Octopress versus Drupal performance
One of the main advantages of a statically generated blog (like Octopress) over a blogging platform that uses a database (WordPress, Drupal) is performance.
My humble blog doesn’t get enough traffic for performance to be a consideration and I thought I wouldn’t be able to discern any improvement.

This graph is from Google Webmaster Tools. Can you guess when the blog migration from Drupal to Octopress was done ? Yes - that’s right - the middle of September (17th to be precise).
Read moreDrupal 7 released
This blog and the handful of modules I use has been upgraded to the final version of Drupal 7.0 which was released today.
I was quite pleased that I used Drupal 7 from the early beta versions and then tracked the D7 release candidates as this gave me valuable experience in upgrading Drupal 7 relatively quickly while preserving my additional modules without losing all my data which always helps. It’s worth noting that although I barely scratch the surface of Drupal 7’s wide range of functionality, the quality, reliability and performance of Drupal 7 was perfectly fine for this blog.
Read moreessential modules for your new Drupal 7 site
People never ask me ‘Hey Norman - what modules have you installed thus far on this wonderful Drupal 7 powered blog ?’
Archive - monthly archives.
Disqus - although I had some problems with this module so I am currently using a simple Disqus block.
Global Redirect - ensures that ’node/1234’ is redirected to ‘2010/21/22/blog-post’.
Google Analytics - mandatory to torment myself over visitors statistics using GA.
Markdown Filter - although I haven’t fully embraced this yet. Old (raw HTML) habits die hard.
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marketing plan for Drupal 7 launch
The date for the long awaited Drupal 7 release has been announced as 5 January 2011.
Dries should just play this video. Then he should simply read the following and leave the stage.
Read moreDrupal 6 RC2 near miss
Siebel customers (and employees alike) all over the world are busy enjoying Metalink3 which has recently replaced SupportWeb.
Everyone (well me, mainly) is taking great delight in taunting Oracle DBA types with incredulous cries of ‘Sorry - did you say you’re still on legacy Metalink2 ?’
A number of readers, impressed with this bleeding edge technology and dying for more, have emailed me asking why this humble Siebel blog hasn’t yet been updated to Drupal 6.0 RC2.
Read moreporting Drupal to Oracle and DB2
A couple of interesting papers discussing the portability issues and challenges involved when trying to port Drupal to the freely available versions of Oracle and DB2.
Read moreDrupal supports Oracle database
Just installed and configured Drupal 4.7.3 and noted an announcement asking for volunteers to test newly added support for the Oracle database.
Most open source, content management systems (WordPress, Joomla et al) use MySQL so it will be interesting to see whether there is much demand for a CMS running on an Oracle database.
On a similar note, Oracle are likely to confirm that the next major release of Siebel (8.0) will be available on the Linux platform. The official announcement is expected at Oracle OpenWorld later this month. This isn’t wholly unexpected as support for Linux in Siebel 8.0 was included in the public Statement of Direction (May 2006).
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