That said, I haven’t changed my general opinion about Drupal, and this week I’ll be addressing some of the recurring points from the comments.

Let’s start with:

Q. What do you recommend in its place and under what circumstances?

A. If you’re building a web app with complex requirements, build from scratch.

I’m a programmer by trade so I’m usually inclined to “roll my own”. If your project is less “website” and more “web app” with many custom features, you need an architecture to work around your requirements, not the other way around. There are plenty of frameworks—Rails, Symfony, Django, to name a few—with enough plugins that you’ll get many of the same features that Drupal offers, such as user management and authentication, without sacrificing flexibility.

More importantly, rolling your own leaves you in charge of deployment procedures. My number one issue with Drupal is deployment. Storing configuration in the database makes deploying a Drupal site across multiple environments a huge PITA. There is a module dealing with this—of course—but it’s still in active development. And as far as I’m concerned, the sheer fact that this has to be dealt with through a third-party add-on is evidence of bad design.

In the original post I wrote that it’s possible to code up a custom CMS in a couple days, and I stick to this statement. No, it’s not possible to code up a Drupal replacement, i.e. a CMS that can be used for “anything”. But it’s definitely possible to code a basic custom CMS for *one* site. And custom-tailored suits, if well-sewn, are superior to off-the-rack jackets. This is hard to dispute.

Blogging? Use a blogging engine.

Use Wordpress, Typo or any of the other excellent ones out there. I happen to use WP but don’t have a particular bias.

Simple content site? Off-the-shelf CMS (including Drupal) is fine

If you’re aiming for something a tad more complex than a blog, but that is still limited to presenting content to a limited audience, and you don’t need much flexibility beyond the front end, and you don’t have complex deployment procedures, and you don’t have a team of developers working on the site, and there won’t be much post-launch development (that’s a lot of ifs) by all means use a general-purpose CMS. This can be Drupal (I said as much in the original post), but in the comments I’ve also seen people recommend these, in no particular order:

• Silverstripe
• BrowserCMS
• concrete5
• modx

(I’ve excluded Joomla, a big ball of spaghetti fail. Wonder when the hate mail will start for that one…)

In short, I stand by my statement. Use an off-the-shelf CMS if you don’t need to do anything fancy. And if you’ve tried ay of the Drupal alternatives I mentioned above, please write in with your opinions.

HTML:
<div class=”field_container”><label>First Name</label><input type=”text”></div>
<div class=”field_container”><label>Last Name</label><input type=”text”></div>

CSS:
label {
width:150px;    /*Or however much space you need for the form’s labels*/
    float:left;
}

I’m serious, that’s it. So if I see another table, YOU’RE FIRED.

You should only specify colors (and, preferably, most attributes) only once in your stylesheet.

The Wrong(ish) Way:

.header {
color:baby-blue;
font-size:humungo
} .footer {
color:baby-blue;
font-size:tiny;
}

The Right(er) Way:

.header, .footer {
color:baby-blue;
} .header {
font-size:humungo
} .footer {
font-size:tiny;
}

The fun at this jewelry outfit begins with the domain name: steveclarkweb.com. I admit, it’s hard to find a good one, and steveclark.com is registered by a New Jersey ambulance chaser. But steveclarkweb? You don’t want “jewelry” or “designs” or “creations” to differentiate you from hordes of other Steve Clarks? No: a domain name has a far more important function. Even before people see your site, it should explicitly let them know that it is, in fact, on the web.

The tagline is also very important to this end. Steve Clark describes his site as “The Online Jewelry Showcase of Steven Clark.” There is space for ten words, and online is one of them. Wise choice, my friend, because I was under the false impression that I could jump through the screen and see real jewelry. Thanks for clearing that up!

But you know, I’m still not sure what this page is for. Is it for walking dogs? Will it make me a cheeseburger? Is it an alternative to The Google? I have to read the Basic Overview on the homepage to find out:

This website is designed to allow for shopping one of the finest fashion jewelry lines in the USA. It is meant to be available to my existing customers and to help find new ones.

