For the geeks out there I was running Drupal 6 and have been plagued by lack of time to do necessary upgrades to the site, like keeping security patches up and all the modules (plug-ins for you WordPress people) so I decided I needed a new platform. I had used WordPress long ago, and it was previously a mainly HTML based blogging system, but it’s grown into a full content management system that is geared for ease of use.

I am not going to get in a war of Drupal vs. WordPress, they both have their advantages, but WordPress is going to be a better fit for me currently. I will am not going to post my entire iPhoto library, which Gallery 2 was good for, but I want to post some pictures, so the Gallery plugin that I have selected for WordPress fits the bill. I also want some pictures posted on the front page for news for everyone to see, as well as a blog area that I can do more specific posts that may not necessarily need to be on the front page.

Looks like WordPress is going to fit the bill for me. Look for a few new posts in the next few days and then more as I get the hang of it.

I LOVE Drupal, so this will be hard for me to do even though I know it needs to be done. I can’t spend the time managing the site in it’s current form any longer and WordPress (yes, my previously most hated system) has grown to the point where it’s exactly fitting the bill of what I need. It’s easy to install new modules and keep your system up to date. It already has Askimet (actually Askimet was written for WordPress) so I won’t have to deal with SPAM and I will be able to do the multimedia presentations that I want to be able to out of the box without having to add many modules that don’t always play well with each other and install them from scratch as with Drupal.

I will keep the new site in azbay.net/azbay for now, when it’s ready to go live I will move it to the base azbay.net (I’m posting this if you want to take a look). Once I have the categories and posts moved, I’ll probably archive the old site and drop it.

So what can you look for in the new site that the old one doesn’t have? Pictures in RSS feeds, as well as audio, in other words podcasts. I haven’t had a large want or need for podcasting previous to this but I would like to be able to put together an easy way to distribute movies of Sean and things like that, so a podcast an iTunes is a perfect way to get movies out there if people want to watch (yes I know about youtube, I also know youtube doesn’t allow HD content!)

So keep your eyes on the site. It’s going to change greatly in the next few weeks. And don’t be surprised if it drops off the face of the earth now and then.