One Central Place Drupal/CiviCRM-based site live

Am pleased to say that we finally got the new One Central Place web site launched and live!  The new site is built on CiviCRM and Drupal and is a great improvement in functionality over the old version, which was a bespoke site built in Django.

This was my first proper introductin to CiviCRM running on top of Drupal and the pair's ability to deliver bespoke web solutions.  

It was an interesting experience.  Drupal and Civi seem to be at times both good at delivering rapid web applications, then at other times provide quite an obstruction to writing bespoke functionality.

I think this is largely due to the data abstraction model used in both Drupal and CiviCRM.  The plethorer of tables, stylesheets, files, modules, API calls, mean that certain things that are straight-forward for a raw PHP or PERL programmer to do, become pretty labourious using this software.

On the upside, imho Civi is an amazingly complete piece of CRM (Contact Relationship Management) software, whose rather geeky web site really doesn't do justice.  It's suitable not just for the civic sector (in their words), but also for any for- or not-for-profit organisation looking for a complete web-based CRM solution.