I've been working on the club's website for about a month now, and I can't help but applaud Alex Wilson's decision to use the Drupal framework to manage the Highland Glen site's content. There are a number of characteristics about the Drupal framework that are very appealing. One very useful thing is how the Drupal framework separates "look and feel" from functionality. This means that one can substitute one Drupal "theme" for another, without changing much (if anything) about how the website actually is constructed. But, by far, a significant advantage of Drupal is that the framework *is* a standardized framework, yet gets contributions from web developers all over the world, who contribute Drupal functionality (termed "modules") that solve a particular task - and all of them are searchable, so that one need not develop a Drupal module from scratch - it's likely been done by someone else, and all one has to do is install it.

The current club website theme, called "LiteJazz", was developed in the US by a firm called RoopleTheme. LiteJazz is licensed under the GNU public license (GPL), which means that its non-profit usage (such as the club's) is free. After a week of "tinkering" with the previous theme (called spreadfirefox), I realized that not only was it going to take a significant amount of work to customize, but also that while I have some experience with web applications and a lot with database technology, I am not a graphics designer, and I won't become one overnight. Hence the switch to LiteJazz - 40 minutes later (no kidding), HGCC is back online with a great new colour scheme and a layout that's suitable for the information the club needs to have displayed. There were some small glitches along the way; but since all of this code is open source, it's all customizable and I've learned enough about PHP and cascading style sheets to make the required changes.

Sure, it could be better. And easier. And more responsive. But this technology is a considerable improvement over what was available even 5 years ago.