[consulting] Selling Drupal to consultants

[Bèr Kessels]

Op maandag 13 februari 2006 07:03, schreef Larry Garfield:
> If I can get an actual discussion on the table somehow, any suggestions on
> how to sell both my fellow developers and designers and management on
> Drupal? They made it clear when I was hired that we're not an open source
> shop, since I'm a big open source fan, although we do current use some
> LGPLed stuff in various places and we make it a point that we always own
> the code, not the client.  I want to wedge that door wider, for my own
> sanity if nothing else. :-)
>
> Thoughts?

I am still working furiously on the Sympal distro (formerly known as 
DrupalCOM). 100% aimed at (savvy) consultants (IE those not afraid to learn 
some minor PHP and use the Commandline). I am still running after HEAD, and 
expect to release the first version soon after the 4.7 release (whenever that 
may be.... :) ).

Features:

views.module
image.module
simplenews.module
sections.module
dashboard.module (not sure, only if we manage to use this while still be able 
to avoid PHP pages)
prototype.module (the developers API toolbox for prototype/scriptaculous AJAX 
support)
(and all of core, minus a few crufty modules, if CVS lets me do that easily)
A lot of code generation and management scripts. 
A commandline installation script system (multisite environments only) fully 
integratable in your provisioning system
the_site_name_custom_blocks.module (To put the php blocks for that client)
the_site_name_custom_views.module (To put the custom PHP for views)
the_site_name_custom_pages.module (To paste your custom PHP pages)
microcontent.module (blocks are nodes, mission and footer and all are nodes 
and blocks too, thus finer grained access and simpler editing for your 
clients)
wireframe theme
admin theme
the_site_name theme

My problem is mostly time. I really want to get this rolling, but I really 
lack the time to take a lead on a team of (volunteers) or somothing alike. If 
you are interested, I would love it if you take some time to look at 
sympal_scripts (drupal CVS tricks) and file extra scripts for that into CVS. 
Mainly I am looking for postinstall.d/create_users.php and 
preinstall.d/create_database.php. But I am sure you have more and better 
ideas. Another thing you can test and improve is the microcontent, for that 
is a main part of the distro too. It tries to pull all sorts of content that 
we hide in the administration to the user-  and moderator-space.

The filosophy is «Sympal for developers. Developers for the users» Meaning you 
do all the adminstration, all the development and configuration. Your 
users/clients should theoretically not even need to have admin rights....

the idea is all based on the agile development methods in Ruby on Rails: You 
invoke a commandline script. That generates code for you. For example
path/to/scripts/generate_node.php simplenode news newsitems will add a 
modules/news/news.module that allows users to add "newsitems" built after a 
"template module" called "simple" (story rip-off). And it will add a 
themes/the_site_name/node-news.tpl.php
(obviously the_site_name is replaced by acmeinc_com for example)

Bèr