It’s Sunday morning in the Perkins household. My wife, Natalie, is fast asleep still after having a nightmare (should I be sharing that? Oh well) and I’m pondering the future of my website. As you might remember, I moved my blog to http://www.nicholasperkins.com/blog/ a few week ago, and there was a reason for this.

Recently I’ve been working with Drupal a lot. I worked on getting Natalie’s new portfolio site up and looking awesome (if I do say so myself). Drupal is not really a CMS, although it can be used as one. Drupal is more of  framework that gives web developers the tools to create very complex sites without having to hand code thousands of lines of PHP.

In the case of Natalie’s site, I still needed to hack into some of the modules code, wrote a few lines of customer PHP database lookups to create the dynamic sub-menu and a few other bits and bobs. What I didn’t need to do is create an entire CMS from scratch. When I wanted to have a new content type for her portfolio images, I didn’t need to design the database structure and code the posting and editing and whatever else functions. Drupal just made it happen.

So I’m now considering moving my blog across to Drupal as part of a larger site redesign. I’m currently looking at creating a main website for my Excel and PHP development business, which is why I moved the blog. It will be a few months before I have the design and content ready to go up though, but that gives me plenty of time to get Drupal into shape.

What I am wondering is whether I should transfer my blog into Drupal and away from Wordpress.

Wordpress is probably the best blogging software I have ever used. The interface is clean and easy to use, the plugin and themes are so easy to install, configure and “just work”. When I helped Natalie with http://www.axisoffat.com/ (it’s on Drupal as well) I wondered if it was really the best option. It did work out in the end but it required more fluffing around to get it to work just the way we wanted it to.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on both Drupal and Wordpress, but also any other CMS/Framework solutions you have used. The decision on what I use for my own site is critical. Whatever I choose I will have to work closely with and become and expert at using and modifying as required so that I can offer similar services to my clients.

I’ve moved the blog this evening to a subdirectory of my website. You’ll now find my blog at http://www.nicholasperkins.com/blog/. For the next month or so you will be automatically redirected, so please update your bookmarks/delicious tags/etc. The RSS feed is still located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/NicholasPerkins so if you have subscribed (and there are more of you there than I remember last time I checked – welcome!) you need do nothing but wait for the next glorious installment.

So why did I move my blog to the new address? Well there are some big changes coming to my life over the next six months or so, and I’m welcoming them with open arms. I don’t want to reveal too much at the moment as things are only in the early stages of formation. I have a lot of ideas going on in my head, I’m about to reach 30, and it’s darn well time I acted on some of them.

On the ‘now’ front, I’ve been feverishly working on a couple of secret projects of the last month or so. One is something that I can never ever tell you about. Sorry but I would be killed (or sued) if I broke the Non-Disclosure Agreement on that one. The other one is still super secret, but I can reveal all soon. Let’s just say that I’ve finally (90%) finished a project that has been outstanding for a while, and my wife is very pleased. Stay tuned for more there.

I best get back to work. I’ve just had another request come in via Windows Live Messenger.