Redstate Has Gone Drupal

08.12.2006

We made the decision to move to Drupal a while ago. It was clearly coming along as a robust platform, that met all of our needs. Why did we move from Scoop? Well my issues have long been documented, but mostly they revolve around the fact that the Scoop developer community is extremely small, relatively closed, and overwhelmingly liberal.

Redstate.com is one of the more influential sites that represents the followers of the American Republican party (many of them deny this, but these types deny a lot of thing). Word of warning to redstate.com about dealing with the drupal community -- you're probably going to want to keep your political leanings like you keep your shirts: "tucked in".Drupal is not merely an overwhelmingly artsy-fartsy and left-wing, "liberal, liberal, liberal" (in the words of Rush) community. Its much worse: it has Europeans. Some of which are even French.Redstate's political shortcomings aside, sounds like they did a great job in putting the site together.

For the Drupal geeks: It's Drupal 4.7.3 with some serious modifications in Views and CCK. The Drupal code base is untouched, but we have a custom Redstate module with some assorted functions.

And, at the very least, the redstaters are not idiots like some of the people who "strategize" for Democrats. On numerous occassions, I've tried to talk up drupal to Democract consultants, but they'd always say the same thing: "we're going with scoop!". I'd ask them why. I'd try to pick apart their argument. But they'd bark, "Kaus uses coop!" This apparently is an alpha and omega answer. Open and shut case, Johnson.Well gee. You can't argue with that. I asked them whether they truly believed the Daily Kaus's success was a result of the technology they used. They'd reply, "A good deal of it, yes."Thats when I knew they were idiots. Their argument (if that's what you call it...) is about as naive as it gets. They probably still think websites are magic tricks.

Technology is never a solution; technology is always a problem. But, technology is sometimes a problem which helps solve even bigger problems. Thus, you should seek to pick the technology which contributes least to magnifying the sum of your problems. The choice that redstate.com made was the correct choice. The choice of Democratic consults was the fools choice. Especially considering none of them have Kaus's resources.Not that the lot of Democratic consultants acting like idiots suprises me. Lord knows they'll probably f#ck up this congressional election too. Most of them probably still support Lieberman!

At the very least, now that a republican stronghold has moved to drupal, we can probably expect some progressive "thinktank" to begin studying their move to drupal. Democrats love to discuss, to analyize, and to study. Not that you'll find much evidence of it in their actions....

Note:

On a scale of 1 to 10, I score 9's on both leftwing, and anarchist. Don't mistake me for a conservative. (it wouldn't be the first time...)

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Comments

Fri, 2006-08-18 09:39 — Harry Slaughter (not verified)

Can I come out of the closet now?

That's right, I'm a member of the Drupal Liberation Front, an underground extreme right wing faction who will not rest until every last member of the bush family has sat in the oval office, country music plays in every office, every red blooded american is wearing a dale earnhardt tshirt, and, most importantly, druplicon turns red!

Wed, 2006-08-16 06:11 — lectric (not verified)

nobody told them...

...about the backdoor liberals built into Drupal. Shhhhhhhh!

Mon, 2006-08-14 23:09 — major_danny (not verified)

Won't make it past moderation

At least Jesus doesn't blog in Python. I'm no red-stater (live in Texas and voted Dem in '00/'04), but somebody should give Señior Markos a daily beating. Seriously.

I nominate Joe Lieberman.

Sun, 2006-08-13 17:05 — media girl (not verified)

Choosing open source is already subversive

It goes against the American way of paying a big corporation to have control over everything you do. Kudos to Red State for doing this. How ironic that the dittoheads have dared to think independently while the Kosnik echo chamber manufactures consent. It's sad, really. Then again, these Beltway types still talk about "the bloggers" like we're all a unified political insurgency, which is evidence that they just don't get it at all. The lost consultants probably just bow to Markos as some sort of expert, and want to imitate his success. After all, he invented right-hand menus, doncha know?

Sun, 2006-08-13 11:45 — dado

can we anticipate lots o

can we anticipate lots o drupal contributions from these or other RedStaters?

Tue, 2006-08-15 17:03 — Clayton (not verified)

Yes you can

Once we get past the point of our initial implementation, you can be assured that we'll give back to the community. In fact, we attempted to do so when we were on Scoop, but our contributions were ignored. (Breaking Blue at mydd.com is a Redstate contribution, but was ignored by core). Clayton

Sun, 2006-08-13 04:25 — J. Alva Scruggs (not verified)

Does my heart good

Democratic strategists can't tell the difference between the "frame" of a message and the substance of it. They'd use a chainsaw to carve a turkey if someone told them it gave them that entrepreneurial look and feel. They could know all about Drupal and still reject it because:

Kos uses Scoop
Kos is a Democrat
Kos raises money and bods for the Cause (our careers)
We're Democrats
We'll use Scoop
We'll get money and bods for the Cause (our careers)

Hopeless!

Sat, 2006-08-12 16:24 — Erick Erickson (not verified)

RedState

Thanks for overlooking our political shortcomings! After only a week, I love Drupal over whatever that was we were using! LOVE. IT. We have so much more flexibility and scalability. It is wonderful.

Sat, 2006-08-12 16:18 — Sami Khan (not verified)

The Drupal Party

I think it would be wise to form a real left-wing party called the Drupal party. We already have a symbol for such a party, all hail the Drupalicon. The Democrats are a joke, America really has a choice between two parties that essentially have the exact same foreign policies and many local ones too (Thank the lobbies), which I find rather odd... But that doesn't seem to bother the majority of American, they just figure that it must be because the same policies must be good for America... I guess when the country switches from bilateral to unilateral the difference becomes more apparent -- and Lieberman is a really good example of the fact that the foreign policy is in sync between the two parties in many cases – fortunately there are a few level-headed democrats left out there. You have to hand it to the Republicans though, they sure are organized and at top of their game!