it to look like, and then I choose an assortment of modules and modify a theme to try to make it happen. There's a lot of back and forth and a lot of compromising, and I'm often left with the feeling that neither of us is 100% happy with the end product. By taking me out of that process, Drupal Gardens ensures that any compromising is between the client and the software, so that I can come on the scene with clean hands. But more than that, the design tools Drupal Gardens is contributing -- not just to their customers, but to all Drupal sites -- give clients an unprecedented amount of control over their stylesheets without requiring them to learn any CSS nor even to tell me what they want, guaranteeing that they are happier with their site than they would have been working through me.
- Secondly, by choosing to support only a few dozen of the thousands of available Drupal modules, Acquia is in effect establishing a standard set of modules for all Drupal sites. No more arguments about whether TinyMCE or FCKeditor is a better WYSIWYG editor, or whether IMCE or something else is better for managing users' uploaded media files -- any site begun at Drupal Gardens will have CKeditor and the new Media Manager. This will give new sites a more solid, standard platform to work from than Drupal core -- even Drupal 7 core -- provides. There's been a lot of talk about "distributions" of Drupal -- OpenAtrium is my favorite of these -- but by virtue of being a hosted service, and with Drupal's own founder behind it, Drupal Gardens is bound to have more followers. I, for one, welcome a little more consolidation of the options! But on the other hand, the limited number of modules ensures that many sites will eventually outgrow Drupal Gardens, so there will still be a market for freelancers like myself.
- Finally, the export feature is a godsend. If there were any question about Acquia's benevolent intentions toward Drupal developers, the export feature puts it to rest. In a nutshell: if you create a site on Drupal Gardens, it's totally free through 2010, or later provided you keep it very small. After that, they will start charging $20 or more a month, depending on your usage. But at any time you can export your site and start hosting it elsewhere, for example at Interdependent Web for just $2 per month.
What this means for me is a whole new approach to my freelance business. In the past, I've worked with the client to determine what modules and theme to use, put a bunch of sample content in place to prove it's working, trained them in how to work with it, and then (depending on their budget) helped put the actual content in place and answered questions for weeks or months after the site goes live. Once Drupal Gardens is open for business, the process will look like this:
- Client approaches me. I send them to Drupal Gardens if they haven't been there already.
- Client returns after setting up their site at Drupal Gardens. They already have the theme tricked out the way they want it, the sidebars and sample content and user roles, and they're fairly proficient in using all those features, but they're starting to outgrow the Gardens.
- I use the export feature to move their site to another host (mine or theirs).
- I install and configure any additional modules the client needs to complete their vision, and train them to use it. (Since Drupal 7 allows modules to be installed from the dashboard, I may not even have to do that.)
- I point the client's domain name to the new site. All done.
At least that's what I anticipate. I should get a beta testing code in the next few weeks, and I'll use it to build my first Gardens site, and from there it will be onward and upward!
Wait, you say, isn't this less work for me? And less pay? Absolutely. But eliminating the middleman has been a stated goal of Drupal since version 5, before I got involved with it, so that's no surprise. I welcome it. I have other things to do, and my clients do, too. This may not be the promised land, but we can see it from here, and it's about time!
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Won't you end up turning out just another drupal looking site?
Drupal gardens is good as a hosted solution for non techies who want a website quickly. It's good at this because it is constrained, limited in modules / themes, while this is good for a non techy it also limits you to produce a Drupal Gardens site, you know it's powerd by Drupal Gardens, it provides the same functionality of every other Drupal Gardens site and looks like a 100 other Drupal Garden sites. As I say not a bad thing if you are a non techy wanting a website eaisly and quickly.
As a web professional most clients come to me as they don't want another Drupal site, they want a Drupal site which does and looks like they want and it is my job to do this. I give them advice on modules, you can have this functionality which is a case of installing X module but won't work as you want exactly, I can customise it to do what you want, it may (will) break upgradability of module X but it does what you want or I may even say nothing does what you want I can write a module which does. It's then up to a client to decide. I'd never say Drupal doesn't do this, I'm a developer Drupal does what ever I tell it, it's all a case of budget and the pros / cons. Drupal Gardens says you can / can't do something and exactly how, ok for a small site but a client who wants something different and to stand out from the crowd fitting their exact business needs this won't do.
Same for themes, tweaking css fair enough you can do alot, your still constrained by the decalred regions and predefined templates. I advise clients what will be cheaper, eaiser, best practice but ultimatley the theme looks how I tell it to within the Clients budget. That's why clients come to a professional, they don't want a off the shelf theme they want their site to look like their design with advice of all routes, pros/cons to achieve this.
As a developer I feel what Drupal Gardens has to offer I already have, we now have drush make, prior to that I used a few crude bash build scripts. For a end user Drupal Gardens may provide a starting point as you say, to get the basics done eaisly and then to pass on to a developer to further extend it. Based on the current size of sites / clients I work with, Drupal Gardens is not going to be revolutionary. For people who deal with Drupal sites turned out 6 hours or less looking like a fairly basic Drupal site it'd probably be a useful tool.
one size may not fit all
I'm sorry Drupal Gardens isn't a good fit for your business and your clients, Anonymous. But I never said it was. I was talking about my business and my clients. I apologize that that was unclear. Since you didn't say who you are, the chances of my writing about you and your clients on my blog are pretty slim, so you may want to read your own blog for that.
I'm glad Drush works well for you. It doesn't run on many of the shared hosting accounts that my clients use. It also doesn't play well with multisites, and I use multisites extensively. Fortunately it's mostly a moot point with Drupal 7 since modules can now be installed and upgraded from the admin pages.
As I mentioned above, Drupal Gardens does not lock you into using Gardens. You can export at any time to your own hosting account, where you can install whatever modules you want and customize the theme freely. It's a great way to get a working mock-up of a site, and to get the client's hands dirty from day one, and I welcome it for that reason. I do not expect to host sites on Gardens in the long term, mainly because of the limitation on the number of users.