So even though I still don’t know what kind of jewelry you sell, how much it costs, or even if you sell wholesale or retail, I am lucky to have received much more useful information:

1. I’m in a virtual jewelry showcase, not a real one,
2. this “website” of which you speak is designed to allow for shopping, and
3. I am eligible to partake in this shopping experience if I have shopped here before, or even if I have not.

Truly online web-based internet homepage website marketing at its best!

UPDATE: Don’t get me started on requiring logins to view the catalog. Or that you have to personally message the guy to even get a login. I mean, that’s such lax security… you should have to apply in person to be eligible.

I will shower you with riches and glory if you can do it right. However, if I catch you confusing an id with a class, notice repetition in your stylesheets instead of clean cascading (why do you think they’re called ‘cascading’?), or see so much as a single table used for non-data purposes, you are FIRED.

Telecommuting acceptable. Javascript a plus.

• Print designers like pretty fonts. “What do you mean I can choose Arial or Verdana? Why can’t I use Zabolofsky Sans Serif Bold?” Web fonts are a pretty foreign concept and they will pressure you to make text images using their pretty fonts. Resist.
• Print designers think a monitor is fixed-size, like a book. “So do I make this 800×600 or what?” This will give you trouble beyond launch. Because print materials do not change after printing, print designers think only of how the page will look when it launches. They often do not plan for expanding pages to accommodate more content.
• Print designers don’t get web usability. Print material usability is pretty simple. Pick up; read; turn page. The web has hundreds of implicit usability rules, such as: logo links to homepage, scroll bars are best left undecorated and at the rightmost side of the screen, fonts are best when big and ugly etc etc. Prepare to explain all these points to your designer client.
• Print designers use wacky print terminology that will confuse you, e.g. “Can you change the gutter and leading on this text?” Huh?
• Print designers don’t get programming. A print designer is an artist; a web developer is an engineer. For a good artist, the hardest part of the process is catching the creative spark that makes things look great; implementation is fairly easy. For an engineer it is quite the reverse. A print designer may not get, for instance, why it takes you two days to code an entire site and then three weeks to figure out why this goddamned rollover isn’t quite right, or even worse, why a form that looks ok still doesn’t work okay.
• Form over function. Designers have tended to be quite apathetic to one or more of the following: whether the user flow makes sense; whether users will read all of the copy; whether the products will sell; whether the site is even a good idea to begin with. Understandably, they do care about whether it is pretty. This makes a ton of sense in the print world, where people do judge and buy a book by its cover. But in the web world, where the most popular sites such as Ebay and Amazon are also the ugliest, it just doesn’t fly.

I, for one, would like to celebrate my recent Olympic victory by eloping with Jared Leto to a Tuscan villa. Luckily, your dream is slightly more realistic. Here’s what you do:

• $0: Content. Write some copy.
• $0: Web design. Get thee to Open Web Design. Browse and download a sleek, modern-looking HTML template. For something more businesslike and less minimalistic, try TemplatesBox. You can find a free design you like (I did) without wasting your small budget on a failure-prone novice.
• $0: Stock photos (optional). If you opted for a minimalistic layout, go to stock.xchng and pick up some free pics. Warning: you may have to post a credit on your site for some of the better photos.
• $300: Rented script kiddie. The Computer Gigs section of Craigslist never fails. You don’t need an experienced developer. You just need a college kid who knows some HTML and a tad of Photoshop (if you opted for the stock photos) and who can cram your copy into the template. You should be paying $20-$25 an hour for this. Assuming your site is under 15 pages, a bill topping $300 means the brat ripped you off. Unless he also happens to give good Shiatsu massages.
• $0: Domain name research. Go to user-friendly MyDomain to search, but don’t buy yet. You’ll probably get a domain name bundled with your hosting. Tip: Domain-snatching BigBrother.com is watching for repeat domain queries, so if you find a snazzy name, catch it quick or someone else will.
• $7/mo: Hosting. I recommend Lunarpages, which has provided me with excellent service for years. A free domain name is included.
• $100: Macromedia Contribute. Get a free trial here. Have your assistant upload your site and then set this up for you. Editing the content on your site, as well as creating new pages from existing ones, will be as easy as word processing.

Note: if you just want a blog, go to wordpress.com and get a free one. If you want to post ads or other frills, get a cheap package at typepad.com.