so…having strayed from techno-stuff for a while, it’s time to get back to what’s important – nerdism.

I’ve been doing a LOT of web work recently – trying to functionally capture my ideas and pet projects into working models. I’ve gotta say, being a “webmaster” is not at ALL what it was like ten years ago. Holy shit Batman. I have proven that with great functionality comes great complexity.

I’ve been using Drupal as my framework. I’ve gotta hand it to the folks at Drupal HQ…because this CMS is awesome!! It’s a freakin’ swiss-army knife of web juicyness. It seems that there’s a module for everything you could want to accomplish. I’m building some pretty complex web-apps…and am blown away that most of it’s all wrangled and accomplished through existing modules. CCK and views alone can conquer Eastern Europe…toss in a few more modules and you could possibly tackle that land war in Asia you’ve been dreaming of. It’s pretty amazing how much contribution has gone into the project. I’m even trying to give back some myself.

All that being said, there’s a little piece to the puzzle that I personally feel is the crème de la crème. One word – ‘drush’.

The DRUpal SHell is KICK ASS.

With this ninja-utility, not only do I have a solid web platform to deliver my apps on…but I also have a way to script and actually MANAGE the platform without having to mire myself in thousands of hours of chasing my desk-rat. Add a little perl on top of the DRUpal SHell, I’m able to roll out sites in a consistent manner with loads of modules already activated, for a consistent experience and dev environment.

For instance, I needed to enable about 20 modules to get my site(s) up to speed with SEO optimization. I could either go through the list of additions by hand, one at a time, site by site… or throw a few commands at drush and call it a day. Leveraging drush, I am able to add the SEO pieces to a dozen websites with one command now. What’s even better…it can stay on top of my updates and security upgrades as well. Needless to say all my portals got upgraded last night as well, again with only one command (thanks to drush).

I won’t go into any more boring details as I’ve got to get back to work at the moment, but seriously…if you want to save your drupal life…check out drush.

Thank you drush developers. I love you.

DRUSH – the best Drupal tool EVER