I finally got around to updating www.lawrencemountainbikeclub.org with a new design and moved it over to WordPress.
I’m not ashamed to admit that a big hurdle for me was my existing PHP code for allowing people to join the club via our PayPal account. I loathed the idea of having to create some kind of custom page with hard-coded links, styled to look like it was a regular WordPress page.
As it turns out, WordPress is amazingly intuitive about allowing me to add some comment lines to the top of a template page, and then have that template be an option on the default “Add New Page” entry screen. Instead of feeling like a complete hack, integrating my existing code – and even a separate MySQL database – with a WordPress template worked so smoothly, it almost felt like this was the way it was supposed to be – that it wasn’t a kludge-y hack.
Not to bash too hard on Drupal, but nothing with Drupal has ever felt nearly so logical and effortless. I guess I just have to say that I am extremely fortunate that I’ve not had to deal with such complex sites that Drupal offered the only real solution. And when I do cross that threshold, I hope my intuition wakes up and sees the Drupal solution with the same clarity!
(A big hat-tip to Themeid.com for their Responsive WordPress Theme. Thank you!)