Close to 15 years I have been using Drupal for my personal web sites. Drupal is a flexible and configurable CMS (Content Management System) web framework, similar to Wordpress. It has been a relatively dependable working horse for my hosting needs - simple and not too flexible, but relatively robust and reliable. It was quite straightforward to bring up a new web site via it:

1. Create a new MySQL database
2. Create a config directory for the site
3. Update the settings file
4. Go through the setup wizard
5. Configure more stuff in the admin interface
6. Voila!

Unfortunately, there are a number of drawbacks to Drupal. I was sort of ignoring those for years, mainly because it “just kinda worked” for most of what I wanted it to do. I didn’t require any advanced configuration that would necessitate code changes, and the rest was relatively simple via the admin interface. However, in the recent year or two I got frustrated with the shortcomings of the framework on one hand, and on the other I decided I did want some more advanced customisation and control over the web sites.

2020 just arrived and it’s time for something new. I have been using Drupal since 2006, so we have been together for almost 14 years! It’s an impressive journey and I am look back with satisfaction - Drupal is simple to use if it fits the requirements exactly, and I stoically avoided touching any of its smelly PHP bowls. However, with the arrival of Drupal 8 I realised, that I couldn’t migrate to it even my simple and straightforward sites. Therefore, I decided to slowly migrate to Django + Wagtail. This will require some coding in Python on my side, but I don’t mind that. I will be able to control the look and feel of my content much better with less effort, and I will hopefully enjoy adding an occasional extension here and there.