Last weekend I went to a local newspaper stand with my daughter to by some cigars (yes, I still smoke). I always checkout some computer magazines while I am there and seldom buy one. Most of them are just not worth it. With the net on your fingertips, why buy a dead tree with a dead article.

Somehow on all newspapers stands, the computer magazines are close located to the porn magazines. I dont know why. It is not that I am browsing in a computer magazine to see a bare naked barebone intel machine on page 3 or so. So I feel like a pervert while looking in the computer magazines and usually I am surrounded by real perverts. Most of them think probably I am the sick one for looking at bare naked barebone intels in a huge rack.

Last week I actually bought a magazine, the Dutch "Linux Magazine", edition 2007, year 7,number 6. Not because it is a good magazine (it isnt) but my eye saw the Druplicon logo at page 58.

At home I quickly read the article. The tittle was "Drupal, het godsgeschenk", which translates to "Drupal, Gods gift". It starts with the writer complaining about the fact that people ask her to do websites and she didnt like doing all the stuff from scratch by herself. I dont think this is true anymore for most people who start with drupal. Drupal is at the high end of the CMS market and most people joining Drupal in do have at least some experience with Joomla!, PHPnuke and other OSS CMS-es. She complains about she has to install MySQL (?) and she doesnt like that. Hmmm, those Debian people. Then Machtelt described how to create the database and install Drupal. Though she doesnt mention what version she is using, from the lack of installer, I would say 4.7. She also uses old style URL's (?q=node), something that has gone out of fashion at least two or three years now in the Drupal community.

I dont think this is a very good article about Drupal. It doesnt do much more then the to make an abstract of the the standard install howto and is wrong on at least one point. Having said that, it is hard to write an introduction article on Drupal in 2.5 pages. Where do you focus on. The community? The abstraction layer? The node system? Themes? Modules? What Drupal can do for you as a newsaggregator, a bugtracking system, a blog? And what is the target audiences? Journalist? Nerds? Bloggers?

Machtelt has written a good book on Linux before, has visited the Drupalcon in Belgium, is a swell nerd, and "Linux chix" (NL). I am sure whe will write a better article on Drupal in one of the upcoming Linux Magazine issues. Toch Matchelt? :-)

BTW: ON A SITENOTE, on the back of the magazine was this advertisement:

I have around a decade experience with datacentra, webhosting and marketing in different roles and functions. And I know it is hard to "sell" rackspace, it is not sexy. Realroot.be, home of the Belgium famous Drupal site Zattevrienden- tries to sell rackspace in a cheap way, throw in some ladies like you are selling cars in the 60-ies. But at least that is the business they are in, hosting and housing pron sites. But this ad of procolix doesnt make any sense. First of all Procolix doesnt have its own datacentre. But most of all, why add "the business lady" for the racks? Why is she dressed like a bad middle manager or sales rep? Why is her hand on her hip? What is she doing in that room? Why *isnt* she in the room but is the photo a cheap muck up (light on floor from left, light on face from right)? But most of all, what is a cheap middlemanager with a fake pearl necklace and her hand on her hip doing on the computerfloor WITH A CUP OF COFFEE!? I mean, common, no datacentre in the world -I might hope- does allow coffee or any other drinks on the floor. And if they do, I am sure not going to host there! Bad Procolix! Bad!