I noticed that the user table and the session table in drupal , the field for date is save in int(11). I wonder if why is it so, and why isn’t the date save in the mysql timestamp format. I am not doubting the work of the drupal community as I believe they may have a good reason to do this. But what happen when we want to sort the data in the database according to the date. If we saved it as int for varchar, we wouldn’t be able to sort it, unless we retrieve it out from the database and convert it back to the date format.

If anyone is curious how we convert it back from the integer to a readable date, most probably for reporting,  this is how we do it :

echo date(’d/m/y’, ‘the date int’);

 

I have been playing a lot with joomla, drupal and wordpress. It’s very hard to say which is the best. Each has their own uniqueness and it’s kinda personal in terms of choosing which CMS suits you most.

And wordpress, the one you are viewing currently. The thing I like about drupal is the CCK plugin. I don’t remember using any CMS with CCK node. However, the bad thing bout drupal is that, sometimes you have to depend on the community a lot to have a module that you want. If you can’t wait, you got to write it yourself or customize from existing version they have. By the time you finished writing a module, drupal might has been upgraded and your code might not work in the new version of drupal.

Other than that, drupal is cool despite the steep learning curve compared to other CMSes. Once you get used to how the things work, you are able to manage drupal pretty well and set up a site within a day or two. I have not tried typo3 or some other CMS in the market, but I have narrowed down my choice to wordpress, drupal and joomla.

Joomla, easy to use for non IT people and it distinguished the admin site from the end user view distinctively. Somehow the URL is not so SEO friendly but I’m sure the Joomla community has some contribution to make it SEO friendly.

Wordpress, I like it very much. The codes inside is easy to modify. Oh by the way, drupal coding isn’t messy as well but in joomla, erm, you will need some time to get used to it. Back to wordpress, it is easy to modify, SEO friendly (with SEO platinum plugin), easy to keep track etc.

Just a few cents of my opinion. Haven’t really go into CSS for the 3 CMS yet, but I will soon. Next will be doing research on how well the plugin of AJAX into these CMS.