Robert Crull

Wow! I really touched a nerve with my last blog.  The power of social media is simply amazing.  I bet a lot more of you know who ONEsite is now:)

Basically I called Drupal socialistic, homogeneous, open source software.  In essence, what I said is you can’t build an innovative site on Drupal.  In my opinion, nobody has produced an innovative site running Drupal.  So far none of your replies have convinced me otherwise.

Here is the point I was trying to make.  If you want to do something creative, say Pinterest, you can’t use Drupal. 

Yes, there are several good high traffic sites, however, in my opinion while these sites have some good content and some a beautiful design, they are not innovative. 

Before I go on, let me clarify.  If you want to build a content site Drupal is a good choice.  In fact, we host thousands of Drupal sites.  We have already launched our ONEsite Drupal plugins with many more to come.  This fall we will be launching Drupal for the ONEsite platform.  It will have our Single Sign On and Social Networking Software integrated.  I can’t call it innovative but I believe it will be more engaging than typical Drupal implementations. 

As someone pointed out, we use Drupal for our developer portal.  It is simple and clean.  If you want to build a very cost effective Drupal site, go to our hosting company www.webhero.com. 

I also mentioned that there were companies that profit off the difficulty of using and scaling Drupal.  There is nothing wrong with this, my point is that if there are companies specifically in place to help you use and scale a piece of open source software, it may have some hidden costs and you get the same solution everyone else is getting.

The option always exists to customize a version of Drupal to be unique and innovative.  I know of some companies that have done this successfully but at that point, you no longer have an open source solution.

Let me say, I wish Drupal continued success.  I also want to encourage some of you exceptionally bright people using Drupal to do something innovative.  Build something unique.  Start the next Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or whatever.  You may notice that none of these sites run on Drupal.  If you spend your whole life with the herd, the chance of doing something big is eliminated.  Not everything has to look the same and be the same. 

Let me clarify my final stance.  I believe in Open Source.  I also believe in proprietary intellectual property.  I know that if you are waiting on the community to build you something that is innovative and will make your site something unique and successful, you will be waiting for a long time and when it does come, everyone else will have it too.

See the Follow-up Post

There seems to be a fairly large trend for companies to build sites on Drupal.  I know what they’re thinking; free and the whole community shares common ownership.  Hmmm...the key characteristic of socialism is common ownership.  Another key characteristic of socialism is a lack of innovation.  If you choose to build a website on Drupal you have resigned to being mediocre.  In other words, I can guarantee you will fail. 

Here is why you will fail. You can’t build a successful innovative site on the same piece of software everyone else is building on.  Group think always results in failure.

But you say, look at Acquia, they are one of the fastest growing companies.  Of course they are, Drupal is a pain to use and can’t scale.  Their customers are a bunch of big companies with small offshoot sites.  There isn’t a single one with any significant traffic.

So do I think Drupal is totally worthless?  No, it isn’t totally worthless if you want to work your butt off and end up with the same kind of homogeneous, socialistic site everyone else has.

If you want to have a successful site or business online, it takes hard work.  It takes custom design and a customized experience.

If you would like to talk someone about what it take to succeed.   Give us a call.