We are studying Drupal Content Management System (CMS) at a furious pace and have joined several online and local meeting groups. Our GOAL is to remove SoCalCreations from SubDreamer as Soon as Possible. As you know SubDreamer has stalled on making improvements for the past 2 years and as a consumer we have become increasingly frustrated with empty promises from them. Over the next several months we will be converting SoCalCreations.net to Drupal and keeping both sites live so you can see our progress.
The reasons why we are doing this
1) Drupal is Fully Open Source and FREE CMS
2) Over 4000+ modules (i.e. plugins)
3) More sites than we can keep track of for every type of module and issue
4) Very quick response from the community members
5) Local meetings, code camp and Drupal camps
6) Lots of customer support through video learning
7) A Theming engine (skin) custom design for any look or style
As a customer of SubDreamer, we are very upset to have been strung along with promises for so long, it has made our commitment to you, our customer, become questionable.
What does this mean to you?
Since we no longer carry a license for SubDreamer, we can no longer have access to certain tech support or plugins. We have been an out spoken voice of reason, along with a few others that have made a similar choice to leave. All of our goals were the same, move our clients from SubDreamer. Now we can support what you currently have, however if a new issue arises, we will have to use your login to ask support questions, so please have that information when we request it.
How GOOD is Drupal?
See this article posted on Drupal about how CNet.com has voted on it for the past 3 years
http://drupal.org/Drupal-2009-webware-100-winner
What major sites use Drupal? • Harvard [
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/]
• MIT [
http://buytaert.net/mit-using-drupal]
• Zappos [
http://zappos.com/]
• New York State Senate [
http://www.nysenate.gov/]
• Gamezebo [
http://gamezebo.com/]
• Linux Foundation [
http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/]
• InfoWorld [
http://infoworld.com/]
• Michael Jackson, built by Sony [
http://community.michaeljackson.com/]
• Recovery, used by the Obama administration [
http://recovery.gov/]
• Googles MLab [
http://www.measurementlab.net/]
• Nokia [
http://research.nokia.com/]
EVEN more listings at
http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites?page=1
As you can see the possibilities to great site development have just been opened by switching to Drupal.
What is the time frame are we talking about?
We are first converting SoCalCreations.net and building another site to test new modules with, while we enhance our skills and learning curve with Drupal, then we will do the following:
1) State that the SoCalCreations.net site has been completed with Drupal and for you to come look at it
2) Ask you if you are interested in the conversion (if yes we will start working on the mockup as done with our Site)
3) We will then start going through each customers site and convert each page to a Drupal site for your inspection
4) After all pages have been converted, we will take your site down for 24 hours to do the swap.
5) We are hoping that we can have our customers converted by the end of the year.
What will it Cost?
The price is not set in stone yet, but we are guessing it will be around to $225-$350 depending on content, conversion of SEO is included.
"I have Forum software, will that be converted?"
We can not be specific with our answer that question right now. However Drupal has it's own FREE forum software included, that will be very suitable to what many of our customers are running now. Converting the posts to Drupals forum software my be an extra fee, as we do not plan on developing the expertise to do this, but there is a company called Cyrve.com that does do that and we can inquire for you what their charge would be.
Drupal has the option to use the OPENID (openid.net) protocol to login to the site and many forum software has adopted this including phpBB3 and SMF. This means if you DO NOT wish to convert your forums, we can enable OpenID on both Drupal and your forums so that it appears to the user that the two are still connected. This will however require that each of your visitors obtain an OpenID account. Which is not all bad considering MySpace, FaceBook, and others are going to OpenID shortly. It's a better way of controlling who can access your own identity online and ultimately a safer way of browsing the Internet in the future.
Is there advance support with Drupal?
YES, we plan on becoming Drupal Gurus and with that we will be entering in to a partnership with Aquia Drupal in the future. Aquia Drupal is a company that is for profit and does priority support with well tested and proven modules. Doing this will take the most time as they have some rather stiff requirements to become a partner, but the benefits we believe will be huge to not only our company, but yours in the future.
"Okay I am convinced I want to switche to Drupal, what can I do?"
The best thing right now, is just keep creating your articles, your content, but DON'T make major changes to your site unless it is of immediate benefit to gain sales or affiliates. Content is fine, because it keeps search engines coming to your site, which is what we want. But with Drupals enhance Search Engine Optimization and built in search functions, your site will be even more popular to the search engines after conversion.
We believe this will be a positive step for all of our customers businesses, including our own, the web community changes fast and our goals have always been to allow for our small to medium size business customers a chance to compete in the open web, after all it is the most level playing field of competition of all marketing and business known today. We look forward to your response, either by email or on our site through the open comments for this announcement.
-- Staff,
SoCalCreations.net
PrePaid Legal, because bad things happen to good people. Life happens and you shouldn't pay for someone else's ineptness or mistakes.
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