This was my first Drupal website! I had wanted to learn more about the CMS and had already gotten my hands dirt with Joomla and Wordpress. I knew I didn't like Joomla, and Wordpress, while incredibly easy to set up and customize, is very limited in it's functionality. It's great, but only for blog websites. (Yea, go argue, you Wordpress fans! It can do more, but it's not good at that. It's great for blogs, though.) I knew Drupal was very complex, but I was itching to learn more about it. I decided the best way to learn was to do some good - and so, I donated my services to this local religious community education organization.

The Skokie Community Kollel ("Kollel" means "Collection" or "Group" in Hebrew) had a website which I would not even call functional. It looked like it was build 20 years ago and was so bad, people gave up trying to update it. The last event posted on it was 4 years old! I am not even posting a screenshot of it, as I don't want to hurt anybody's monitor. They wanted a new website which would be able to handle schedules and events notifications, calendar, photo galleries, information about the kollel, and the ability to post recordings of classes given at the center.

I knew that the Kollel services people of all ages, and many of them were a little older and not used to the web. The new website had to be contemporary in function, but a little bit conservative in design. The final design had patterns and colors of more classical and ornamental origins; something the community would appreciate and probably recognize from their ornamental religious objects. (Torah scrolls are dressed in decorative velvet, sometimes with gold and silver trim, and placed in a large cabinet which is itself very decorated.)

The final website makes it easy as pie for the Kollel staff to add photos, update content, and upload recordings of classes. When we sat down for a training session on the website, they were so surprised how easy it was! And myself; well, now I'm a Drupaller.